The Best of 2011 - Posts & People Who Rocked Our World

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.