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 post 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 at 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 roll). 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, kittens and rainbows from Sarcastic Monday.
First of all thank you for remembering Bullit Goodnewscowboy. He loved these kind of "community" posts, and surely Bullit would have flooded this one with his witty comments.
Second: as one of the main characteristics of this year is the contribution of YouMoz to the main blog, I prepared a list of the most successful promoted YouMoz of 2011. Just two notes:
So... here it is
The Top 15 YouMoz posts
Finally, as correctly has written Himanshu, in this Moz annual celebration, I too would love to remember all the contributors to the SEOmoz Q&A, because many of them rarely are visible here in the blogs, but are doing wonderful things for the Community. Especially I'd love to remember Egol and RyanKent, who are respectively 4th and 1st in the Top Users Ranking.
Yeah, I was thinking the YouMoz stuff should show up here too. Great stuff!
Awesome job Gialunca! Love to see some of the users getting credit for their awesome posts this year :).Â
I hate to be self promotional, but my youmoz post "Check My Links Chrome Extension - A Link Builder's Dream" (76 thumbs up, 124 comments) should have made it somewhere in there :D.
Oh, please forgive me... I did that list on the run checking the YouMoz promoted and, surely, I didn't notice yours (probably I confused you with one of the Associated). Yes, your post surely deserves to stay in that list).
Thanks Gianluca!
Thanks so much for putting this list together Gianluca! I've always been in awe of the amount of time and effort I've seen put into these YouMoz posts, even when I was just reading from my RSS feed and not participating at all in the community.
I second the shoutout to Egol, Ryan Kent, Sha, Alan (both of them!), and all of the others in Q&A. For anyone who hasn't looked in Q&A, we have a great community over there that really gives so much to each other.
Good thinking, Gianluca!
It'd be very fitting if this got turned into a YOUmoz post, in the same style/layout as this post... Maybe something to think about?
Thats a great sum up of the best posts of 2011. I think Q&A Forum contributors like EGOL also deserve recognition. These unsung heroes spend lot of time in answering to the questions. Consequently i would love to see best questions of 2011 in terms of thumbs up, responses etc.
I agree with you on this.  (Congrats to you. great job) :)
For those unsung heroes, THANK YOU!
Let's give them the recognition they deserve, if we can.
Aww great, congrats to all of you :) . But i think there should be added one more category that is top thumbs down comments and you know what i will at top in this category for sure :d
Kidding :)
Syed ,if that category comes in reality, I would be standing next to you for having large percentage of thumbs down!! but thanks to Moz people, they care about us!
One thing is catching my eyes! We do need more SEO ladies!
Great recap Jen and my compliments for beeing the best social media community manager ever :-)
Agreed, Indeed we do need more; plenty of SEO ladies around, just not so many, relatively speaking, in this community for some reason.
Of course I make the list not for either of my YouMoz posts or my lengthier, thought out comments, but for...
"Shit happens. Still the best service around"
I'll take what I can get :-)
Another great year down at the SEOMoz community. Looking forward to 2012
Thanks for all the hard work in putting this together Jen - and thanks to Casey & Dr Pete too :)
A really nice walk down Memory Lane and also an awesome resource for grabbing those Top posts to help out with answers in Q&A.
Even though I wasn't around for the whole year I've loved reading all the posts as they've come along, caught up on some that I missed and finally put together a Youmoz post of my own a little while ago. Your post just goes to prove something I've learned from all of that:
The SEOmoz Blog ROCKS!
It's been a great year and I have a feeling that the next one will be even better. Roll on 2012!
-Sha
Yes thanks for wraping up all great things in one post and I am sure this post will get more thumbs up and may be you need to edit your this post again and will put this post as well in the list.
Thanks again and Marry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you in advance.
Wish that 2012 will be a great year for all man kind.
That's much motivating, I agree to Eugen for his statement i.e. Every blog, forum should do the segerggation of the top users in monthly or Annual manner. and congrats to all of the listed moz users and mozzers! A real benefit which I got from this blog is that I easily found some of the TOP rocking posts and comments directly from the above lists, thanks Jennita for saving my time and energy in finding the most popular posts by searching and checking manually.
Thanks again!!
now its clear why I have no social life ^^
Yeah me too!!!
Mozzers clearly love experiements and data visualization. Cheers on more to come in 2012! Props to Oli Gardner on the success of The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC). He rocks at marketing inforgraphics!
Rand's White Hat SEO: It F@$#ing Works and Cyrus's 10 Super Easy SEO Copywriting Tips for Improved Link Building definitely make my top 10 favorite posts for the year. I'm surprised the latter didn't get more buzz. It's a brilliant concise guide for web writing, regardless of SEO.
Honored to be the #8 non-staff, non-associate commenter. Thanks to everyone who has given me thumbs ups, making me feel like my words are somewhat useful. My New Year's resolution will be to finally graduate from the comments section and into a YOUmoz post!
...and we'll be looking for great things to come from you, Joshua!
I was certain that at least half of the top 10s would be Whiteboard Friday posts or comments. Strangely pleased to see that wasn't the case. Keep up the fantastic work in to 2012!
A great way to summarise the year and for anyone to play catch-up that missed any of those topics.
Thanks to Jen and Gianluca for putting this together.
Happy Holidays to all of you Mozers :)
Hey, you forgot to put "The Most Popular Q&As". Some of them were cool.
This is something that every blog should do: take a look back, see what worked and what didn't. Not as a blog post, but just as an internal audit.
Great job SEOmoz! Here's to an even better 2012!
Eugen
It is really great post and superb from analysis point of view. SEO most popular post comes by Thumbs up first. It will show that wether some just read and gone away without commenting. Commenting takes more time so people used to do thums up on profile if they like the post. This is shprtest way. Good use of resource to make nice post. Thanks.
WOW...  what a line up!!!
From the lists above I guess I dont have to worry if i have missed some of thos blogs, i have a whole year to read those. you can also check some of the best post here:https://www.vastvision.com/linkBuildingServices.php..:)
Hi! I am a newbie on SEO and just joined SEOmoz to upgrade my knowledge and SEO skills. This forum is quite intresting.
Hallelujah Post!!
Thanks Jenni for writing it.
Really, 2011 gonna end soon & we people in search industry will be mashing up what comes & what goes out.
A very heartful thankyou to all those people who are taking their time out to write something meaningful for us & guiding us through the ethical ways of doing SEO.Â
Looking forward to 2012 with some great expectations in search industry (especially from SEOmoz).
Ciao.
Wow, had no idea so many people liked that comment. I should have ended it with something cool like "KNIBB HIGH FOOTBALL RULES!" (>> to 1:21).
Wow, that year seems to have gone so quickly if you look at that list?! Just goes to show the great content being provided by the community as well now, as Gianluca just highlighted in his comment. I know Keri and the team have been trying to get through the waiting list quickly and posting often twice a day. So great to be able to bounce ideas around with fellow SEOs and get opinions and confirmation on some things you think may be working, but perhaps don't have such a client/project, etc.Â
Thanks Jen for compiling and hope the dinner was worth it ;o)
Thanks for such a great post,Â
Will spend few hours to review  this list)
This is nice Jen! It goes nicer when you actually see your name in the list :p.
Awesome recap of the whole year plus a a great list for the people who have any plan to read about the awesomeness of SEO during the Christmas off!
Great list. Thanks for all the work. It's a great list, I enjoyed reading through some posts I had missed.Â
Cool blog post. I'm amazed that 2 posts got over 100,000 unique views. I think both Oli and Aaron will be having a few drinks to celebrate that feat!
Great to see that SEOMoz continues to be the number one social space for the SEO community.
Really interesting to see how different the the segmentation of the post works out, I'm sure you'll be drawing some conclusions from this to better improve the blog offering in 2012!
great post, will see me up there one day ;)
Thanks for this!
It's so nice to look back and review things. I'm sure when you go back, you will always and it's certain that you'll still get something from these people, posts, and comments every single time you visit them.
Great job seomoz, this is concrete manifestation how rich this community is, in terms of content and the people.
Thanks everyone for doing a great job!
Let's look forward for an even better 2012. :)
Awesome post, Jen. What a great recap of content -- thanks for taking the time to pull this together!
Great! I needed to play some catch-up on my Moz reading
Great collection. Thanks Jen!
Great, wooooow, Congrats all of you Moz members!!