SEO World

In an online world where the quality of your blog content is only increasing in importance, the fabled ‘list’ post commonly gets a bad rap. It’s unfortunate, but definitely understandable. You can easily drown in a sea of particularly low-quality, low-value lists posts.

But hey — not all list posts have to suck! While there are definitely some pretty awful ones out there, you can also find quite a few very valuable, high-quality list posts floating around the internet. So let’s not judge a list post by its title. I’m a firm believer that the list post does have a place in the world of high quality blog content. And to no surprise, this post about lists posts is largely a list post itself. You can be the judge of its quality, but I stand by my beliefs.

First, let’s talk a little bit about common misconceptions about list posts. Then we’ll dive into the characteristics of high quality ones so you can start squashing the myth that all list posts are subpar … by writing awesome ones!

Common Misconceptions About List Posts

Last week, Daily Blog Tips published an article highlighting some common misconceptions about list posts and explaining why it’s silly to think about list posts in those ways. Let’s quickly review the points the article made:

1. “List posts are just for lazy writers.” Pish posh! In fact, when done well (meaning it’s not just three, sentence-long points slapped together), a list post can take just as long — if not longer — than any other type of post for bloggers to write.
2. “List posts aren’t right for my style/niche.” Huh? Why are list posts — a type of post — conceived as fitting only certain industries? A list post could work for any industry, as long as the subject matter and quality fit the audience. 
3. “List posts have to be really long.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s no rule that your list post needs to be a laundry list of useless information or that it needs to include a minimum number of items. In fact, a super long, 100-point list runs the risk of sounding daunting to readers, deterring them from reading it and turning them away.

The thing is, people love the classic list post! They tell the reader exactly what — and how much of it — they’re going to get out of the post, plus they’re very shareable. They’re also easy to scan, and with so much content available on the web these days, being able to scan a post and still grasp a helpful nugget or two of information is highly valuable. Here are a few examples of the types of list posts we’ve published recently on this very blog, all of which we believe are high quality posts that have performed well in terms of traffic, leads, and inbound links:

• “9 Ways to Increase Visibility for Your Best Blog Content“
• “7 Keyword Research Mistakes That Stifle Your SEO Strategy“
• “13 Brands Using LinkedIn Company Page Features the Right Way“
• “5 Actionable Insights to Extract From Your Landing Page Analytics“

Now for the meaty stuff. If you’re convinced that list posts can be a part of your blogging strategy, make sure the ones you publish include these top 10 qualities of high-quality list posts.

1) Includes Items That Stay True to the List Subject/Angle

Sometimes a blogger will start writing a list about one thing, and then when he/she is done, it turns out to be a list that takes on a completely different angle because their research revealed more information about a slightly different subject. The problem is, this new angle is no longer relevant to their audience. Don’t let this happen to you. If, after your initial research, you find that the points you’ve brainstormed don’t fit with the subject you intended, scrap it and move on.

Another common symptom of bad list posts are list items that don’t quite fit with the others. For example, if you notice in this very list post, all of the items on this list are qualities of awesome list post. If one of my points was, in itself, an example of a list post, that wouldn’t make sense, right?  Be consistent and parallel. If you’re writing a list of examples, they should all be examples. If you’re writing a list of best practices, they should all be best practices. It’s easy to stray off-topic when you’re trying to compile a hearty list, but you need to avoid it. Otherwise your list — and your writing — loses its integrity.

2) Dense With Valuable Takeaways (No Fluff!)

The biggest indicator of a lousy list post is one that contains a ton of fluff and no real, valuable takeaways for the reader. Here’s an example of what we mean:

3 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

1. Be unique! Do something to stand out from your competitors.
2. Take risks! Try out-of-the-box ideas.
3. Measure results! Use your analytics to tell you what’s working.

What a fantastic list post! I’ve learned — absolutely nothing. No wonder list posts have a terrible reputation. That took me 60 seconds to write. Sure, on the surface, each of these list points sound valuable. You absolutely should do all these things in your social media marketing. But it doesn’t tell you exactly how to do those things. Your list shouldn’t just give readers a list of things to do and expect them to figure out how to do those things themselves. It should also walk them through the steps required to actually do those things.

A great list post nixes the fluff and concretely explains each item in detail. And while every point you make on your list might not be new to all your readers, if a reader walks away thinking, “Well, I already put numbers 3, 4, and 6, into practice, but I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on numbers 1, 2, and 5!” — then you’ve probably got yourself a high-quality list!

3) Links to More In-Depth Information When Necessary

One of the ways you can make sure you’re hitting on point #2 is to direct readers to other resources when necessary. Great list posts are comprehensive. It also means they can get pretty long and unwieldy, especially if you’re truly committed to point #2. That’s why sometimes it’s okay if you have to point your readers to another place for more in-depth information. 

For example, we recently wrote a list post entitled, “9 Ways to Make Your Marketing Analytics Actionable.” Number 8 on the list reads “Score & Prioritize Your Leads for Sales,” which could be a blog post in itself — and hey … it is! Giving our readers enough information for that section to be truly helpful would have involved copying and pasting the entirety of that post into our list post, and that wouldn’t exactly have been the most helpful choice. So what we did was explain the point in a moderate amount of detail, and then directed readers to the other post where they could find more in-depth information. 

Don’t be afraid to do this in your own list posts. And if you have to link to an external resource because you haven’t the written the post yourself — great! You’ve just passed off some link love, and you also now have another article idea for your blogging backlog! 

4) Explains List Items Using Relatable Examples

Piggybacking again on point #2, sometimes one of the best ways to adequately explain a point on your list is to use an example to support it. Real examples are ideal, but sometimes even a hypothetical works just as great. In fact, we’ve used each of these example types in the first 3 items on this list! The main thing to consider when selecting or concocting an example is to keep it as relatable to your readers as possible. If the audience of your blog is comprised of a variety of readers representing different industries or businesses (like ours), this can be tricky. The key here is to keep your examples general so that everyone can relate. Here comes a hypothetical example to explain what I mean about using hypothetical examples …

In our list post, “7 Keyword Research Mistakes That Stifle Your SEO Strategy,” for example, we use the broad, hypothetical (even mythical!) example of unicorn farms/breeders to more easily explain points 4 and 5 on our list so that everyone could relate.

5) Numbered Items

This is an easy one. If you’re writing a list-style post — and especially when you use a number in the title of your list post — number your list items! This is particularly important when you have a longer list, because readers like to be able to gauge their progress as they’re reading through the list (i.e. “only halfway to go” or “I’m almost done!”). Readers may also like to reference certain points on a list later or share them with others, and being able to refer to a specific number rather than having to count themselves and say “it’s the 16th item on the list” is a much more user-friendly experience for your blog audience. Don’t make things difficult for your readers.

6) Includes an Appropriate Number of List Items

While we’re talking about numbers, let’s clear some misconceptions about them. Some list bloggers are of the camp that you should choose a number before you start writing your list and make sure you have enough points to fit that exact number. We are not. Sitting down and saying you’re going to write a list consisting of 14 items makes no sense. What if there really ends up being only 11 truly solid, valuable items that make up that list? Does that mean you should come up with 3 more forced or somewhat repetitive items just to achieve your goal of 14? We think not.

The rule of thumb is: just be comprehensive. This very list post includes 10 items because that’s how many I thought were individually valuable and indicative of a high-quality list post for this particular subject. Originally I had brainstormed 11, but as I started writing, I cut one out because it wasn’t that different from another point, and they could easily be represented as one.

As we mentioned before, list posts can easily become unwieldy. When you sit down to start drafting your list post, decide how granular you want to make your topic. This will help make your list more manageable. The title you craft can also help you stay focused. For example, if you’re a plumber writing a list post about the various ways you can unclog a drain, you might decide to stick to “The Top 4 Ways to Unclog a Drain,” rather than writing a lengthy list post covering “The 50 Different Ways to Unclog a Drain.”

Furthermore, do some testing and research if you want to glean some best practices for your list posts. An internal study of our own blog, for example, revealed that posts for which the title indicated 6 items or fewer didn’t perform as well as when the title indicated the list contained 7 or more items. The lesson? While we sometimes still write lists posts containing 6 or fewer items, we don’t include the number in the title for those posts. For example, our post, “Why Every Marketer Needs Closed-Loop Reporting” is essentially a list post, but it’s not framed that way in the title since it only includes 6 points. Do your own analysis to determine best practices for your business blog.

7) Uses Category Buckets (For Longer Lists)

Now, if you had decided to write that list post of 50 different ways to unclog a drain, your list post would look pretty daunting, considering the sheer number of items it would include. In this case, a great practice is to use subheaders to break up your list into categories. This makes the list much more scanable (remember how people love to scan blogs?), and a lot less overwhelming at first glance.

For example, when we published “25 Eye-Popping Internet Marketing Statistics for 2012,” we broke up the statistics into 5 sections: “The Internet in 2012,” “Mobile in 2012,” “Social Media in 2012,” “Video in 2012,” and “Ecommerce in 2012.” If some of our readers didn’t give a squat about ecommerce, they could easily scan the post and avoid that section. Perfect!

Contains Logically Ordered List Items

Your list, like any other post you’d write, should flow and tell a story. How you do this will definitely depend on the subject and contents of your list, but here are some great organizational structures to choose from: alphabetical (great for glossaries), chronological (great for step-by-step guides), by popularity/importance — most to least or least to most (great for top 10/20/50 lists). Another best practice is to emphasize your strongest points in the beginning, middle, and end of your list to keep readers engaged throughout.

When I sat down and brainstormed this list, for example, it was just that — a brainstormed list. It was unorganized and all over the place. But once I’d identified all the points I wanted to include, I rearranged the furniture a bit. I realized how easily numbers 5 and 6 would flow into each other, and how number 5 would make sense after discussing points 2, 3 and 4. Number 1 was a great starting point, and number 10 made the most sense last, since that’s likely the last thing you’d tweak when writing a list post. Sometimes your list points will practically arrange themselves (e.g. “5 Steps to Do X”), and sometimes there won’t be as obvious a story (e.g. “20 Ways to Do Y”). Just put the time into figuring it out and ordering your items as logically as possible.

9) Parallel Formatting

I’m not as strict about this one as some list post purists, but in general, I agree that your list post should have a consistent and parallel look. Failing to do so only confuses readers, especially when they can’t tell that they’ve moved onto a new item on the list because the header style was inconsistent or under-emphasized.  

Here are some helpful guidelines to consider:

• Try to keep sections similar in length.  
• Use the same header style to highlight your individual list items, and make sure it stands out.
• Make sure your list item headers are written in parallel fashion (i.e. if it’s a list of action items, each should be led with a verb)
• Use images and bullet points to break up text when appropriate.

10) Clear and Catchy Title

As we mentioned in the beginning of this post, one of the reasons people have always loved list posts is because they know exactly what — and how much — they’ll get out of them. There is no guesswork involved, and expectations you’ve set for your readers are very clear. Make sure your title epitomizes that. An effective list post title should accomplish two things in order to entice readers to actually read the post: 1) capture the readers’ attention and 2) clearly indicate the value or what the reader will learn, and 3) indicate how much they will learn with a number.

For example, earlier this week, we published “The 7 Aspects of Inbound Marketing Most People Screw Up.” Do you have to wonder what this post will be about? No! You know that after reading this post, you’ll know which 7 parts of inbound marketing people tend to screw up so you can avoid screwing them up, too. And chances are, you probably don’t like to fail, right? So you’re probably kind of intrigued to learn if you’re one of “most people” and, if so, what you should stop screwing up.

What’s your take on list posts? What else would you add to our list of high-quality list post qualities?

Image Credit: MStewartPhotography

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

If you guest post as much as I do, you are (1) probably guest blogging too much and (2) already losing track of what, where and when.

My guest posts are usually the best of what I can. It’s unfair to this blog readers if I am not sharing my best articles with them. Besides, sharing your guest posts on your own blog gives you much more:

• Link to your guest posts to give more exposure to them;
• Share your guest posts with your loyal community and readers;
• Create your guest posting portfolio for your clients and partners to check.

At MyBlogGuest.com one of our PRO features allows our users to automatically share all their guest posts via a customized widget (you can see the sample here in the right sidebar).

Besides, one of my old posts shares two more wicked ways to share your guest post on your blog.

This post adds to the above tips: let’s try to create a master feed of my main guest accounts and publicize the feed here!

1. Create a Feed Where You Don’t Have One

Some of the blogs I contribute to have no separate RSS feed for the author page. For those pages I have to create an RSS feed.

There are quite a few tools that can do that, but the one that has proved to be the most effective is Feed43

It requires no registration but it did require some considerable brain effort from my part. I don’t pretend to be too tech-savvy, nor am I too stupid, but I spent like 40 minutes trying to figure it out. I was quite happy with the result though!

RSS feed for the author pages should be no-brainer: the page consists of links to your articles – all those links have the same HTML markup, so all you need to so is to learn to extract that repetitive markup and turn it into the RSS feed.

Note: While creating your own author feeds is a good way out, it’s not the best option (most of your self-created feeds will lack “date” parameter). So whenever you can, use original author RSS feeds. In many cases, you can find your author RSS feed here: http://www.blogdomain.com/author/author-name/feed/

Also, “Fetch Feed” module inside Yahoo! Pipes will help you find an RSS feed where you lack one. Here’s Kristi’s guide on using the module.

In case neither of the above works, you’ll have to create a feed for your author page. To make your life easier, here’s what I did at Feed43 to create RSS feeds for my author page at MakeUseOf. All you need to do is to replicate these steps while adapting them to the HTML markup of your own author page:

Step 1: Specify your direct author page URL.

For me that’s:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/author/annsmarty/

Step 2: Identify the repetitive code:

Obviously, in my RSS feed I want:

• My article title
• My article direct link.

Looking at the source code of my MUO author page, I see that both the link and the title are wrapped up with <h2 class=”entry-title”> code:

Step 3: Define extraction rules at Feed43:

In this step we point the tool to the repeatable HTML patterns to extract the info we want to be present in our RSS feed.

All text you want to be extracted to the RSS feed should be substituted with {%} variable, see:

Step 4: Identify which parts exactly you want to make it to the feed

If you have done everything right in the above step, you should see the following:

Obviously, we need the following elements in our RSS feed:

• {%1} (direct link to the post)
• {%2} (the post title)

That’s what we specify to the tool:

Now preview:

And get the link to the RSS feed:

Note: the feed will be updated every 6 hours and there will be “– Delivered by Feed43 service” as long as you are using the free version. If you try to use the feed and love the service, you may want to upgrade (that’s what I did eventually).

2. Combine All Your RSS Feeds in One

OK, now take a deep breath. The hardest part is passed. Now to the easier step: combine all your author feeds in one master feed.

There have always been quite a few RSS feed mergers. Unfortunately most of them are unreliable or even discontinued due to massive use.

Yahoo! Pipes is still the most reliable one. I do hope Yahoo! will keep it alive!

So to merge all our author feeds, let’s do the following:

Step 1: Sign in to Yahoo! and click “Create a Pipe”

Step 2: Add “Fetch Feed” module to your dashboard and add all your author feeds in it:

Step 3: Connect it to “Pipe Output” module and click “Save”.

Step 5: (Optional) Sort the updates by date

If you want to just aggregate your guest articles, you may miss that step. However if you want to share this combined feed to let your readers keep track of your articles elsewhere, it is essential to sort all the updates by date.

For that click “Operations” section in the left-side panel and add “Sort” module. Put it in-between your feeds and the output feed and elect sort by “item.pubDate”:

Note: Why this step is “optional” while still being quite important is simple: if most of your feeds are “self-created”, most of them will lack the “date” and the filter will move them up or down.

Step 6: (Optional) Truncate most active feeds

In some places I blog (or used to blog) weekly, so they started dominating my author master feed. I used “Truncate” module + “Union” module to cut some of my most active feeds, then unite them and offer my dear followers some variety:

Step 7: Click “Run Feed” and grab your feed URL (HERE’S MY PIPE – feel free to clone it and create your own):

Note: This WordPress plugin seems to also combine various feeds and even publicize them on your blog automatically as round-ups. Feel free to try it if you only want to use your Master feed for your blog.

3. Import Your Feed into a Page

Update: eventually I ended up with the PRO features of this tool to publicize my feed. But you can use the tips below which are free:

Create a page which will be automatically updated whenever you have a new post published.

Don’t worry, our tutorial is getting easier step by step

Step 1: Install RSS Just Better WordPress plugin.

Step 2: Create a separate page where you want to aggregate all your guest articles and contributions and use the following code to embed your feed:


Feed URL not provided. This shortcode does require an attribute as feed = 'http://your-rss-or-atom-feed'. Please, enter one.

Where:

• RSSjb feed=”YOUR MASTER RSS FEED LINK”
• list=”ul” (for the bullet-style list)
• target=”_blank” (to open links to my guest posts in a new window)
• pubauthor=”false” (to remove the plugin credit link; I am crediting it in this post)

Note: I had to edit the plugin source code as well as it seemed to force the 5-post-from-feed limit. I edited this part:

The Result?

***Here’s my page listing all pages where I guest post and featuring a self-updating list of links to my contributions***.

What are your thoughts?

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by Open Kitchen España

Related posts:

1. Searching Google… by Author! It is amazing how many new things we may discover…
2. Where I Contribute and Guest Post I guest post at and contribute to quite a few…
3. How to Create a Useful Twitter Retweet Bot Twitter can be used in various, almost countless ways. In…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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SEO Consulting Blog – Seo Smarty

2011 was a great year on the SEOHosting blog. We published a lot of interesting, helpful posts, gained a lot of new readers, and got a lot of positive feedback about the blog. For those of you who might be new to the blog or if you just want a bit of a refresher on what you read over the past year, here are 10 SEOHosting posts from the past year that are worth (re)reading.

1. Don’t Let One Bad SEO Company Ruin Everything

There are lots of shady SEO companies out there that rip off clients for thousands and thousands of dollars. They give a black eye to the entire industry, causing a lot of people to write off all SEO as a spammy, ineffective tactic. This post offers hope to those who have been the victim of an SEO scammer.

2. 7 Ways to Increase Engagement on Twitter

A recent report shows that customers who engage with companies over social media spend more money and have increased loyalty. This post offers 7 great tips to help you engage your audience more effectively on Twitter.

3. The Case Against Writing Every Day

We’ve been trained to believe that the more you write, the better you become. Experts have always encouraged writers to write every single day. No matter what you’re writing, just write. But is this really sound advice?

4. The One Question to Always Ask Yourself Before You Tweet

Want to make sure you’re Tweeting content that your followers actually care about and will respond to? There’s one simple question you should always ask yourself before sharing anything on Twitter. Read this post to find out what it is.

5. Don’t Try to be All Things to All People

One of the biggest marketing mistakes you can make is to try to be all things to all people. Having an undefined or poorly defined target audience is a surefire way to create ineffective marketing.

6. 5 Warning Signs of a Bad Client

Not all customers are worth having. Some customers can cut into your profits and give you a huge headache in the process. Check out these red flags bad clients tend to wave exuberantly.

7. 4 Really Good Reasons Not to Offer Discounts to Customers

Think offering a discount is the best way to drive sales and get more customers? Think again. Offering discounts might do more harm than good to your brand. Find out why by reading this post.

8. The Science of a Good Slogan

What’s the secret behind the world’s best slogans? How can you create a memorable slogan that helps build your brand? Check out this post for an insightful breakdown on the science of slogan writing.

9. 5 Easy Steps for Keeping Your Emails Out of the SPAM Folder

You’re not going to have much luck with email marketing if your messages get flagged as SPAM. The good news is that there are 5 easy things you can do to improve the deliverability of your emails.

10. Why Your Leads Aren’t Converting Into Customers

All the leads in the world are useless if you don’t have a plan in place for converting them into paying customers. Read this post to find out how you can do a better job of converting your leads.

Do you have a blog? Share your one favorite post from it by leaving a comment below.

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SEO Hosting Blog

Posted by jennita

What's better than unicorns and kittens happily leaping over rainbows with gold at the end? The Moz community, that's what!

At the end of every year we like to take a look back, not only at which posts made an impact, but which people made an impact on the community as well.

This year we're taking a peek at the top content on the blog based on thumbs up, visits, root domains, tweets and comments. Plus we have the added bonus of looking at community members who left the most comments, and those whose comments were the most thumbed up. If you've missed any of these posts over the past year, I invite you to grab a cup of coffee and start reading. I look forward to hearing about your favorite posts, plus your thoughts on why these posts did so well this year.

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, I wanted to again remember GoodnewsCowboy, a long time community member whom we lost to cancer earlier this year. GNC was an amazing man and is sorely missed around here.

For quick reference, check out the Top Posts of 2011 by:
Thumbs Up
Unique Visits
Linking Root Domains
Tweets
Total Number of Comments

And the community members who rocked our world:
Top Comments of 2011 by Thumbs Up
Top Users of 2011 By Total Comments

A few notes about the data: 1. I'm no scientist, I did my best putting this together and I apologize now if I've screwed anything up. 2. All data was pulled in the past 24 hours, so some of the numbers may have changed slightly. 3. I'm not a scientist. Plus, I need to send a huge thank you to Casey Henry who helped me gather quite a bit of this data. Thank you Casey!

Top Posts of 2011 By Thumbs Up

Let's get this party started. First things first, I wanted to note that last year there were three posts with 100 or more thumbs up. This year, there were 41 posts with over 100 thumbs up. FORTY ONE. That's just crazy pants (as Joanna Lord would say). This of course made me want to figure out if the thumbs up was just a general inflation, better content, more traffic, what. I think you'll see it's a generous helping of all of that combined. For the first time the blog schedule was pretty well organized (ehem.. I may be the one who organizes this , we specifically reached out to get great guest bloggers, we added more amazing Associates to write for the blog and our traffic was through the roof (more on that later). But enough of my mumblings, let's get to the good stuff.

Thumbs Up: Help Raise Money for New Zealand
March 3rd, 2011 – Posted by jennita
This post is actually the top post in every single category listed below. But in order to show off more great content, I pulled it from the other lists since it dominated them all. I wanted to call it out here and again thank everyone for all their donations to the New Zealand Red Cross after the horrible earthquakes earlier this year. It was absolutely amazing to see the community come together so quickly.

1. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday
June 23rd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler
Panda. As the title says, Google Panda changed SEO forever and everyone wanted to watch the video about it. Number one Yo!

2. Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World
November 16th, 2011 – Posted by Dr. Pete
Panda… again. Pete knocks this one out of the ball park and inbound marketers across the globe liked this puppy. In fact people liked it so much they asked for him to make a PDF version that they could print out for themselves and others. Sweet.

3. The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded
July 12th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
So, an SEO isn't just an SEO anymore, we've become so much more. Inbound Marketing anyone?

4. How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google's Search Results
January 28th, 2011 – Posted by invseo
Whee! This awesome posted started out in YouMoz and very quickly got promoted to the main blog. It really got people riled up as we headed into the new year.

5. 4 Graphics to Help Illustrate On-Page SEO
November 8th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
In grand Rand fashion, he put together these great images that will help us to demonstrate a bit easier what on-page SEO really is. You know for that boss or client who just doesn't get it.

6. Which Type of Link Anchor Text is the Most Effective? [An Experiment]
October 11th, 2011 – Posted by jamesagate
Another top post that started off in YouMoz (YAY YouMoz!!) and won the hearts of the community. James ran an experiment and walked us through what seemed to work best!

7. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
February 9th, 2011 – Posted by Oli Gardner
I'm not quite sure this one even needs any introduction. If you're reading this post, I'm sure you've already seen the Noob Guide (as we call it around the office). Once again Oli hits the top 10 list with an infographic (he was on it last year too #goOli!).

8. Just How Smart Are Search Robots?
November 29th, 2011 – Posted by iPullRank
They are smarter than you think, and Mike King explains it all, Pacman style!

9. Quantifying the Impact of Google's Keyword Referral Data Shutdown
November 14th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's up with this (not provided) bs?

10. Better Understanding Link-based Spam Analysis Techniques
July 31st, 2011 – Posted by Justin Briggs
Justin gets into the mind of a search engine to help us understand link-based spam detection. Sounds geektastical, doesn't it?!

Top Posts of 2011 By Unique Visits

Great, we've seen the posts that got the most thumbs up, but are they the same as the ones that got the most traffic? I'll give you a hint, only two of the top thumbed, are the same as the most trafficked. Which means eight of them are different. The question is, does this mean these posts got a lot of traffic from new users that didn't create accounts in order to thumb up the posts? Sadly we may never know. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments though. Now let's look a the traffic!

1. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
February 9th, 2011 – Posted by Oli Gardner
Yep, you'll notice a trend here… the Noob Guide is on ALL OF THE LISTS. #goOli

2. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday
June 23rd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler
Pppppppppanda!

3. White Hat SEO: It F@$ #ing Works
April 10th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
This was in response to a post claiming that White hat SEO is a joke, which Rand easily proved otherwise.

4. The New Google Social Network – Google+
June 30th, 2011 – Posted by caseyhen
z0mg! Google created a social network that doesn't suck! Everyone go get your account noooowwwwwwww.

5. 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock
September 5th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Apparently people like ugly. Kidding, kidding. What this really says is that people love tools and especially ones that kick booty.

6. Facebook + Twitter's Influence on Google's Search Rankings
April 19th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Rand takes a look at some early correlation data on social influence in Google SERPs. You'll notice a trend this year and that's social, social, social.

7. An SEO Checklist for New Sites – Whiteboard Friday
September 22nd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron
And the crowd went wild! Seriously though, everyone knows someone who has a new website, and they came to watch this one in droves.

8. Blog Design for Killer SEO – Infographic
July 12th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
These days everyone tries their hand at Infographics. But Cyrus (and his wife who designed it) put the "fogra" back in Infographics. It's a great visual on blog design with SEO in mind.

9. Beating Google's Panda Update – 5 Deadly Content Sins
August 16th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Everyone wanted to learn how to make sure they didn't get hit by Panda, or pull themselves out of the Panda abyss.

10. New Edition of the Ranking Factors for 2011 is Now Live!
June 6th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Can I get a w00t w00t!

Top Posts of 2011 by Linking Root Domains

Well we're SEOs aren't we? Then we must take a look at the posts that have received the most backlinks! The best way to do this is to look at the number of linking root domains instead of total number of backlinks. As with everything else, you'll notice that last year there were three posts with over 100 linking root domains. However this year, there were twelve posts with over 100. SEO really does work?! What?!

1. Facebook + Twitter's Influence on Google's Search Rankings
April 19th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Everyone who wrote a post about how Facebook & Twitter are now helping with rankings, must have linked to this post. Love!

2. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday
June 23rd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler
Poor little photos of pandas all across the web being used in posts about Google Panda. All the while linking to this highly informative Whiteboard Friday.

3. A Tweet's Effect On Rankings – An Unexpected Case Study
February 15th, 2011 – Posted by jennita
Well lookie there, I MADE IT TO THE LIST. I don't need no stinking thumbs or traffic, I'm down with the backlinks! (ok… I'll move on now)

4. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
February 9th, 2011 – Posted by Oli Gardner
Noob. Guide. 'Nuf. Said.

5. Google's Farmer/Panda Update: Analysis of Winners vs. Losers
March 3rd, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Oooh everyone wants to know who made out well with Panda and who got crushed.

6. Google +1 And The Rise of Social SEO
March 30th, 2011 – Posted by Tom Critchlow
Remember when Google +1 came out before Google+? Yea, that was odd. Anyway… Tom wrote a great post on how it changed SEO!

7. Blog Design for Killer SEO – Infographic
July 12th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Infographics = links.

8. Experiments on Google+ and Twitter Influencing Search Rankings
July 5th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Hmm more talk of this social thing helping SEO, we might be on to something here.

9. White Hat SEO: It F@$ #ing Works
April 10th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
And if you haven't read this post yet, go F@$ #ing read it! (sorry for the bad language, but Rand started it)

10. Social Annotations in Search: Now Your Social Network = Rankings
June 22nd, 2011 – Posted by randfish
If your aunt Betsy shares a post about gluten free brownies, you might see that in your SERPS. Wait. What?!

Top Posts of 2011 by Tweets

Ya'll have been tweeting your little fingers off this year. In 2010 there were only two posts with over 1,000 tweets, but in 2011 there were 55. This may very well be the reason for all that traffic above. I need to give a huge thanks to Dr. Pete for gathering this data for me at the last minute (that's how I role). Now let's see what people like to tweet about. I should probably note that five of the 10 top tweeted posts ARE ABOUT TWITTER. heh. I know what I'm going to be writing about more in 2012.

1. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
February 9th, 2011 – Posted by Oli Gardner
Holy tweets batman.

2. Yes, You Really Can Build Links With Twitter – Whiteboard Friday
September 1st, 2011 – Posted by caseyhen
You can build links with Twitter? OMG I have to tweet this!

3. Facebook + Twitter's Influence on Google's Search Rankings
April 19th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
This is starting to be like deja vu.

4. 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock
September 5th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Any time I see a post being tweeted that has the word "ugly" in it, I totally click. Cyrus is a tweetbait master, who knew?!

5. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday
June 23rd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler
Panda. SEO. Changed. Forever.

6. A Tweet's Effect On Rankings – An Unexpected Case Study
February 15th, 2011 – Posted by jennita
Ooh Ooh Ooh! That's me again. (Every post from here on forward shall be about Twitter)

7. Experiments on Google+ and Twitter Influencing Search Rankings
July 5th, 2011 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Google+. Twitter. Rankings. Tweet it.

8. The Tweet Effect: How Twitter Affects Rankings
June 1st, 2011 – Posted by dohertyjf
Hehehe this is just getting funny the number of top tweeted posts talking about twitter. It's so meta I might cry. But really, John's post rocked the twitters.

9. Tracking the KPIs of Social Media
September 7th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Love, love, love this post. I may have even tweeted it 20 times or so from various accounts. I mean… wait… you can't prove anything!

10. White Hat SEO: It F@$ #ing Works
April 10th, 2011 – Posted by randfish
Don't make me tell you again.

Top Posts of 2011 by Total Number of Comments

Here's the thing, mozzers comment a lot. It's really quite amazing how many comments a post will get, even the mediocre ones. There are tons of exceptional industry blogs out there, but I've never seen one get this many comments to every post. I absolutely love that the community is so generous! Below we'll take a look at the top commenters, but for now let's see which posts caused the most disucssion. Oh! Most of these have been mentioned above, so I left out my comments (since you're probably getting tired of them anyway).

1. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday
June 23rd, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler

2. 32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011
January 18th, 2011 – Posted by Lindsay

3. White Hat SEO: It F@$ #ing Works
April 10th, 2011 – Posted by randfish

4. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
February 9th, 2011 – Posted by Oli Gardner

5. Article Marketing: Mostly A Scam – Whiteboard Friday
August 25th, 2011 – Posted by Aaron Wheeler

6. Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World
November 16th, 2011 – Posted by Dr. Pete

7. Quantifying the Impact of Google's Keyword Referral Data Shutdown
November 14th, 2011 – Posted by randfish

8. Competitive Analysis in Under 60 Seconds Using Google Docs
May 15th, 2011 – Posted by Tom Anthony

9. The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded
July 12th, 2011 – Posted by randfish

10. Google +1 And The Rise of Social SEO
March 30th, 2011 – Posted by Tom Critchlow

Top Comments of 2011 by Thumbs Up

Yay! Now we get to take a look at some of the people making "waves" in the community. This list shows the top 10 comments based on the number of thumbs up it received. Some of them are cooky and fun, while others are direct and to-the-point. Take a peek:

1. SandroM | January 19th, 2011
32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011

2. Jonathon Colman | September 24th, 2011
Crawl Outage – An Update and What We're Doing

3. randfish | September 2nd, 2011
Yes, You Really Can Build Links With Twitter – Whiteboard Friday

4. russvirante | September 26th, 2011
Crawl Outage – An Update and What We're Doing

5. iulian lita | January 18th, 2011
32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011

6. Liza Shulyayeva | July 12th, 2011
The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded

7. Dan Deceuster | September 15th, 2011
5 Reasons Why Copying Links is Bad for You

8. Frederik Hyldig | August 26th, 2011
Article Marketing: Mostly A Scam – Whiteboard Friday

9. gfiorelli1 | July 12th, 2011
The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded

10. randfish | July 6th, 2011
Experiments on Google+ and Twitter Influencing Search Rankings

Top Users of 2011 By Total Comments

So who commented the most you ask? Well if you're around the blog much you probably already know that Gianluca is the king of comments. I wanted to also note that our friend GoodnewsCowboy (who I mentioned above) was the top commenter last year. This year he fell to the 15th spot, and that's only with having comments through March 16th.

One note about the top users, all Associates and staff have been removed from this list (There were five that would have made the list: Rand, Dr. Pete, Cyrus, myself & iPullRank). So who are our chatty Kathy's?

1. gfiorelli1
mozPoints: 5578 | Rank: 3

2. James Norquay
mozPoints: 1692 | Rank: 16

3. Jenni Brown
mozPoints: 583 | Rank: 71

4. Moosa Hemani
mozPoints: 535 | Rank: 82

5. algogmbh_petra
mozPoints: 1179 | Rank: 26

6. Dubs
mozPoints: 284 | Rank: 162

7. webpagefxseo
mozPoints: 210 | Rank: 269

8. joshuahedlund
mozPoints: 330 | Rank: 136

9. SEOTakeaways
mozPoints: 1088 | Rank: 31

10. Stephen
mozPoints: 1724 | Rank: 15

Are you as enamored as I am with this post? I sure hope so! It was a ton of fun to put together (even though you may have heard me grumbling on twitter about it). I always love taking a look back at the past year's posts and realizing how much has really happened in a year! This year the obvious themes were the convergence of search and social, plus the Panda update. I hope you'll bookmark this post and read through the ones you may have missed throughout the year. What was your favorite post this year?

Spectacularly awesome image of unicorns, kitttens and rainbows from Sarcastic Monday.

Do you like this post? Yes No

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do!

How YouTube Became A Community
YouTube never really felt like a place for community. It always felt like a way channel to distribute content but the latest updates change everything.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

What to Look for in Freelance Writers
This post includes a few tips to consider to find good external content contributors.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

4 Reasons To Partner With An Agency For SEO
This post includes 4 reasons a dedicated firm might be the better bet than hiring an in-house SEO.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

How To Respond To Negative Reviews
This post provides 5 tips for responding to negative customer reviews online.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Google+ Business Pages – the Bad and the Brilliant!
This post takes a look at Google+ business brand pages.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Top 20 Social Media Do’s and Don’ts
This post outlines 10 social media “dos” and 10 social media “don’ts” for business.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Is your SEO copy crap? 8 ways to tell
If your SEO copy sucks, that means that it’s time to send it back to the writer and it fixed.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Twitter: The New Résumé
This post outlines how employers are using Twitter when hiring.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

5 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Blog’s Traffic
Writing fantastic content is no longer good enough to bring traffic to your blog. This post includes 5 ways to make your blog traffic surge.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

How to Get More Customers with Local Search Marketing: 10 Optimization Tips
This post discusses ten solid tips to ensure any local business has the opportunity to outrank their competitors.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

These were our favorite SEO, SEM and Social Media blog posts this week. Check back next week for more top posts!

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal

I’d like to take a step back for this blog post and highlight some fantastic blog posts that I always find myself referring back to when speaking to clients or working on problems.  There are some in here which are “old” in SEO terms that go back to 2010, but I still refer to them now because they really are that good.

If you haven’t read this already, go read them now or bookmark them for future reference.  Also let me know in the comments which posts you’d add to this list!

Keyword Research Using Categories by Richard Baxter

This is a great, step by step post by Rich and is super actionable.  It contains some Excel magic which we all love and lets you play with large datasets.

You can basically go from this -

To this -

Best Social Media Metrics by Avinash Kaushik

I could have put a lot more of Avinash’s work on this list, but this one stood out for me and talked about a topic in a very clear and actionable way.  The key thing for me was how Avinash related social media metrics back to more real life metrics that non-SEOs can relate to.

If you follow the steps, you can end up with something like this -

Panda Update Timeline from Search Engine Land

I’ve referred back to these posts countless times.  This is the latest one I could find and includes details of all confirmed Panda rollouts and updates so far, very handy when checking back over analytics for suspected Panda issues.

Surviving a Site Migration by Richard Baxter

Another entry from Rich that I always refer back to.  In this post Rich clearly explains the steps needed if you are carrying out a site migration for a client and all the important points you need to consider.  Whilst I have my own process for this, I always find myself double checking that I haven’t forgotten anything!

Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-page Optimisation by Rand Fishkin

This is an old post from 2009 but I still love the simplicity of it and the diagram that Rand opens with.  Some of the details of the exact elements and their impact has probably changed over the past two years, but the core principles are the same.  I often use the diagram at the start to explain basic on-page elements of SEO to clients.

The Noob Guide to Online Marketing by Oli Gardner

Seriously, if you haven’t read this, go read it now (after you’ve finished this post of course!).  Its a very definitive guide to virtually every element of online marketing (marketing online) and goes into a lot of detail.  I don’t think I’ve ever read the post in one go, but I often refer back to various bits of it that I’m working on.

Content Based Outreach for Link Building by Justin Briggs

My first link building (posicionamiento web) entry on the list is a great post by Justin over on Outspoken Media.  He outlines a great process which he has used himself with great success.  I think one of the key parts that I liked was the diagram of how you can classify the link targets into buckets:

Competitor Backlink Analysis by Jane Copland

Jane doesn’t blog that often any more which is a shame when she produces these kind of posts.  I love the process she goes into and the ideas of classifying the links you find are very actionable.  Also take note of her thoughts around links from C-Class IPs.

Link Bait Guide by Ed Fry

I still struggle to believe this was written by a 17-year-old.  Ed has done a great job on this piece of content which includes videos as well.  Again I don’t think I’ve ever actually read the whole thing in one go, but I still refer back to various sections of it all the time.

Googlebot is Chrome by Joshua Giardino

I only read this a few days ago but have still referred back to it a lot since then.  Even if the concept that Joshua discusses isn’t true, the detail he goes into when explaining how it may be possible and feasible is amazing.  Definitely a good educational resource for anyone wanting to learn how crawlers and browsers work.

This diagram alone is great reference material -

I Want to Learn to Code Thread on Hacker News

I know coding isn’t for everyone, but if it is and you are just starting out, this is a great discussion thread which I still look at now.  It goes into detail about different opinions on different languages and the pros and cons.  If you are getting started in coding, this is a good one to bookmark.

Why Knowing Everything About SEO Doesn’t Mean Shit

I know this is self serving (mainly why its bottom of this list) but I genuinely do refer back to this post a lot.  To be honest I refer to it most when I’m struggling with clients and struggling to get stuff done, or if I just want to refocus.  Plus some of the comments and feedback offer some great ideas on getting SEO done which I often find useful.

Well thats it for my list.  These are the blog posts I refer to and reference the most.  What are yours?  Feel free to leave a comment and let us know!

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distilled

*
2011 has been another very busy year on the SEOptimise blog, with nearly 400 posts generating over 400,000 visits and well in excess of half a million pageviews (oh and one best blog award).

With the year drawing to a close, and Christmas just round the corner, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try and summarise the best and most popular posts of the year, and hopefully give you a few early SEO Christmas gifts. While I am personally not a fan of list posts, judging by the most popular posts a lot of you are. So ever eager to please, here is a list of the 58 best/most popular posts of the year.

Our 10 most popular posts

What better place to start than the most popular posts of the year? Between them, the posts below generated almost 100,000 pageviews. So, working on the basis that 100,000 people (ok, maybe not people) can’t be wrong, there must be some awesome SEO gems contained within them.

1. 30​ Web Trends You Have to Know About in 2011 – the first post of the year is also the most popular, with Tad’s post about what was going to happen to search and social in 2011 receiving over 17,000 pageviews. As you would expect, there were a few predications that didn’t come true, but a fair few that did.
2. 30 Ways to Use Social Media for Business People – with businesses seemingly falling over themselves to become more social, it’s good to know what you can use it for, and this post rounds it up.
3. 30 (New) Google Ranking Factors You May Over- or Underestimate – a one-stop guide to some of the more misunderstood Google ranking factors: link decay anyone?
4. What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 Hours? – this post got a fair few mentions at conferences, on other blog posts and even in the mainstream media. While the answer may seem obvious, you never know until you try, and Marcus did.
5. 30 (New) SEO Terms You Have to Know in 2011 – this was the most shared post on our blog in 2011 and, amongst other things, told everyone what a content farm is shortly before Google tried to destroy them all. Still, there are always the 29 other terms.
6. High Risk SEO: 33 Ways to Get Penalised by Google – a post that summarises ways to get penalised by Google. Best used as a “how not to guide”, but I’m fairly sure people will still try a few and cross their fingers.
7. 36 Must-Read Local SEO/Google Places Resources from 2010/2011 – with Local and Places results becoming ever more prominent in the SERPs, it’s best to know how to master them. This post did the hard work and aggregated lots of the best sources for you.
8. 30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change – despite only being published in late November this still made the top 10 list. Judging by the accuracy of the one Tad did for 2011, it’s probably worth a read.
9. Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes & Tweets? – there was a lot of talk earlier in 2011 about the potential use of social signals in Google’s algorithm, so Marcus tried to find out if there was anything to back up the chat by experimenting.
10. 30 Link Building/Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011 – With the Panda update (potentially) devaluing a lot of low quality links, Tad refreshed our memory about some of the great link building (posicionamiento web) tactics that are still available.

The 20 posts that got you sharing

The later half of the year has all been about one thing – social media, largely fuelled by Google’s latest attempt at social media, Google+. Bearing this in mind, we had to check what got our readers sharing during 2011.

1. 30 New SEO Terms You Have To Know in 2011 – shared 1,510 times
2. 30 Ways To Use Social Media for Business People – shared 1,284 times
3. 30 Web Trends For 2012: How SEO Search Social Media Blogging Web Design Analytics Will Change – shared 890 times
4. 30 New Google Ranking Factors You May Over or Underestimate – shared 678 times
5. How To Write a Social Media Audit – shared 599 times
6. Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes Tweets – shared 597 times
7. High Risk SEO 33 – Ways To Get Penalised by Google – shared 582 times
8. 30 Link Building & Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011 – shared 406 times
9. What Makes a Real SEO Expert – shared 404 times
10. 30 Google Quality/Panda Update Resources for Content Farmers and SEO Practitioners – shared 397 times
11. 30 Efficient Web Tools That Save Time and Make Money For Power Users – shared 369 times
12. 30 Google SERP Changes that Impact Your SEO Strategy – shared 357 times
13. 157 Awesome PubCon 2011 Takeaways – shared 346 times
14. What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 Hours – shared 322 times
15. 30 Web Trends You Have To Know About in 2011 – shared 285 times
16. Google Dropping Analytics Keyword Data: What Does This Mean – shared 273 times
17. 30 SEO Myths That Are True or False Depending on Who You Ask – shared 247 times
18. 30 Ways To Optimise Your Site for Speed – shared 235 times
19. Experiment Do Google+1S Impact Your Rankings – shared 229 times
20. Social Media Why an SEO Background is Better Than PR – shared 229 times

The three best experiments of the year

Due to the secrecy behind Google’s algorithm, a lot of popular SEO theory is based on anecdotal evidence and guess work. But, every so often Marcus, our resident SEO mad scientist, likes to don his lab coat shark outfit, lock himself away and get experimenting. Below are three of his best experiments from 2011 (no animals were harmed during the making of these posts – but a few sites were).

1. What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 Hours
2. Experiment – Do Google+1s Impact Your Rankings
3. Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes Tweets

The 10 greatest SEO tool posts

The one thing common to all SEOs is that we like our tools, whether it’s to crawl a site or just optimise it. In the SEOptimise office we like to try everything out, and the good news for you is that we love to write about them too. So here are the 10 greatest posts about SEO tools we wrote this year.

1. Top 20 WordPress Plugins 2011 Edition
2. 30 Efficient Web Tools That Save Time and Make Money for Power Users
3. 10 New Google Tools Products and Services Every Business Person Has To Know About
4. Five Low Profile SEO Tools
5. 30 Very Useful Twitter Tools You Must Be Aware of
6. Google Webmaster Tools: A Beginners’ Guide to Installation
7. More Than 30 Google Tools, Extensions, Tutorials and Other Resources
8. Simple Goal Conversion Tracking With Piwik, the Open Source Google Analytics Alternative
9. 30 Social Search Tools SEO Resources For Power Users
10. Salespeople The Free SEO Tool Every Agency Has

10 awesome SEO conference posts

As an agency we get like to go to and talk at as many conferences as we can (especially if they are in Vegas). But we also know that not everyone can go to them all, and even if you do there is a lot to remember, so we always try our best to post a round-up of the stuff we hear. So below I have summarised our 10 most viewed conference related posts.

1. 157 Awesome PubCon 2011 Takeaways
2. Using Social Media for SEO Benefit: Travel Presentation SAScon 2011
3. How Important Are Facebook Likes for Search Presentation From SMX London
4. BrightonSEO 2011 Roundup Who Said What and Why
5. Post Panda Affiliates’ Guide to Surviving Google, a4uexpo London 2011
6. Keyword Research SMX Advanced London 2011 Presentation by Kevin Gibbons
7. Top 65 Takeaways From a4uexpo London 2011
8. SearchLove 2011: Top Trends
9. 28 Top Takeaway Tweets From SAScon Mini 2011
10. London SES Day 1

Five wicked polls

We love a good bit of crowdsourcing in the SEOptimise office, and we are very lucky that we have followers who like to get involved and share their opinions. Here are five of the best and most interesting polls we ran this year.

1. 74% of SEOs Buy or Would Buy Links
2. Google Dropping Analytics Keyword Data: What Does This Mean
3. Quick Poll Is Google AdWords Remarketing (A) Great for ROI or (B) Annoying
4. Poll What Are The Most Important Factors That Make a Blog Post Go Viral
5. Think Visibility Voted 1 UK Search Conference by SEOs

So these are our greatest hits of the year, hope you all found some cool stuff. Next year there will be more of the same, plus hopefully a few more video blogs as well. If there are any blogs that we haven’t included but you think deserve a mention, let me know in the comments section.

Finally, we are always happy to take requests, so if you want us to blog about something in particular you can add those to the comments too.

*Image credit: negatendo on Flickr (I had to use a cat picture once this year).

© SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. SEOptimise’s 58 most awesome blog posts of 2011

Related posts:

1. 154 Awesome Pubcon 2011 Takeaways, Tips & Tweets
2. Top SEOptimise posts in September…
3. 30​ Web Trends You Have to Know About in 2011

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SEOptimise » blog

Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do!

SEO Tactics for 2011/2012
This post includes six ways to improve your search rankings in the next year.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Just an Average Day on Facebook [Infographic]
This post includes an infographic which takes a look at what the average statistics are for the social network on any given day, including number of friends, private messages and comments.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Why Your PPC Campaign Needs SEO
Businesses often have the misconception that investing in PPC or SEO is mutually exclusive but in reality, these are two very different strategies that should work together to maximize online presence and leads.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Should I Learn SEO Or Hire An SEO Company?
It is perfectly possible to learn SEO yourself and work at it for positive results. However, is it worth the time to do so?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

12 Steps to Creating a Business Blog
This post contains a step-by-step process to creating a company blog for traffic generation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Proactive Link Campaign Tactics
This post contains highlights from a link building (posicionamiento web) session at PubCon.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Does Google Freshness Update Make Online Reputation Management More Difficult?
An increase in the number of “fresh” listings on page one means it will be more difficult to keep negative coverage off of page one.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

8 Ways to Give Your Blog a Chance
This post provides tips for your blog to stand out among the fluff.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

There’s No Such Thing as “Gray Hat” SEO
This post suggests that the label “Gray Hat” is not only inaccurate, but also gives false legitimacy to those “borderline” techniques by situating them halfway between the extremes of black and white.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Reputation Monitoring for Large Brands
This post discusses how large brands with noisy subject matters manage and maintain discipline while monitoring reputation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

These were our favorite SEO, SEM and Social Media blog posts this week. Check back next week for more top posts!

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal

Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do!

When in a Rush, Better to Not Blog than to Blog with Mistakes
If you want to build a strong community and following, you have to get it right. You can’t have a post littered with spelling or grammatical errors.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

How to Turn your Web Traffic into Loyal Readers
This post includes four ways to transform website traffic into loyal readers.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

New Info on How Social Affects Search
This post discusses Google’s encrypted search for users that are logged in to their Google account.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Best Free Tactics for Infographic Promotion
This post provides a list of the 8 best ways to promote your infographic for free.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Mind-boggling blogging ideas through mind mapping
This post suggests that mind mapping is a great way to develop endless blog post ideas.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Ideas to Increase Reader Attention Span and Reduce Your “Yawn Rate”
This post includes a few things to consider to minimize the “yawn rate”.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Social Media 101
This post provides helpful information for social media newbies.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Are Bad Infographics Destroying Your Marketing? #BWELA
When it comes to launching a website, the SEO consultant has the last word.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

14 predictions for email marketing in 2031
This post takes a humorous look at what email marketing will look like in 20 years.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

These were our favorite SEO, SEM and Social Media blog posts this week. Check back next week for more top posts!

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal

Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do!

Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips
This post provides tips to increase the search engine visibility of your press materials.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

SEO News – Google Announces They Are Limiting Keyword Data For Analytics Users
This post discusses a Google analytics privacy update in which programs will still be able to detect referral data from the search engine, but it will not be able to show the keyword from Google signed-in users.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

The Major Implications of SSL Encryption No One’s Talking About: Enhanced Search Personalization
This post states that there are broader implications for the search industry at play, including the changing makeup of search results and increasing modes of personalization.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

New Research Shows Social Media Marketing has Strong Impact on Retail Sales
This post analyzes the effect of social media on sales.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

What a turtle can teach us about landing page testing
This post includes a case study that highlights the importance of testing and optimizing.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

A Secret about Facebook Likes that Most People Don’t Know
Various factors—most of them completely out of your control—can affect who sees your social media content, whether they follow you or not.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Increasing Web Conversions – 6 Tips and 3 Case Studies
This post discusses how a clear message can improve web conversions.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

3 Things Google Tells Your Customers—Whether You Like It or Not
If you aren’t paying attention to your Google SERP snapshot, maybe you should.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

How To Use Internet Video Successfully
This post includes four video marketing tips.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

How Google Changes to Keyword Referrals Affect Your SEO Reporting
This post discusses the Google keyword referral data change and the impact it will have on marketing strategies.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

These were our favorite SEO, SEM and Social Media blog posts this week. Check back next week for more top posts!

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal