Central Perk

joi, 3 ianuarie 2013

The Best of 2012: Top Posts and People of the Year

Posted: 02 Jan 2013 06:34 PM PST

Now that 2012 has come to a close, it's time to take a look back at the posts and community members that made the biggest impacts on the Moz blog throughout the year!

This year offered unlimited awesomeness to highlight, but we had to pick and choose. The list includes top posts based on unique pageviews, thumbs up, total number of comments, and linking root domains. We also highlight the community members who left top comments (by thumbs up) and those who left the highest amount of comments throughout the year.

If there are any posts you didn't get a chance to read (or any epic posts you can't wait to re-read), my advice is to grab your favorite mug, fill it with a tasty treat, and curl up in your favorite cozy place to catch up on the best of the Moz blog in 2012. I'm excited to hear your thoughts on your favorite posts, why you think they did so well, and what you'd like to see more of in 2013!

A quick-reference list of the Top Posts of 2012:

Unique pageviews
Thumbs up
Total number of comments
Linking root domains

And one for the community members who Mozzed our socks off:

Top comments (by thumbs up)
Top users (by total comments)

Data disclaimer: This data was gathered within the last 24 hours, so the numbers may change slightly (if so, my apologies). A huge thank you goes to Casey Henry, who helped me gather and compile a fair amount of the data used. All of the data used is current and reliable to the best of my knowledge, but keep in mind that I'm no data scientist like our wonderful Matt Peters. :)

Before we dive into the posts, let's look at this year's top ten post topics:

Top comments of 2012 by thumbs up

â€‹Our community members aren't just commenting on our daily blog posts; they're supporting each others' opinions, as well. Group hug! Here are the comments (some serious and some not-so-much) that got the most love from other community members this year:

1. Kris Roadruck | October 19th, 2012
The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning - Whiteboard Friday

2. Dan Deceuster | February 17th, 2012
The Last Linkbuilding Strategy Your Business Will Ever Need

3. Sajeet Nair | March 5th, 2012
12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time

4. Matthew C. Egan | September 25th, 2012
How Many SEO Consultants Actually Know What They're Talking About?

5. wrttnwrd | March 13th, 2012
The Brand of SEO and the Trend of Inbound Marketing

6. Kane Jamison | May 7th, 2012
Are You Setting Up WordPress For SEO Success?

7. Sajeet Nair | February 14th, 2012
Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

8. Kane Jamison | June 11th, 201
The Bigfoot Update (AKA Dr. Pete Goes Crazy)

9. Asif Dilshad | March 8th, 2012
Visualizing the Marketing Funnel - Whiteboard Friday

10. SEOTakeaways | January 6th, 2012
All About Anchor Text - Whiteboard Friday

Top users of 2012 by total comments

â€‹It's time for the movers and shakers who went above and beyond in their comment discussions this year. Who was the most active in 2012, you ask? If you're around the blog often, the faces below will look familiar. If not, give them a holler and connect! Here are our top ten (associates and staff removed) commenters of the year:

1. moosahemani
mozPoints: 2193 | Rank: 14

2. James Norquay - Australian SEO
mozPoints: 2688 | Rank: 11

3. SEODinosaur
mozPoints: 1012 | Rank: 56

4. Brian Reynolds
mozPoints: 215 | Rank: 394

5. GrowTraffic
mozPoints: 350 | Rank: 205

6. Jeff Downer
mozPoints: 234 | Rank: 345

7. Asif Dilshad
mozPoints: 302 | Rank: 243

8. David O'Donnell
mozPoints: 847 | Rank: 69

9. algogmbh_petra
mozPoints: 1466 | Rank: 31

10. Jonathon Colman
mozPoints: 776 | Rank: 79

And there you have it, folks! Hopefully this post was as fun for you to read as it was for me to put together. I'm so thankful to be part of such a wonderful community, and after looking back at the amazingness that was last year, I can't wait for what the new year has to offer.

What was your favorite post of 2012? Is there anything you'd like to see more of in 2013? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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!

83 Photos You Don't Want to Miss

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, January 3, 2013

83 Photos You Don't Want to Miss

By all accounts it's been a historic year at the White House, and we're excited to share some of our favorite photos from behind the scenes in 2012. The White House Photo Office compiled some of the year's best, with commentary from Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza.

Check out 83 photos you don't want to miss.

Seth's Blog : The attention paradox

The attention paradox

Online, where you can't buy attention as easily as you can with traditional advertising, most commercial media has the imperative of interestingness built in. The assignment is to make it viral, make it something people will watch or click on or even better, share.

This is hard for mass marketers, marketers who are used to making average stuff for average people and promoting heavily in media where they can buy guaranteed attention. And so, we see organizations buying likes and pageviews, pushing for popovers and popunders and all sorts of new ways to interrupt online.

Smart advertisers, though, are realizing that they have to make content that people decide is worth watching. Some have very good indeed at making media that's so entertaining that we not only want to watch it, but spread it.

The challenge is that all those hoops you need to jump through to attract attention might be precisely the opposite of what you need to do to cause action, to get someone to change her mind or to connect.

A squadron of singing ferrets might make your video spread, but that approach isn't going to cause the action you seek.

And, alas, you have to do both.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 2 ianuarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Gallup Poll Suggests Private Sector Hiring Down Since April
Crowd of Fools Cheers Obama; Tweet Irony
Republicans Prepare to Wave White Flag Again, This Time On Debt Ceiling; "Temporary, Partial, Non-Threats"

Gallup Poll Suggests Private Sector Hiring Down Since April

Posted: 02 Jan 2013 08:20 PM PST

Gallup reports U.S. Job Creation Steady in December, but hiring in the nongovernment job sector stalls.

The following charts (trendlines added by me) reflect answers to Gallup's question: Based on what you know or have seen, would you say that, in general, your company or employer is 1) hiring new people and expanding the size of its workforce, 2) not changing the size of its workforce, 3) letting people go and reducing the size of its workforce.

Percentage of Employers Hiring Minus Those Letting Go

click on any chart for sharper image

The hiring momentum that began in early 2009 slowed in mid-2011. Momentum vanished (at best) in March or April of 2012.

Slowdown in Hiring Since Mid-2011

There appears to be even less momentum from this perspective. However, the first chart is simply a subtraction of the numbers in the second chart.

Factor in Government Employment and Things Look Worse

From this perspective, private hiring peaked in April of 2012 and has since been in a very slow decline.

Meanwhile, states and local governments have been adding workers since the beginning of the year although it is highly doubtful they can afford such actions with private sector running at stall speed at best.

Bear in mind, two things: First, the survey represents what people perceive to be happening at their employer. Actual hiring or firing may be different.

Second, these charts only show direction not size. Thus, a small-sized company laying off a single person counts as much as a larger company that is hiring 40. Of course, the opposite is true as well (a small-sized company hiring a single person counts as much as a large company firing 40).

However, based on the randomness of the samples, there will be more calls to those working for large-sized companies than those working for small or medium-sized companies and most people are probably aware of what their company is doing.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Crowd of Fools Cheers Obama; Tweet Irony

Posted: 02 Jan 2013 11:55 AM PST

Caroline Baum, one of my favorite Bloomberg columnists has an interesting article today that's worth a read.

Please consider Wanted: Middle-Class Tweeters for White House Event.

Who were these people, gathered on the afternoon of New Year's Eve to fete the president as a deal to avert the fiscal cliff was hanging in the balance?

They were "middle-class Americans" who had tweeted their way to a staged White House event, according to Politico.

The crowd gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Monday looked fairly young, which makes their cheering even more disconcerting. Don't they understand that the president has done nothing to protect future generations from a crushing debt burden? Nothing about deficit reduction other than to talk about it? Nothing about preserving Medicare other than to demagogue any changes to the program?

A president truly interested in the issues he claims to be would have used this opportunity to educate younger Americans. Explain to them that the government has made promises to the elderly that it can't keep. Tell them they have choices to make on the benefits they want and the price they'll have to pay.

You won, Mr. President. You won re-election. You got your promised tax increases on the rich. But we lost. And if we lose, then ultimately you lose.

Tweet This

Politico notes Obama's staged event, jokes draw McCain rebuke

The crowd was nothing if not adoring. ("Thank you for having us!" Two standing ovations.) And the president did seem in a good mood. (Cracking jokes about showing up at an audience member's house to ring in the new year.)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for one, took to the Senate floor and slammed the president for "antagonizing" Republicans during a White House event "with that group of people that he was talking to who were laughing and cheering and applauding as we are on the brink of this, of this collapse."

The audience members, billed by the White House as "middle-class Americans," were drawn from Obama supporters who responded to the White House's #my2k hashtag campaign and tweeted what a $2,000 tax hike would mean to them. Being invited to the White House based on a tweet, it would seem, doesn't make for a dour audience.

Tweet Irony

Young Americans like Obama because he gives them student loans making them debt-slaves for life
Young Americans like Obama because of a promise for "free" health-care for everyone. Little do they realize, nothing is "free", and they are the ones overpaying.

The fact of the matter is youth overpay for health-care as the benefits primarily go to the elderly. Obama needed a pool of fresh suckers to overpay for health-care costs to keep the system solvent for a bit longer.

Since nothing was done to contain costs, Obama will be asking for more and more money in the future.

Baum asked "Don't they understand that the president has done nothing to protect future generations from a crushing debt burden? Nothing about deficit reduction other than to talk about it?"

Obviously not.

The crowd [of fools] was adoring.

Young Americans tweeted Obama and they got an invite to bow down to the person making them debt-slaves to union educators as well as debt-slaves to the ungrateful elderly.

By the time they are old enough to collect benefits, the system will be bankrupt, with no benefits to be had. In the meantime, Republicans Prepare to Wave White Flag Again, This Time On Debt Ceiling, proving that neither party is capable of a remotely honest discussion.

The sad irony in this mess is youth have gotten nothing out of Obama but a big screw job. And for that screw job, they offer adoring praise.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Republicans Prepare to Wave White Flag Again, This Time On Debt Ceiling; "Temporary, Partial, Non-Threats"

Posted: 02 Jan 2013 09:41 AM PST

Having totally collapsed on deficit reductions in fiscal cliff non-negotiations (agreeing to a mere $12 billion in cuts down from an Obama offer of $600 billion), Republicans are already offering signs they will once again wave the white flag when it comes to the alleged battle over the debt ceiling.

Reuters reports Bigger fights loom after "fiscal cliff" deal.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans looked ahead on Wednesday toward the next round of even bigger budget fights after reaching a hard-fought "fiscal cliff" deal that narrowly averted potentially devastating tax hikes and spending cuts.

Retreat, Retreat, Then Surrender

Let's stop right there for a second. What "hard fight" was there?

It certainly took a lot of time to reach a deal, but there never was much of a fight. Every day Republicans offered more and more concessions until deficit reductions were whittled down to a mere $12 billion or so from a starting point of $600 billion.

Senate Republicans immediately waved the white flag of surrender as only 5 Republicans voted against the deal. Please see Obama Deal Adds $3.97 Trillion to Deficit Over 10 Years; Only 5 Republicans Voted Against; White-Flag Surrender for details.

This was a pathetic case of retreat, retreat, then surrender, with every retreat making the president more confident he would get his way.

Reuters continues ...

[The fiscal cliff agreement] set up political showdowns over the next two months on spending cuts and on raising the nation's limit on borrowing. Republicans, angry the deal did little to curb the federal deficit, promised to use the debt ceiling debate to win deep spending cuts next time.

"Our opportunity here is on the debt ceiling," Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said on MSNBC, adding Republicans would have the political leverage against Obama in that debate. "We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean."

Opportunity to Surrender Again

There is no opportunity here. Read the paragraph carefully to see if you can spot the crucial words.

In case you missed it, the crucial word is "temporary". More specifically the crucial phrase is "willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean".

The word "temporary" is pathetic enough. But Toomey goes even further, adding the word "partial".

Temporary, Partial, Non-Threats

Who is supposed to fear a "partial, temporary" shutdown? Anyone?

Sadly, Republicans are already signaling they are prepared for more temporary threats coupled with more permanent can-kicking exercises.

The wimpy language bantered about by Republicans before debt ceiling debate even begins suggests the safe thing to do is prepare for more retreats and more white flags.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
Click on Image to Learn More

joi, 3 ianuarie 2013

The Best of 2012: Top Posts and People of the Year

The Best of 2012: Top Posts and People of the Year

Top posts of 2012 by unique pageviews

Top posts of 2012 by thumbs up

Top posts of 2012 by total number of comments

Top posts of 2012 by linking root domains