How Long For 'Wizzes' To Mature?

TerriRexson: 04. Jul 2012, 04:43

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My Wizzley content seems to be decaying rather than maturing! I guess I just created all my early content in the honeymoon period. Initially my Wizzley content did well from day 1 (and stayed up.) 

Now I'm seeing lots of junk in the google results above my pages. 

Generally I see older content dropping rather than rising up. And new content doesn't take off at the moment. 

I did a round of edits a few weeks ago but that didn't seem to help. 

I think the problem is as simple as a legacy formatting issue.

Compare the following old wizzle of yours:

http://wizzley.com/dinosaur-shoes-for-kids/

with a new wizzle you've done:

http://wizzley.com/avengers-iron-man-costume-for-kids/

The old one has a lot of white space next to the adsense block, whereas the new wizzle fills the space with text.

G doesn't like adsense plus blank space above the fold as it is empty of content.

It's simple to fix - just go through the old wizzles and move the intro content from the text box into the intro module.  I did mine a couple of weeks ago.

l think that when wizzley first started, the intro module didn't exist, which is why we all put our intros in the text module instead. If everyone could just go through all their legacy wizzles and reformat them correctly, the site will probably revive when G does it's next update.

Rose: 07. Jul 2012, 14:42

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TerriRexson: 04. Jul 2012, 04:43

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My Wizzley content seems to be decaying rather than maturing! I guess I just created all my early content in the honeymoon period. Initially my Wizzley content did well from day 1 (and stayed up.) 

Now I'm seeing lots of junk in the google results above my pages. 

Generally I see older content dropping rather than rising up. And new content doesn't take off at the moment. 

I did a round of edits a few weeks ago but that didn't seem to help. 

 

I think the problem is as simple as a legacy formatting issue.

Compare the following old wizzle of yours:

http://wizzley.com/dinosaur-shoes-for-kids/

with a new wizzle you've done:

http://wizzley.com/avengers-iron-man-costume-for-kids/

The old one has a lot of white space next to the adsense block, whereas the new wizzle fills the space with text.

G doesn't like adsense plus blank space above the fold as it is empty of content.

It's simple to fix - just go through the old wizzles and move the intro content from the text box into the intro module.  I did mine a couple of weeks ago.

l think that when wizzley first started, the intro module didn't exist, which is why we all put our intros in the text module instead. If everyone could just go through all their legacy wizzles and reformat them correctly, the site will probably revive when G does it's next update.

Most of my articles that were doing well got an update to the new format and that hasn't helped. The one you mention hasn't because the product is temporarily unavailable at Zazzle so I was just waiting to see what happens there - it will get a revamp at some point. 

I don't think we're likely to get everyone to go back and reformat old articles. If that has caused a site-wide problem then an automatic reformat would be needed. There are lots of old format articles by authors who are not currently active or wouldn't bother to update old articles. 

Terri, I know from a conversation we had some time ago that you do not do much keyword research, if any at all. I have always admired the "gut instinct" you seem to have about what people are looking for and what may be successful for you.

However, given all the changes in the Google Algorithm since we first started publishing on Wizzley, I do wonder if it is time for you to re-think your strategy.

Of course we can only guess at exactly what Google wants, but it does seem to me that with the lessening in value of backlinks so people cannot "game", then content is going to become "king" even more than it has been.

That may not answer why junk and spam appears to be ranking higher than your content, but when you consider what the difference could be, I am wondering if they are ranking for keywords rather than quality of content?

Hopefully, from the information coming out from Google and thanks to the interpretation of people far better qualified than me to comment on what is happening, the spam stuff will gradually get pushed down, but of course that is of no consolation to you.

But perhaps if you re-visited the issue of keywords on some of your pages as an experiment, then this may help re-establish the pages higher up the search returns.

AJ: 08. Jul 2012, 08:41

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Terri, I know from a conversation we had some time ago that you do not do much keyword research, if any at all. I have always admired the "gut instinct" you seem to have about what people are looking for and what may be successful for you.

However, given all the changes in the Google Algorithm since we first started publishing on Wizzley, I do wonder if it is time for you to re-think your strategy.

Of course we can only guess at exactly what Google wants, but it does seem to me that with the lessening in value of backlinks so people cannot "game", then content is going to become "king" even more than it has been.

That may not answer why junk and spam appears to be ranking higher than your content, but when you consider what the difference could be, I am wondering if they are ranking for keywords rather than quality of content?

Hopefully, from the information coming out from Google and thanks to the interpretation of people far better qualified than me to comment on what is happening, the spam stuff will gradually get pushed down, but of course that is of no consolation to you.

But perhaps if you re-visited the issue of keywords on some of your pages as an experiment, then this may help re-establish the pages higher up the search returns.

 

Some of the pages are precisely the kind you would come up with via keyword research - reasonably high volume (and high converting) and very low competition, I just got there before you'd get any results from keyword research. 

The problem, in the ones I've looked at is I'm currently seeing pages like Walmart search pages (with no relevant products to offer!) outranking pages which I know to be useful, and even really scummy keyword stuffed nonsense that has no content.

I'm happy to just hold tight for a future google update. I'm not going to play games with google and keep chasing what it wants in the latest update. 

And I don't want to make things sound worse than they are! My Wizzles are still making money that a lot of people would be pleased with. They were just doing a lot better earlier on (and hopefully will again.) 

The change I've noticed isn't so much that pages, lenses and other articles are plummeting (in fact, my affiliate sales have soared on these sites since penguin...in the blah summer season) - but my blog has now surpassed everything else combined - as far as traffic goes.

I don't know the hard data, maybe it is coincidence...and don't want to waste a lot of energy analyzing...but I can say that my self hosted blog, barely on par with my writing on sites like Wizzley, Squidoo, etc. only months ago, now is really rocking and rolling with visitors, other sites promoting my blog on their own rv sites, comments, followers...and daily Adsense revenue, too.

Something does seem to be shifting, at least for me. At first it looked like I got knocked down a bit by penguin (if anyone recalls that forum post)...but not anymore, for certain.

The changes may actually be a reason for us to all do less keyword research, content 'written for the search engines' is one of the big things that people / sites / subdomains are getting whacked for.

AJ: 08. Jul 2012, 08:41

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Terri, I know from a conversation we had some time ago that you do not do much keyword research, if any at all. I have always admired the "gut instinct" you seem to have about what people are looking for and what may be successful for you.

xmasdecs: 09. Jul 2012, 03:27

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The changes may actually be a reason for us to all do less keyword research, content 'written for the search engines' is one of the big things that people / sites / subdomains are getting whacked for.

AJ: 08. Jul 2012, 08:41

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Terri, I know from a conversation we had some time ago that you do not do much keyword research, if any at all. I have always admired the "gut instinct" you seem to have about what people are looking for and what may be successful for you.

Dammit. My usual login is 'ryank'.... this is a secondary-account, didn't want to mix up logins on the forum, because it makes it look like I'm trolling :/ 

TerriRexson: 08. Jul 2012, 02:59

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Rose: 07. Jul 2012, 14:42

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l think that when wizzley first started, the intro module didn't exist, which is why we all put our intros in the text module instead. If everyone could just go through all their legacy wizzles and reformat them correctly, the site will probably revive when G does it's next update.

Most of my articles that were doing well got an update to the new format and that hasn't helped. The one you mention hasn't because the product is temporarily unavailable at Zazzle so I was just waiting to see what happens there - it will get a revamp at some point. 

I don't think we're likely to get everyone to go back and reformat old articles. If that has caused a site-wide problem then an automatic reformat would be needed. There are lots of old format articles by authors who are not currently active or wouldn't bother to update old articles. 

 

Sorry for the deIay in responding, haven't logged in for a few days.

I think it's definitely a site-wide problem rather than a problem related to individual wizzlers. 

I recalled reading something about Google frowning on lack of content above the fold, and have just googled and found the source. Here it is:

http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html

The above is a google announcement, and here's the pertinent bit:

As we've mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

So I think that when they finally got round to assessing this site, all those pages with a large square block ad and blank white space next to it hurt the site.

As far as I can tell there are two solutions:

1. People can update their pages (and Wizzley can email a reminder for those who, as you point out, no longer log in

2. People just continue to create new pages and at some point the new correctly formatted pages with the text next to the ads above the fold will outnumber the old pages and "tip" the site in the right direction (they mention "process enough pages" which seems to me to indicate that a percentage of your site needs to be right, not the whole thing)..

The first solution is easier and quicker.  Even if everyone reading this forum makes an effort to reformat, they might change sufficient pages to tip the site in the right direction and provide a partial uplift.

Your so right Rose! Thanks for the link, I didn't really think about the experience in terms of more content on the top etc... I'll keep this in mind :)

Part of our upcoming update will address this issue to a certain degree. No intros (or very short ones) will show only 1 ad, so the first text module should feature prominently above the fold. A 100-word (or more) intro will show a larger ad unit. More details soon.

The way it looks right now, we'll start a countdown to the update tomorrow or the next day. Then you'll have plenty of time to get ready for an approximate 2-hour downtime of Wizzley.

This just keeps getting better and better... thanks for the update!