Earlier this month we gave you the top SEOmoz posts from 2010 based on the total number of thumbs up, traffic, backlinks and tweets. But that wasn't enough, and the community asked for more! You wanted to see the posts with the most comments and the comments with the most thumbs up (as I screwed that list up in the last post). So I decided to even take it one step further and see which community members commented the most in 2010 also.
The numbers were gathered on December 21st, so beware that some of them could have changed since then. Now that we have that out of the way, come along with me for a walk down memory lane.
Top Posts of 2010 By Total Number of Comments
It's interesting to note that this list consists mostly of SEOmoz launch posts (beta web app, Open Site Explorer), controversial posts and YOUmoz promoted posts. One could definitely come to the conclusion that search marketers like to give their opinions when the topic is a bit controversial! I also love to see that 2 of the posts in this category started in YOUmoz. Wahoo! Let's take a look at the posts that got the most comments this year.
1. New SEOmoz Web App Now in Beta for PRO Members
August 11th, 2010 - Posted by randfish
2. I'm Getting More Worried about the Effectiveness of Webspam
August 17th, 2010 - Posted by randfish
3. Whiteboard Friday - We Bought Links and It Worked!!
June 24th, 2010 - Posted by Scott Willoughby
4. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Google's Rankings are Remarkably Well Correlated
September 6th, 2010 - Posted by randfish
5. One Giant Leap for Link Data: Announcing Open Site Explorer + Page/Domain Authority Metrics
January 20th, 2010 - Posted by randfish
6. SEO Chrome Extension - Comprehensive View of Page and Domain Data
February 23rd, 2010 - Posted by neopunisher
7. All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines' Valuation of Links
May 27th, 2010 - Posted by randfish
8. Link Building 101 - The Almost Complete Link Guide
September 14th, 2010 - Posted by scott.mclay
9. A Recommendation for Google's Webspam Team
December 1st, 2010 - Posted by randfish
10. It's Only A Clique If You're Not In It
January 26th, 2010 - Posted by Dr. Pete
Top Comments of 2010 by Thumbs Up
Ok so in the last post, we looked at top posts based on the number of thumbs up it received, but what about those comments? Who writes comments so eloquent that people can't wait to thumb it up? Well since 5 out of the 10 comments are from Rand and Jane, I'd say they do. :)
1. randfish | March 3rd, 2010
Using Anchor Links to Make Google Ignore The First Link
2. Jane Copland | January 26th, 2010
It's Only A Clique If You're Not In It
3. audilo | September 10th, 2010
Discussing LDA and SEO - Whiteboard Friday
4. MOGmartin | June 25th, 2010
Whiteboard Friday - We Bought Links and It Worked!!
5. Mike Coughlin | June 25th, 2010
Whiteboard Friday - We Bought Links and It Worked!!
6. gfiorelli1 | September 10th, 2010
Who's Ready to Get Googley?
7. Jane Copland | June 25th, 2010
Whiteboard Friday - We Bought Links and It Worked!!
8. randfish | September 16th, 2010
LDA correlation 0.17 not 0.32
9. Jane Copland | January 12th, 2010
An Update to Our Testing on PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow
10. Ann Smarty | September 16th, 2010
4 Valuable Link Building Services (Zemanta, MyBlogGuest, EightfoldLogic & Whitespark)
Top Users of 2010 By Total Comments
Whew! This list of Top Users is based on the total number of comments they've made in 2010. I've removed employees and Associates from this list as we all comment quite a bit, and have added the member's mozPoint total and rank amongst all users. These members need a huge round of applause for the amazing number of comments they've made both on the main blog and in YOUmoz this year! Thank you all for your contributions. :)
1. goodnewscowboy
mozPoints: 2057 | Rank: 6
Now we all know that goodnewscowboy and gfiorelli1 comment a lot, but wow over 1,000 comments each? I'd say they win some sort of prize... any ideas?
So which were your favorite posts, comments or even members from this last year? Personally I'll never forget when Gillian wrote this excellent post about digging deeper into analytics but sadly when I added the post to Facebook, the title got cut off at a horrible (no, I mean HORRIBLE) spot. Thanks to our friend hoodwebmgmt who saved a screenshot from Facebook and posted it in the comments, you can see my ridiculous mistake. Oh and the screenshot only shows about 1/4 of the total comments on the Facebook thread. :) I do however still break down into tears laughing about this whenever I tell the story. :) Now... your turn!
Ah,,, a prize? No, that would be too much. To be here and to say without any doubt that on SEOmoz I have friends I love to share things with is already a prize. But if you come up with something ;).
I was reading the most thumbed up comments and it is possible to make somehow a classification of them:
1) Comments that helps making clear the content of the original post (that's the case of the 1st of Rand)
2) Comments that politely and with arguments contradict the thesis of the post (that's the case of the MogMarting one)
3) Comments that open a window to the humanity of the commenter (check the first one by Jane Copland)
4) Comments that are related to the TAGFEE Tenets and/or the "rules" the Community has accepted to follow here in SEOmoz (check number 8, again by Rand, and mine)
IMO, the best comments are those ones that are engaging, long threaded, give value to the post and that sometimes are even more valuable than the post itself. As an example, I remember the incursions of Danny Sullivan in the LDA related posts. That pushes me to another consideration: we all know that great minds/blogger/SEOs... read SEOmoz; I just wish they engage with the community a little bit more.
About my favs: the Laura Lippay series, the Lindzie ones (simply love her style) and "Yup, SEO Can Be A Competitive Advantage" by Rand (and all the "Business Tactics" categories and this by Dr Pete: "Are Your SEO Resolutions Actionable?".
Great job Jennita... and don't worry about that horribly funny mistake anymore ;)... well, I too laughed a lot when seeing it, but that give even one more reason to go checking out the SEOmom post. The problem is that it was posted on a Sunday, when people is usually taking a "blog-break".
As always, you have a great value added comment G. You get my vote for the #1 mozzer of the year.
And re: your favorite posts from 2010, I agree with two of your choices. Ordinarily I'd shy from naming favorites as there were so many other really great posts and I wouldn't want to slight the authors of the same. But I make an exception in this case.
Laura's series on The 8-Step SEO Strategy and Lindsay's posts on her SEO Audit reports were phenomenal.
I still remember how excited Rand was when he introduced SEOmoz web app and its no wonder seo community was equally excited and hence so many comments. The announcement of open site explorer is my favorite post. OSE is one of my favorite tool and its hard to imagine back link analysis without it. "A Recommendation for Google's Webspam Team" is the post i like the least and it made me think whether Rand is on our side or the Google. I am excited to be in the top users list but I comment only when i have something to add to the ongoing discussion. I don't comment just for the sake of commenting or to get thumbs up. The whole point of commenting is to express your opinions fearlessly. If i get induced by 'thumbs up' or get scared by 'thumbs down' then i am not true to myself. I am also expecting list of top youmoz posts.
I'd have to say that you tie with G. for being fearless in what you say Himanshu. Y'all are definitely not shy about calling things the way you see them.
I'm looking forward to another year of your well expressed and outspoken comments Himanshu.
Himanshu - I think we both need to be on the same side, actually. If Google's results are allowed to be manipulated consistently, search won't be a primary navigation choice of users, and SEO will be useless (like optimizing for directory placement after 1998). Even black/gray hat SEOs should be worried about the macro influence of spam. If I can help Google defeat manipulation that we both perceive to have a negative impact on the quality of results, I'm going to do it (and I think every marketer should). I realize this opinion is not universally shared in the SEO community, but it's been my attitude for a long time.
As for OSE - get even more excited, because the new version, coming in April/May, is going to be a massive upgrade :-)
Re: OSE Update. AH! Rand that is teasing... but, I know, that is pure marketing too ;). Good way to start make us aware (and eager) for the future update of OSE.
Ohhhh, OSE is the tool I use most often (not being a full-time SEO). Excited now :-).
Good on you all for putting the spot light back on those who have helped the community throughout the year.
SEOmoz's user base is unlike any other. YOUmoz is one of my favorite resources on the web so I'm sure you all could do this once a month even without having to search for good/popular comments.
Our community rules!
Number 6 position... not bad.. but what were top posts by traffic? there should be a place where you can see some analytics about posts you make, pull the data from GA API?
pssst: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-seomoz-posts-of-2010
I'd love to set up YOUmoz authors to get analytics and have tried it in the past. I just kept finding that it was super time consuming to do it manually. Hopefully with some of the new processes in 2011 I'll be able to get this set up. I'd LOVE for everyone to have access to analytics on their posts.
Gianluca, top second user by comments! I don't know why I'm not surprised by that ;) ... Congratulations :D
What? I'm not on any of your lists??
I'm kidding, of course. I pay attention but don't comment too much since I move through my daily research pretty quickly. But I did want to say thanks for all the "tops" posts. They've brought me back to a few posts that I'm sure I read the first time around but had forgotten about, and there are some gems in the comments that are usually posted long after I've moved on. I'm especially intrigued by Dr. Pete's post about the SEO clique since something about cliques at work came up in luncho convo yesterday and I swear I quoted that headline word for word without realizing I must have read it here almost a year ago. Freaky!
Thanks for all you do, Jen.
Hey, I made the top commentors for 2010! I'm really honoured to be art of the community as well. Like Luke said, work has been absolutely mad for me the last two quarters of the year, which has seriously slowed me down in the commenting department. I have a feeling next year is going to be just as busy as this one, but I'll be just around the corner, reading and retweeting as usual, I'll also try to be more active like I was before...
Looking forward to the new year and new things to learn... Happy new year everyone!
Hey Tola, we've missed your participation. I look forward to whenever you get more time so you can comment more.
In the spirit of the season (ala "The Grinch" played by Jim Carrey) "An award?...[licks lips salaciously]...you never mentioned an award"
If you ever did do something like that Jen, you should make it something universally desirable to the readers like comping a month of SEOmoz membership or something similar. The reasoning behind this is to make more people want to jump in and be a part of the commenting in an attempt to get the award.
It's a lot funner when more people are involved, and it just adds to the richness of the experience for all.
What a massive undertaking this post must have been! Thanks Jen. And like the others have said above, it's giving me a ton of reading material to re-read. I just spent the morning re-reading Dr. Pete's post and the comments for the "Clique "post. Wow.
PS - You might want to check into the last comment there by the way. Yet another spam attempt. [sigh]
Not that I expect an award but I second the notion that a month PRO membership would be fantastic. Back in August/September after offering some help, I was given a free month and it was amazing. Unfortunately I'm not a full-time SEO, I'm purely an enthusiast; hence, I couldn't justify paying monthly for it – as much as I'd love to! (Seriously, it's great).
That is (or was) something previewed in the mozpoint page:
"Earn 150+ mozpoints in a month and the SEOmoz staff will consider your account for a free month of SEOmoz PRO"
Wow, three comments of mine made it to the top? That's crazy - they must be some of the only comments I've made this year ;) I guess I held true to my resolution to only say something when it really needed to be said?!
Thanks for this, Jen. I had no idea those comments had attracted so many upthumbs! Still haven't topped my most thumbed comment though - 39 up, 2 down - from 2009. Not sure you'd have wanted to highlight that one in a post, though, so good thing this is 2010 only ;)
Great post! I wish the Twitter handle was readily visible by usernames as a link. A wishlist enhancement for 2011? =)
@aschottmuller
Me too!!! I especially need them when I publish a YOUmoz post and want to tweet about the author. The cool part is we are updating the profiles soon and Twitter has more of a prominence. woot!
Thank you for the recognition! I realise I haven't been commenting very often in recent months due to increased workloads, but I've been reading articles, tweeting and bookmarking the most valuable ones and only commenting when I feel I have some interesting input!
Over the coming year, my workload is likely to shift slightly, so hopefully I'll be able to spend more time contributing both through comments and through YOUmoz – I actually have a very interesting article in the works which I'm considering for YOUmoz.
I'm a mere youngling amongst you lot (I'm only twenty years young), so I'm still learning and I look forward to 2011 on here.
Nice to see you back commenting trax. I have to say that you are responsible for one of the best ever comments made."No worries! Don't take my word one hundred percent. I'm just a boy."
PS - For those of y'all that don't remember seeing lukejonesme much this last year, it's because he used to go by traxor.
Haha, I'm glad at least one person understand my humour.
err... did you just call me old?
Now, why would I do that? :D
I'm included again? this is putting too much pressure on me for next year =p To b e honest I am really shocked that my post performed so well!
Seriously... you gotta step it up a bit next year. I mean making both of the "Top" posts??? You should be able to do better than that :P
That's a nice community involving post. I like it! Thank you for taking your time to put all the datas together.
On of my favourite post was indeed from neopunisher regarding the SEO Chrome Extension. But there would be so much more to remark ...
You have my vote for being always first to comment Petra :)
Mine too! After a post is published, I sometimes watch to see how long before she comments! :)
Thank you goodnewscowboy and Jennita. At least I could made it that you know my name and that I am not "algogmbh" (that's the company I work for). As I mentioned before, my luck is the time difference between the two time zones we are in. And apparently most posts are written at the beginning of the night so I can read them first in the morning when I start working.
I don't have the time to write very long comments but indeed I have most of the time the need to involve me into the "written" chat which is a good start in my morning :-)
Reading through all of this has just made me realise how much I (unwittingly) miss having the time to spend here on SEOmoz.
I think I've just found my first resolution for 2011.
Congrats to all!!
It's amazing how many of these posts I have already bookmarked and reread frequently.
It's been fun for me to go through these old posts and remember them! I read all of the posts, and most comments so it's been great to reminisce. :)
Great Post as always! Yes.. we wanted more details.. and top post of 2010 will help us go through them again and help us getting better, Thanks
Kashyap
this is a great resource. Don't know what I would do without it. OSE rocks!!!! Keep the improvement coming in 2011
Congratulations to all the readers listed out in this post. You are also contributing a lot in the success of this website by giving your suggestions as comment. Keep this great work.
Ah another resolution for me in 2011. I'll am for the comments with the most thumbs up in 2011. I wish I had the time to be one of the top users in 2011. But you've got to start somewhere.
great info, thanks!!
Top 10 Lists are Great! Especially with Statistics.