How to choose Hot Topics of Interest to create Hubs on:

Even after the huge algorithm hurricane that swept across the entire World Wide Web that left many sites like Hubpages, Ezinearticles.com, demand studios and even Squidoo (though fully recovered) confused and de-SERPed;  there’s still much to be gained writing hot topics of interest on Hubpages but many writers are yet to see why.

The only snag here is sniffing out what kind of topics that can really generate interest and ultimately more traffic to the contents you create on this site. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit rusty as regards creating hot contents because I’ve been away from the content creation circles for a long time now (two years to be precise). So tutoring anybody on what you should write or not write can be out of the question.

However, I might still be able to lend one or two suggestions on how to get good writing ideas that will get the readers and searchers out there all squirmed up and reeling for more. But before that, I’ll be taking a cursory look at the state of the World Wide Web post panda/penguin and the overall implication of the changes as it affects every content creator and hubbers specifically.

Now after the series of algorithm changes that was instituted by Google, the way things were done in relation to how it is done at present has seriously been revolutionized for good or maybe worse. SEO tactics that were hitherto used to get exposure for your contents are now deprecate and obsolete. Remember these changes embraced duplicate contents, spam and now Exact Match domain (EMD). So to make your contents SERP worthy, it must conform to the dictates of these changes.

Nonetheless, I’ll from personal experience look at plausible ways to get cool ideas for great topics that will increase any Hubber’s readership.

Getting more Hub Followers

It is really sad and disheartening that many top elite and ‘A’ list Hubbers have left the scene for good post panda/penguin; most of these hubbers where the ones who made this site a beautiful rendezvous for great writing minds and having them as followers and following them had its perks.

Top Hubbers like RebeccaE, Frogsdropping, Ryankett- where more like Hubpages moderators who helped guide newbies and even oldies into knowing what was required of them as Hubbers. They helped many writers on this site via their useful comments which somehow helped you know what kind of contents that can bring in the most traffic.

But the real issue as always is how can you have these set of people as followers? Remember your longevity on this site wholly depends on having these groups of followers who through their comments and other feedbacks guide you through the precepts of writing topics that elicits the most reactions and traffic to be precise.

For example, when I was getting hits upon hits on one of my health related how-to-do hubs titled health benefits of coconut water; this made me do more research on topics related to natural therapies and home remedies. Though I’m yet to write and develop enough hubs on this niche, I plan to do so in the coming months and weeks ahead. As a matter of fact, I’ve started a men’s health tips blog which I will be sharing its content soon on this site.

Another topic that really got more interest since the animal attack (panda and penguin), was the hub 21 Hot and Trendy Places …, this hub made more impact during the last Christmas and holiday season. This gave me another insight into knowing what kind of topics people loved reading at a particular time and season; in what could be referred to as seasonal Hubs. This kind of Hubs can be written during periods and seasons like Christmas, Hanukkah, Valentine (which is just around the corner), Easter, thanksgiving and more.

How do I get more Hub Followers?

Like I’ve posited here, having more followers is very important if you must get cool contents out there for reading. But the real issue here is how?

As a Hubpages veteran writer, I might affirm here that I’ve got one or two important skills on how to get more followers. Don’t forget, this is about knowing what kind of stuff you should write about; and like I said earlier on- a good number of followers should help you understand this. So I’ll be listing below some tactics I’ve used and still using to get loyal followers that have stuck with me for five years running.

1. Followed more people especially those who I shared some similarities with.
2. Wrote on topic I had a natural flare for. 
3. Commented more.
4. Placed useful comments on the hubs of other I read and followed their contents. 
5. Learnt a little SEO to help optimize my contents.
6. Burnt my RSS feeds on FeedBurner.
7. Followed the trends on this site via the forums.
8. Answered more Hub questions where I made sure my answers were pretty useful to the person who asked the question and to others who needed answers to similar questions

These are just a handful of what I did to get more followers, I hope to discuss this in full in a hub I plan to write and share soonest.

Now how do having this great number of followers transcend to knowing what topics are hot?

1. It exposes your contents to more people who can have your content voted up and subsequently shared in social Medias like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. 
2. The more interaction on your hub will mean more activity for the search engines. 
3. Though people view backlinks as black hat after the penguin strike, however backlinks are actually important link juice that could make your content viral.
4. Comments are like pointers to what your readers love.
5. Your followers are like subjects who revere and guide you like a sire or king. 
6. Constructive criticisms of your work which most of your more experienced followers make via direct message and comments to you can help you a great deal in making long term decisions on your writing goals and aspirations.

Now I’ve got a substantial amount of followers, what next?

To crave your indulgence further, there are other ways of getting to know what is really hot and one of the way that this site has carve d a niche for itself is the creation of the question and answer feature.

What can I do with this Question and Answer hub feature and how does it translate to helping me choose the right topics?

I noticed something immediately after the introduction of this hub attribute, the interaction at the Hubpages forum declined to some extent; I stand to be corrected on this. However, this wonderful inclusion has really helped many hubbers facing writer’s block to get wonderful writing ideas and topics.

How?

Well this is made possible through the make this into a hub tool that allows you answer any question in hub format.

One of my hubs, best place to meet a life partner was actually drafted and written when I answered a hub quite related to this topic.

Every day I get notifications from Hubpages, and I get to see many question type that I can specifically transform into a stellar hub.

Sorry for digressing a little bit as I am yet to answer the question on how you can make the most of this feature.

There are specifically three ways I personally see the advantage of the question and answer tool, see below-

1.  The question proper:  yes you can get a pretty nice writing idea looking at the structure of a particular question. If this kind of question fall under the type of niche you have a flare for, you can easily answer the question to the satisfaction of the person who asked the question. 

2.  The Answers: looking at the response to the question in the form of answers can be another top pointer to what kind of stuff people care much about. A question with a lot of response, will give you a vivid picture of what you can write about basing your hub topic on the responses. Now most responses are concise and not detailed enough to satisfy the curiosity of the one who asked the question and also the army of others who want answers to this particular type of question. As a savvy writer you can make researches and improve the answer by way of a well written hub. I plan to exploit this feature to my benefit as I embark on my very first Hub challenge, you can join me. 

3.  Keywords and Niche: the set of keywords used by the Hubber who asked the question can become golden for SEO purposes. Though I’m yet to do this since I just figured this out now; the keywords used in the question can be copied and placed in Google’s search bar to ascertain the number of hits this type of question can generate.

People ask series of questions, from the very typical and logical questions to seemingly silly and absurd questions.

Like-

• How can I French kiss my girl?
• What is the best writing site?
• Should I make love on my first date? 
• How to climb mount Everest? 
• Who is God?

And just anything you can think of as a question. Most Hubbers are lucky to have their question featured in the Hubpages monthly Newsletter.

You could use a little stat to get a feeler of what is hot and trendy and guess what tool can help you do this- Google analytics it is, see how...

The Importance of Google Analytics as you Research for Hot writing Topics

Truly speaking, I’m yet to fathom out the full importance of the Analytics tool even as I list it out as a very important tool in my quest to sniff out what is hot.

I began to understand how prominent this wonderful SEO apparel can be after I incorporated it to Adsense. With this tool right in place, I’ve been able to see my stats, from the stats I now see which particular Hub, content or website brought in more ad dollars. It doesn’t stop there. It also enables me to see the demographics of my traffic. Like I said earlier, I am yet to factor out all the uses of the analytics toll, but what I’ve seen so far will suffice.

How do I get to choose what topics that are cool basing my judgment on the analytics tool?

• A multibillion dollar question if I must say. Regardless, it is quite easy to use this tool as a niche finder if you know how. Remember Google analytics is a sort of a diagnostic center for your contents. But in all, you can get all you want just by studying the demographics of your traffic and visitors to your content. By demographic I mean the following
• Location of your site’s visitors.
• What kind of content they clicked on most.
• Their ad preference.
• The age estimation of your visitors – you can understand this via the content type your visitors loved most.
• Sex of the visitors: women and men differ on most issues, and your content type can help you understand this. For example my hub ‘how to detect a liar” got more response from women than men. Since most women see their men as potential cheats not the other way round.
• More…

From the above estimation, any web savvy writer can unearth hot topics that can generate even more traffic and above all dollars.

Don’t forget the forums…

Like I posited earlier, the Hub question and answer feature has reduced the power of the forums to a varying degree. But no one can denounce the power of the forums. I still remember that during the algorithm crisis that rocked Hubpages a couple of months back, the forums became the rendezvous for every disgruntled writer who lost their rankings to air their views.

More so, the power of the forums can never be overemphasized bearing in mind that most of the SERP’s that got Hubpages contents listed came mostly from Hub question and answer segment  followed by the former.

Like always, how can the forums come into play when choosing good and hot topics to write about?

The forums are like the life wire of the any site, especially a site as big and gigantic like Hubpages. Some forum thread can become really useful looking at the response of other hubbers on any particular topic. I still remember this one thread that generated so much controversy post panda that got some hubbers almost daggers drawn. It was a discussion on what constitutes “quality content” based on Hubpages standard.

The thread had all the heavy weight like Paul, Simone Haruko, Ryankett and many other elite Hubber that I can’t remember or list their names. It bothered on the rationale of moving hubbers to separate domains, to help top Hubbers to regain their rankings SERP wise. The argument was that the movement did not bring in the much talked about and overhyped benefits as proposed by Hubpages CEO and management. Some Hubbers agreed with Paul while others bluntly disagreed. Well I don’t need to keep writing about this thread but moved straight to the relevance of forums in getting writing topics.

• The Forums are often crawled and visited by search bots since it is always fresh with new responses. Also this can help you understand what type of stuff people talk about most.
• If you are very observant, through the forums you can draw out the ingredients that will enable you build any content just by reading and following the responses objectively.
• It is free to use and serves as the complaints board of the site. 
• Topics bothering on almost any niche and how it affects those concerned and interested in the niche area gives you an in depth analysis on what keywords and jargons and even slangs that characterize contents on any niche discussed at these forums. 
• Forums are a search light to understanding trends and possible site breaking news and how it affects you as a hubber especially in choosing what to write about.

Hope you got this week’s Hubpages Newsletter?

Hubpages weekly or is bi-weekly newsletter is one filled with a potpourri of hot information on how Hubbers can enrich their hubbing experience.

The wonderful thing about this newsletter is that it contains stats like your average page views measured in percent, number of followers and more. Then information of the site’s latest news, developments and a host of other important info and future proposals to make the site one of the very best content sites.

How can this Newsletter become a source for hot writing topics?

If I must remind you, the newsletter gives you the links to the hottest hubs on every niche, the coolest question asked and its responses, the forum thread that generated the most heat, interview segment, rising stars and Hub tips from the HubPages learning center.

From here you can fathom out what is really hot and why; through this newsletter I plan to do the following as regards getting hot writing topics and trends. More so, if you are facing writer’s block then see how this Newsletter can be of great help to you-

• The Hubpages learning center is a great resource for every writer on the Hubpages train. Here you can learn simple and easy SEO tips that will help you on a long term. If you need help on how to use social Medias like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest for content marketing purposes, then here is your numero uno for that.  
• The latest development on this site which is always mentioned in these mailings also gives you a sneak peek into what writing on this site entails for every writer; like I got to know about the separate domain policy, Amazon capsule rearrangement, idle hubs resting and more. With this info within your grip, you can select good topic on any niche to write about based on the changes as they come and also how to write these topics to make them readable for your target audience. For example, many hubbers did a hub on how the separate domain can impact either negatively or positively on your overall rankings that spawned many controversies, claims and counter claims.

Your average Hub Earnings should also guide you to what is really hot! See how…

The Google AdSense program became rewarding for me when I started writing on this site, it gave me an insight to what brings in the clicks as regards topics and niches in the broader sense.

I got my first AdSense check through Hubpages (though the check got lost in transit thanks to Google’s carelessness).  Also my very first sale from Amazon Associate program was made possible courtesy of this site. Though things are no longer what it used to be, I still have every cause to say a big thank you to Paul and his team for creating this platform where every greenhorn and expert can get reward for their work.

So what does my earning stats got to do with hot writing topics?

Like I affirmed above, the Affiliate programs from Google, Amazon, eBay and the Hubpages Ad program can become a great resource for every writer here, see how-

1. If you are using Google Analytics tool, your AdSense earnings can tell you what Hub topic you wrote generated the most click; and also where and why the ads where clicked.
2. Amazon is a great program if you know how to use it, and knowing how to use it will help you create good topics on this site. Now I told you earlier that my very first Amazon Associate dollar was made on this site. When I got the info on this sale, I traced the source and found out that the sale was credited to me not even from a capsule; rather another similar product that the buyer bought after getting to amazon’s site via my link. Luckily for me the sale went through immediately and I got credit for it (remember Amazon’s Cookie only last for 48 hours or so).
3. I don’t use eBay, but for those who do can attest to its potency in guiding every writer on this platform on what niches are making the most money and why such a hubber should create great hubs on them (niches).
4. The Hubpages ads program is still not very clear to me; however I’ve heard great testimonies from hubbers who use it. It could still serve as a hot writing topic generator like its counterparts (AdSense, Amazon and eBay), it is all about knowing how to apply it for maximum result.

There are a couple of other hot unexplored tools on this site that can do the magic of guiding you though Hub creation.

Most of these unused tools are if properly utilized have long term benefits, I’ll just list some below and hopefully as I get to understand the rudiments and applications of some or all them; then I won’t hesitate to either update this hub to or create an entirely new one on how these tools can be employed for powerful Hub creation.

1. Idle hub feature.
2. Hub title help tool.
3. Apprentice program

Whatever is your long term Hub creation mantra, it is my belief that the information contained herein can add a little to the much you already know.

Hope to see your comments below, thanks.

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