The Best of 2013: The Top Posts and People on the Moz Blog |
The Best of 2013: The Top Posts and People on the Moz Blog Posted: 30 Dec 2013 03:31 PM PST Posted by Trevor-Klein Continuing what has become an annual tradition at Moz, on the last day of 2013 we're excited to bring you a roundup of the very best of this year's posts on the Moz Blog and YouMoz. After asking Roger to work overtime to crunch these numbers, we've whittled the posts down to the cream of the crop, and have organized them in several different ways:
Top posts by unique pageviewsOne of the quintessential metrics for a piece of content is its number of unique pageviews. Reflecting our audience's thirst for advanced SEO, content marketing, and data analysis, these posts were winners from the very beginning. 1. 10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations 2. A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization 3. The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 4. How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint 5. Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings 6. Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization - 91 Point Checklist and Infographic 7. 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors 8. Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! 9. The 100 Best Free SEO Tools & Resources for Every Challenge - Interactive 10. When Keyword (not provided is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do? - Whiteboard Friday Top YouMoz posts by unique pageviewsWe saw some real gems come through the YouMoz queue this year. Most of these posts were promoted to the Moz Blog shortly after they were published, as their resonance with the Moz community was readily apparent. 1. Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization - 91 Point Checklist and Infographic 2. 96 Quick SEO Wins - What Can You Do With an Hour? 3. The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Guest Blogging 4. 33 Link Building Questions Answered 5. Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study 6. 5 Lessons Learned from 100,000 Usability Studies 7. How to Build Links to Your Blog - A Case Study 8. How to Build a Great Online Fashion Brand - 34 Things that Really Amazing Fashion Retailers Do 9. How To Blog Successfully About Anything 10. Semantic Web and Link Building without Links > The Future for SEO? Top Moz Blog posts by number of thumbs upWhile something of a controversial metric, there's nothing more satisfying for an author (or, I admit, for a publisher!) than seeing a bunch of thumbs up. These posts went far beyond satisfying, though, garnering jaw-dropping numbers of thumbs up. 1. How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint 2. Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! 3. The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 4. A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization 5. Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings 6. 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors 7. The 100 Best Free SEO Tools & Resources for Every Challenge - Interactive 8. From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency 9. Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study 10. Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization - 91 Point Checklist and Infographic Top Moz Blog posts by number of commentsSome posts, whether due to truly inspired content or a touch of controversy (sometimes a little of both), generate significantly more discussion in the comments than others. Many of these have comment sections that dwarf the original post! We expected our announcement of the shift from SEOmoz to Moz would drum up some conversation, but we were interested to take a look at the rest of this list. 1. Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! 2. Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study 3. The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Guest Blogging 4. Why We Can't Just Be SEOs Anymore - Whiteboard Friday 5. The 100 Best Free SEO Tools & Resources for Every Challenge - Interactive 6. Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal 7. From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency 8. When Keyword (not provided) is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do? - Whiteboard Tuesday 9. How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint 10. Why Google Analytics Tagging Matters - Whiteboard Friday Top Moz Blog posts by number of linking root domainsIt just wouldn't seem right to use unique pageviews, thumbs, and comments to judge an SEO-focused blog without throwing in linking root domains as well. Using data from Open Site Explorer, here are the 10 posts that garnered the most attention from unique domains across the web. 1. Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings 2. 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors 3. When Keyword (not provided) is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do? â" Whiteboard Tuesday 4. Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! 5. The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 6. A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization 7. How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Ranking 8. 10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations 9. The SEO of Responsive Web Design 10. How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint Top comments by number of thumbs upWe're always impressed by the discussions we see in the comments below blog posts. In addition to the great many insightful points that add to what the authors say, one of our favorite parts is the support our community members show for one another. Here are the most thumbed-up comments from 2013. 1. Stephan_Boehringer | September 24 2. gfiorelli1 | July 19 3. MarkTraphagen | August 20 4. jcolman | May 29 5. randfish | August 29 6. Dr-Pete | April 15 7. Bill Sebald | July 16 8. KeriMorgret | February 7 9. evolvingSEO | February 12 10. KeriMorgret | March 8 Most active users by number of commentsWhile quality certainly trumps quantity in most cases, we're continuously impressed by the ability of our community members to cover both bases. On average, the folks on this list (which intentionally omits our own staff and associates) have left a comment on every second or third post we've published, and we couldn't appreciate their contributions more. 1. Charles_SEO 2. Spook SEO 3. Brahmadas 4. Dubs 5. steviephil 6. paints-n-design 7. danatanseo 8. manishbhalla 9. skifr 10. Matt-Antonino Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
Foursquare Quietly Unlocks Its Own "Local Data Aggregator" Badge Posted: 30 Dec 2013 02:28 AM PST Posted by David-Mihm I was wrong about Foursquare. While five of my 2013 local search prognostications came to fruition, my sixth predictionâ"that Foursquare would be boughtâ"doesn't look like it will (unless Apple has silently acquired Foursquare in the last couple of days). In fact, Foursquare has been turning away from an acquisition path, setting off on a fundraising spree in 2013. While this quest for cash has struck some analysts as a desperate tactic, PR from the company indicates that it remains focused on growing its userbase and its revenues for the foreseeable future. It's one of the few companies in tech to successfully address both sides of the merchant and consumer marketplace, and as a result, might even have a chance at an IPO. As the company matures, we hear less and less about mayorships, badges, and social gamificationâ"perhaps a tacit admission that checkins are indeed dying as the motivational factor underlying usage of Foursquare. Foursquare: the data aggregatorInstead, the company is pivoting into a self-described position as "the location layer for the Internet." Google, Bing, Nokia, and other mapping companies have built their own much broader location layers to varying degrees of success, but it's the human activity associated with location data that makes Foursquare unique. Its growing database of keyword-rich tips and comments and widening network of social interactions even make predictive recommendations possible. But I'm considerably less excited about these consumer-facing recommendations than I am about Foursquare's data play. If "location layer for the internet" is not a synonym for "data aggregator," I'm not sure what would be. In the last several months, Foursquare has been prompting its users to provide business details about the places they check-in at, like whether a business has wi-fi, its relative price range, delivery and payment options, and more. It's also accumulating one of the biggest photo libraries in all of local search. For companies that have not yet built their own services like StreetView and Mapmaker, Foursquare "ground truth" position is enviable. So from my standpoint, Foursquare's already achieved the status of a major data aggregator, and seems to have its sights set on becoming the data aggregator. Foursquare: The Data Aggregator?That statement would have sounded preposterous 18 months ago, with "only" 15 million users and 250,000 claimed venues. But while many of us in the local search space have been distracted by the shiny objects of Google+ Local and Facebook Graph Search, Foursquare has struck deals with the two largest up-and-coming social apps (Instagram and Pinterest) to provide the location backbone for their geolocation features. Not to mention Uber, WhatsApp, and a host of other conversational and transactional apps. And buried in the December 5th TechCrunch article about Foursquare's latest iOS release was this throwaway line: "Foursquare has a sharing deal with Apple already â" it's one of over a dozen contributors to Apple's Maps data." So, doing some quick math, we have
All of a sudden that's a substantial number of people contributing location information to Foursquare. Granted, there's considerable overlap in those users, but even a conservative 80-100 million would be a pretty large number of touchpoints. In fact, one thing that Wil Reynolds and I realized at a recent get-together in San Diego is that for many people outside the tech world, Foursquare and Instagram are basically the same app (see screenshots below). I'm seeing more and more of my decidedly non-techie Instagram friends tagging their photos with location. And avid Foursquare users like Matthew Brown have always made photography their primary network activity.
Providing the geographic foundation for two appsâ"Pinterest and Instagramâ"that are far more popular than Foursquare gives it a strong running start on laying the location foundation for the Internet. What's next for Foursquare?While Facebook is undoubtedly building its own location layer, Zuckerberg and company have long ignored local search. And they've got plenty of other short- and mid-term priorities. Exposing Facebook check-in data to the extent Foursquare has, and forcing Instagram to update a very successful API integration, would seem to be pretty far down the list. As I suggested in my Local Search Ecosystem update in August, to challenge established players like Infogroup, Neustar, and Acxiom, in the long run Foursquare does need to build out its index considerably beyond the current sweetspots of food, drink, and entertainment. But in the short run, the quality and depth of Foursquare's popular venue information in major cities gives start-up app developers everything they need to launch and attract users to their apps. And Foursquare's independence from Google, Facebook, and Apple is appealing for many of themâ"particularly for non-U.S. app developers who have a hard time finding publicly-available location databases outside of Google or Facebook. Foursquare's success with Instagram and Pinterest has created a self-perpetuating growth strategy: it will continue to be the location API of choice for most "hot" local startups. TL;DRFoursquare venues have been contributing to a business's citation profile for years, so hopefully most of you have included venue creation and management in your local SEO service packages already. Even if you optimize non-retail locations like insurance agencies, accounting offices, and the like, make one of your 2014 New Year's resolutions be a higher level of engagement with Foursquare. The bottom line is that irrespective of its user growth and beyond just SEO, Foursquare is going to get more important to the SoLoMo ecosystem in the coming year. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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