Sustained Search Traffic on Wizzley vs. Other Sites

I publish on a lot of different sites, including my own domains, Squidoo, EzineArticles, and various blogs, including ones hosted on Wordpress and Tumblr (and formerly, Blogspot).

On all of these sites, I have seen a certain degree of pretty stable traffic in the long-run.  When I publish a new page, it usually has a burst of traffic and then receives significant search traffic in the long-run.  My traffic to Wizzley, on the other hand, seems to oscillate wildly, and has tended to fall off in the long-run, for a new page, more often than not.  I actually received the most search engine traffic in the first month I published on Wizzley, and it's never reached that level again, in spite of me having published a lot more now.  The biggest success in terms of drawing in search traffic has been my page on Teavana vs. Adagio Teas, but other pages that I expected to attract an equal amount of interest, like my page on Black Tea vs. Green Tea, have attracted little traffic.  I've also been disappointed in the traffic to my non-tea-related pages, like Tumblr - Pros and Cons as a Blogging Platform, which has not been ranking well in search engines and has drawn little attention other than on-site traffic, in spite of people here seeming to like the page a lot and give me lots of positive feedback about it.

My strategy on other sites has been to keep publishing, sharing my pages on social media, and occasionally linking to them from my blogs or other websites, when revelant.  This approach doesn't seem to be working well with my work on Wizzley.

Does anyone have any advice?  Does Wizzley require a different sort of approach or strategy?  Is there anything that anyone can see about my pages that jumps out as being a weak point, relatively easy to improve, or important to focus on?

Thanks in advance for the input!

Hi Alex,

I find it really depends on the page. I had a lot of traffic, for instance, with a very short piece on a film music concert here in Bucharest. It so happened that mine was one of very few reviews in English on the night. Hence the traffic.

http://wizzley.com/the-masterpiece-film-soundtracks-and-more-epic-music-in-the-concert-hall/

I'm also getting constant traffic on this piece:

http://wizzley.com/gorjuss-girls-merchandise-from-santoro-london/

A lot of my pages are doing within expectations. I'm sorry to say the recipe ones don't do that great, though, which is understandable (just too much competition). But even there I get traffic from Google (and wonder how come people found my recipe, of all recipe pages out there).

I find the more unusual pieces fare best in terms of Google traffic, which makes sense, given that there's so much competition out there. I also think that in time, as people continue to visit our pages, they will rank better and we'll see way more traffic.

Wizzley has some elements of social networks. So being more social and do more networking can't hurt.

After 5 months on this site you still don't have 100 percent on your profile what is an indicator of not being very social here. Occasional comment on other writers' pages can give more exposure to you and your work. This can be time consuming, this can be fun and this can show SEs something is going on here, so they can send you some traffic.

You said you promote your articles with social media. Do your tweets, shares etc. bring you traffic and can SEs see some reaction (think retweets, FB likes and probably mst important - CTR) from your visitors?

I see only one of your 15 articles reached 100 percent. This number has almost no impact on traffic from SEs, but still shows they don't get a lot of interaction with users (Wizzley's or from outside). Addition of social modules as polls and duels can help you.

We are all different, so if social component doesn't suit you, your best bet is probably to write more articles and slowly build authority in your niche inside Wizzley.

I have months when I hardly log in Wizzley and months when I am very active. Traffic from SEs is constant in both cases. Some keywords work and some don't. And some are very surprising...

Now question for you: how is your traffic on ezine articles in this year? Is this site still worth anything?

Hope this helps a bit:)

I haven't been very active here (I add a page every once in a while), and don't do much with promoting my articles.   The traffic has still been fairly constant (higher during the holidays) UNTIL just this past week, when it plummeted.   I'm curious about what happened.

Tolovaj: 06/11/2013 - 02:01 PM

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After 5 months on this site you still don't have 100 percent on your profile what is an indicator of not being very social here. Occasional comment on other writers' pages can give more exposure to you and your work. This can be time consuming, this can be fun and this can show SEs something is going on here, so they can send you some traffic.

This makes sense.  I was much more social when I joined the site, but haven't been as social lately.  I do like the social element of the site.  I think it's been a little hard for me because most of the topics I've published in have been pretty empty, so, unlike Squidoo, I need to branch out to less directly related topics in order to connect with other users.

You said you promote your articles with social media. Do your tweets, shares etc. bring you traffic and can SEs see some reaction (think retweets, FB likes and probably mst important - CTR) from your visitors?

Yes!  I tend to see a fair amount of traffic from FB and Google+, some from Reddit, not much from twitter.

Now question for you: how is your traffic on ezine articles in this year? Is this site still worth anything?

EzineArticles has sustained itself somewhat, but at a low level.  I haven't published much new there in about a year, yet I'm still getting about the same traffic as I did a year ago, to RateTea, which is the main site I use EzineArticles to promote.  The traffic is also very high-quality, with over double the pages/visit from the site average, and over double the ad earnings.

It's still way lower than the traffic pre-Panda, and it's not really worth my time to continue to publish there...but I'm certainly grateful for the traffic I do get.  By comparison though, I get about 40 times as much search traffic as traffic from EzineArticles.

I have very little to compare with other sites, so I don't know how normal my Wizzley stats are.  I do know that there's a big initial burst of traffic, then that drops off.  After that, anything can happen. 

I've got articles which draw in the crowds every week.  I have others which dropped like a stone and stayed dropped.

Occasionally, I'm surprised when an article comes from nowhere to get a lot of traffic very quickly.  Then that stays fairly constant.  It's quite interesting switching on the 7 day and 90 day stats to see what's suddenly popular.  Often it's because something's happened in the big world which relates to it, or a fan site has found my article about their 'thing'.

As for method, after I publish an article, I run it through all of the social networking.  I have a Twitterfeed pushing every link out once a month too.  Otherwise, I let the internet find them naturally.

My traffic drops to nothing about a day or two after I publish. I've also noticed I don't get the amount of initial traffic I used to. I use the social media stuff but I don't have much traffic from there either.

i haven't been here very long so I keep telling myself my articles have got to hang around a while before they get traffic. I hope that's true.

good luck to you!

There's also the fact that it's June.  Last year, my traffic generally slumped at this time of year.  Then, in September, it suddenly and very steeply rose.  It's because it's summer, so fewer people are on their computer.

I know people who own an IT shop.  They said the same thing happens to them, as fewer people on computers = fewer people needing computers fixed.

Being new here, I am using the summer months, to build up my articles for the fall and winter. Work now, rest later. Hoping this is how it will be. My goal is to have 50 wizzles up by the Fall and 100 by January 2014. Hoping this summer "break" of traffic will give us all plentiful winter earnings. Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful day!

JoHarrington: 06/11/2013 - 04:18 PM

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There's also the fact that it's June.  Last year, my traffic generally slumped at this time of year.  Then, in September, it suddenly and very steeply rose.  It's because it's summer, so fewer people are on their computer.

I know people who own an IT shop.  They said the same thing happens to them, as fewer people on computers = fewer people needing computers fixed.

Sorry, Jo is who I was replying to.

GeorgiaRose, that's a really cool way of looking at things.  I could take a big leaf out of your positive and productive attitude.  Thank you. :)

Good luck with your article writing!

Jo, that is very reassuring that you noticed the same thing happen last June, with a sudden spike in September. People are definitely outdoors a lot more this time of year.

As respects social media, one thing I've noticed is that some articles I'd like to pin on Pinterest, I can't, because the thumbnail (often by far the best-representative image for the article's content) is not pinnable.

The easy remedy is to repeat the image elsewhere in the article, either in an Image module, or within a Text module.

I've seen articles where the only pinnable images are the Amazon products being offered, and the images in the sidebar (separate, related images, but not that related).

I think it's tough to choose a good image for an article about an intangible subject, but for more tangible subjects like food, flowers, home design and such, the quick addition of an extra copy of the thumbnail would help everyone get some juice out of that red "P" among the social buttons on the left.

I don't have that many articles on Wizzley yet, and I've got some checking to do, to make sure there are pinnable copies of their best photos in each one.

I agree Kimbesa. I normally try to have my thumbnail picture in my article, so it can be easily pinned. I enjoy creating Pinterest pictures and try to make them Pinterest friendly. Hope you have a great night!

I also don't do a lot of  writing elsewhere, except on my blogs, but I agree that summer in general seems to be a slow online time.  It's always the slowest sales time for me at Zazzle too.  I try to do what GeorgiaRose is doing - use the slow time to build up for fall and the holiday season.

I have seen my Wizzley visits dip slightly recently as well, but I don't think that will last.  I have not been promoting them as regularly as I was.

Thanks for the suggestion about putting the intro picture into the body of the page so it can be pinned.

Good tip.

I'm only here a little at present, but at least all of my pages to get SOME views every week....no big 0s!

I think patience and persistence will pay off in the end. 

I don't think that you can put up anything on the Internet anywhere and just let sit and make money from it. I've been busy lately renovating the fallen down house my husband and I purchased, so I've been neglecting my Wizzles and everything else. As a result traffic is down EVERYWHERE. So I spent the morning trying freshen things up.

I've checked for new products on Amazon that were better than my original selections. I checked my keyword tool to see if there were new phrases that needed to go into descriptions. I added a few Youtube vidoes. The time away has been frustrating, but I do have a fresher pair of eyes to work with.

Maybe this will encourage Google and his friends to send more visitors.