My Ten Worst Performing Articles of the Month

As a writer, I hope that each article that I publish will not only be well accepted by fans of my work, but also head off into the ether and get recognition in the wider world. As we all know, however, that doesn't always happen.

January 2011 has been one of those months where I have tried to write what I feel are interesting articles, and they were ones that I enjoyed writing as well.

Based on the comments that I have received from those who have read them, they really enjoyed the articles, and yet so many articles this month just failed to launch, just like the proverbial paper aeroplane that gets thrown into the air, but instead of soaring high, just plummets directly into the ground.

Maybe it's the subject matter that is the result of the lack of traffic, and maybe it's my bad choice of wording in the opening paragraphs that are the root cause of the problem.

Maybe I just need to go back and tweak the wording, to change a phrase here and there, and then just maybe, like making a minor change to a paper aeroplane, those articles just might take off and fly like the wind, giving me the traffic and visitors that I hope for with every new article that I write.

But as of right now, the final day of the month, my last opportunity to publish an article that gets a lot of traffic, and to have a shot at remaining one of the Hot 500 writers on Associated Content, so many articles remain lacking in popularity, with no less than 6 having less than 100 page views, and 12 more having less than 200 page views in total.

My dilemma right now is of course, do I go back and tweak these articles, hoping that the tweaks will make a difference, or do I just focus my efforts on one or two new articles, on the final day of the month, and hope that one of them makes the grade.

Since tweaking might make a difference, but is unlikely to be reflected in the search engines for a day or two at best, and some stories have already lost their popularity, I think for today that I am better employed writing new articles, rather than in editing older ones, but that might be worthwhile later in the week.

So without waffling on any more about what to do, these are my 10 worst performing articles of the month, with total page views as of 30^th January:

Just when You Thought that Cities Couldn't Get Any Bigger (63 page views)
Those of us who have lived in a large city know about the overcrowding, heavy traffic, air pollution and other problems, but now China plans to create a mega city of 42 million people, and to spend billions on infrastructure to achieve it.

One Hundred Years Ago Today - 28 January 1911 - Horses Crash into Fish Shop (64 page views)
We take it for granted today that we can go everywhere and do everything in motorized vehicles, and yet it was only 100 years ago that these were in their infancy, and horse drawn transport was still the most common way of getting around.

Does Mario Kart for the Wii Live Up to Expectations (84 page views)
Mario Kart has been one of the most successful Nintendo driving games that has been launched across all their games consoles since the SNES (Super Nintendo). How does Mario Kart for the Wii measure up.

London Art Exhibitions March 2011 (89 page views)
There are always good art exhibitions in London, and March is no exception, with exhibits that include Afghanistan Crossroads Of The Ancient World, Ai Weiwei, Modern British Sculpture and the British Art Show.

News from a Weird World - Offbeat News 26 January 2011 (93 page views)
In this edition of News From A Weird World, the Miami Piano Mystery, Smell Of Rotting Flesh, Invasion Day Protests, The Perfect Companion, A Strange Addiction and more

Actor Tom Hanks is My Hero (93 page views)
If I had to choose a celebrity who always seems to be enjoying what he does, who plays a wide range of fun and challenging roles, and has had more hit movies than you can count on your fingers and toes combined, then my hero would be Tom Hanks.

What Makes a Rock Concert Memorable (104 page views)
When anyone looks back at the best rock concerts that they have been to, is it just the music that made it memorable, or is it the atmosphere, the interaction with the audience, or the audience participation that made it an event to remember.

Problem Causing Skype Extension for Firefox is Blocked by Mozilla (110 page views)
If you use the Mozilla Firefox browser and have been experiencing slowness and a lot of crashes lately, it could just be that it's the Skype extension for Firefox that has been causing the problems.

One Hundred Years Ago Today - 21 January 1911 - Journey on a Branch Line (110 page views)
Travelling by train today you visualise high speed locomotives rattling along at over 100mph, with few stops and your destination being just hours away. One hundred years ago, in the age of steam trains, travel by train was a far more interesting journey.

Before the New Year Diet Comes the New Year Binge (120 page views)
The New Year begins with a diet for many people, but if you are like me you can't diet while the holiday goodies are still around, and so before you can diet, you have to eliminate those items that prevent you from losing weight

The sad thing is that these articles did all get good comments, and they were all submitted to Digg, Facebook, Twitter etc, as well as written about on my personal blog, and yet still something didn't click to make them rank higher in the search engines.

Although there is a lot of skill involved in writing articles with good SEO, I firmly believe that a certain amount of luck is also involved, since you can't predict the phrases that people will use to search for something, and you can't predict how your articles will be indexed either.

Maybe, just maybe, January was a bad month for me as regards traffic, but February might be a better one. I did after all have other things on my mind for a lot of the month, with my wife being in hospital for surgery, but at the same time, I did my best to try and publish articles that I hoped would be popular.

So dear friends, wish me well for next month, as I try to bring the traffic back to my articles and to get back on track.