Use the HubPages Suggest Links Tool to End Writer's Block

The HubPages Suggest Links tool scans your Hub looking for words and phrases that are contained in other published Hubs. For each word or phrase the Suggest Links tool finds in your Hub that has a potential likeness to a word or phrase in another Hub, you can view the other Hub to see if you want to create a text link to that other Hub from yours. The purpose of this tool is twofold: to encourage inter-linking within the HubPages site and to expand a reader’s experience.

As for any tool that is good in concept and also survives the testing phase, there is a shake-down period where real users beat the heck out of it, and many have done just that, to the point where there are several Hubs written about this Suggest Links tool, its good points and not-so-good, and many forum threads as well. If you like, you can follow those Hubs and lively discussions to learn about Suggest Links functionality, issues, and issues resolutions.

Meanwhile, you can explore this tool as another strategy for ending writer's block by using its sometimes unrelated suggested links to stoke up your creative juices when you feel your personal writing well is running dry.

I found myself one sultry summer evening, not too long after the Suggest Links tool was released, looking through my Hubs to see how I could use the tool effectively. For me, effectively means adding to the reader’s positive experience, not taking away from it.

For example, two years ago I wrote a Hub about the similarities and differences between Hillary Clinton and me while she was a contender for the top executive job in the USA. Since she and I share a certain time, place, and set of experiences, that’s what I decided to write about.

When subjecting this Hub of mine to the Suggest Links tool, the tool highlighted the word “college”. The context of that word in my Hub was “...a prestigious American women’s college.” I got excited about this. What would I learn from other Hubbers about women’s colleges? But disappointment followed on excitement. The Suggest Links tool returned twelve entries having the word “college” somewhere in them, including a photo gallery of pretty college girls having fun. Other Hubs listed as possible links that would enhance a reader’s experience were on topics such as business ideas for college students, how to pick a college major, colleges in Manila, and study habits for college students.

To make sure that the Suggest Links tool offered up all possibilities relevant to my Hub, I searched Hubs for “womens college”. (Notice the lack of an apostrophe.) I did find one Hub about a women’s college in India. I also searched for “woman college”, and found topics like Obama as a woman, the end of evil woman, and funny college jokes.

My personal light bulb lit. There’s nothing on HubPages about the advantages, disadvantages, and experiences of attending a women’s college. Now there’s meat for a Hub. Or at the very least for a HubPages “question”.

Needless to say, this first experience with women’s colleges intrigued me. So I subjected another of my Hubs, How Not To Feed a Baby Cow, to the Suggest Links tool. I about died on the spot.

There was nothing in the list the Suggest Links tool returned that had anything to do with my topic, which was a humorous take on avoiding injury to your private parts when you feed a calf the wrong way.

The first phrase highlighted by the Suggest Links tool was “dairy operation”. The topics of the suggested Hubs were everything from how to cook eggs, to eggnog recipes, to how to buy a door opening device.

The next highlighted word in this Hub that caught my eye was “calf”. I can't resist listing the Hub title that was returned: Buy Wide Calf Boots Online (That's hysterical...imagine a baby cow wearing boots. This idea is perfect for sending to sangrea.net for a cartoon or two!)

Not one suggestion from the Suggest Links tool had anything to do with the topic of my Hub, which was how to hand-feed a calf, meaning a barn animal that would be turned into veal. Nor did any suggestion enrich a reader’s experience by better explaining a term.

Again, my creative bulb lit up. It seems as though the word “calf” to most readers on HubPages (and maybe on the Internet) means the human anatomical structure between the knee and the ankle. I think I may have an additional humorous Hub in the works that has something to do with a play on "calf."

Apparently proper names mean something to the Suggest Links tool.

I was quite surprised to see that the name “Robert Farrar Capon” in one of my older Hubs about falling in love with onions was worthy of being singled out. But when I clicked on this highlighted name, I got the message that there were “No suggestions found.” Names have meaning, but what meaning? The format of a unique name is strong enough to trigger some kind of Suggest Links association, but yet there were no links suggested that would lend meaning to the content of my Hub. So what to do with that? Clearly, write a Hub about Robert Farrar Capon, my teacher who had a great role in my falling in love with the onion.

This tool is a gem for stretching your imagination. Take a look at the suggestions this tool presents and ask yourself, “Really? Those suggestions have nothing to do with what I’m trying to convey.” Then take the next step to see how you can turn those results around to find a fresh topic to write about.

And while you are at it, use the Suggest Links tool frequently both while your Hub is still unpublished and after you publish it. Not only will it suggest more ideas the more you write, it will also suggest different ideas for the same words or word phrases than it had before. What a clever tool.

Disclaimer: I have no idea about the technical aspects of how the HubPages Suggest Links tool works (perhaps it’s doing more than simply scanning like words and phrases between one Hub and all the Hubs on the site). I only know how it appears to work for me. If my words are in any way misleading or erroneous, please offer your expertise in the comments section below.

One more thing you need to know: every word or phrase highlighted by the HubPages Suggest Links tool has been followed up in this Hub, for better or for worse.