Doing Research For Your Hubs

For those who have taken college writing classes you may already understand the importance of using external resources to back up your content as well as citing where you get your information to avoid plagiarism. If you are not the leading expert on a topic you would like to write about doing research on the topic will make it possible to write on the topic as an expert.Reading other peoples work will place the necessary information in your head to write a hub which even a leading expert would bookmark.There are some things to think about when doing research and in this hub I will be covering what resources are ok to use and what resources should be used as a last resort.I will also be discussing how you can use another person’s work without infringing on the copyright.

When deciding whether or not a resource is worth using some important factors include who published the content, who wrote the content, and who is endorsing the content.When learning about any given topic you should be placing the most time with those who are the established leaders within the niche.A leader is not a person who claims to be a leader, but rather those that the niche itself declares the leading experts.Another way you can get an idea of the validity of the information is looking at the top level domain.This is the .com, .org, .info, ect.Some of the domains which guarantee a certain level of accuracy include .edu and .gov top level domains.These are only given out to colleges or government agencies.They still may have some prejudice, but in a world of opinion these websites may be the closest to factual information.

Sources such as wikipedia should be looked at closely for who did the last editing.This is a massive resource on pretty much any topic imaginable.The only problem with wikis is everyone is allowed to edit the pages making the information inaccurate when someone who knows nothing of the topic publishes an article.To avoid using inaccurate information use these types of resources with other resources making sure they match.If they do then you know the information is more than likely accurate.

There are many instances which you will be unable to find a doctor in the field or a government website.In these instances you will need to rely on common sense when trying to decipher the validity of the information.Some of the topics that would fall into these categories are mainly hobbies which are extremely popular in the online world.Search engine optimization is another topic which does not have many professional people publishing work.The reason for this is search engine optimization is simply a guessing game.You will need to attempt to find the 200+ factors Google uses to rank websites well. Google and the other major search engines keep their algorithms secret meaning no one knows the exact method of ranking well so anyone who tells you how to optimize a site is estimating hopefully through experience.

While out on the web you may come across some amazing content in various forms.The largest picture production website has millions of pictures that you can use for your hubs.There are quote sites out there filled with thousands of quotes which would fit your site and youtube.com has millions of videos on any given topic. If you are going to use someone else’s content do your best to find what it is protected under.Content that is protected by copyright has the most strict policies and should not be copied unless they have a republication clause which is usually published on the website and tells you what to do if you would like to use the content on your site.Most websites use the creative commons which means if you are going to use the content you will need to attribute credit to the author.There are also other forms of creative commons which include non commercial clauses and clauses which prohibit any changes to the content.

If you would like to use flickr click on the creative commons then click on the attribution pictures.You are allowed to take and use these pictures as long as you give credit and a link back to where you got it.Hubpages makes it extremely easy to do this.To publish a flickr picture on your hubpage you will need to go to flickr and find a video.Click on embed then copy the code to a text editor.You will not need the entire code since Hubpages provides a picture module.All you will need is the link to the picture which starts with http and ends with something like .jpeg or .gif.Take this link and place it in the URL link in the hubpage picture module then click import at the bottom.You will then need to place “flickr” in the source name and copy and paste the URL where you got the picture into the source URL box.

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