Over here at the mozPlex we thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of our “Best Posts” of 2010. But how do we determine what a best post is? Do we look at the number of thumbs up… or do we care more about traffic generated by the post? Or since we’re SEOs over here, is a top post based on the number of linking root domains it’s obtained?

Well why not look at all of these aspects? So we did! What's interesting is that as we began to look at these "top" lists, we realized that what the SEOmoz community liked (based on thumbs up) weren't necessarily the most linked to posts, nor were they the most trafficked. Digging just a bit deeper, I went back and looked at the feedback we received back in April when we asked what we could do for you, to see if the topics chosen as the top picks, were the same topics with the most thumbs up.

Back in April, 650+ people voted and the following 10 topics were the ones the community wanted to see more of on the blog:

1. Link Building & Link Analysis 
2. SEO Tools & Automation
3. On-Page Optimization / Keyword Targeting      
4. Conversion Rate Optimization  
5. Site Architecture & Navigation
6. Analytics & Tracking  
7. Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc.)
8. Keyword Research      
9. Content Creation Strategies   
10. Blogging Strategies 

Now let's take a look at the "Best Posts of 2010" based on  Thumbs, Traffic and Backlinks and see if we've brought you the content you wanted.

Top Posts of 2010 By Thumbs Up

For these posts I simply used the popular post feature from the right nav. The top thumbed up post wins by a huge landslide and every single one of these posts are based on topics from the top ten list of topics above. Apparently you weren't lying when you filled out that form in April. :) Plus, check out the value of community! Four of the top posts started in YOUmoz and one was guest post promoted directly to the main blog. When the community speaks... the community likes. (Also, Rand is a blogging machine)

1. All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines' Valuation of Links
By randfish on May 27th, 2010
Wow! This really shows you what SEOs care about... links baby.

2. The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs
By laura on April 6th, 2010
This was the first of eight great guest posts from Laura.

3. Link Building 101 - The Almost Complete Link Guide
By scott.mclay on September 14th, 2010
Originally posted in YOUmoz, this is yet another example of the community loving some link building.

4. SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them (Part 2 of 2) 
By randfish on April 28th, 2010
Tools, tools, tools! This is the follow up post from Rand that goes through an amazing list of free and paid tools to help you do your job.

5. Boy Do I Love Linkbuilding - And You Should Too
By Seoteric on July 1st, 2010
Originally posted in YOUmoz, this heartfelt post from Matt walks you through his love of linkbuilding (a theme here!)

6. Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO
By randfish on December 2nd, 2010
Look at the date on this one! It's in the top posts on the site and it's only 2 weeks old... cool.

7. Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide
By timsoulo on July 14th 2010
Originally posted in YOUmoz, this post grabbed the heart of the community it was retweeted like crraaazzzzy.

8. An Illustrated Guide to Matt Cutts' Comments on Crawling & Indexation
By randfish on March 17th, 2010
Based on the interview with Matt Cutts by Eric Enge, Rand proves that SEOs are visual learners.

9. 4 Things That Are Getting Me Rankings, Right Now
By Glen Allsopp on March 11, 2010
Originally posted in YOUmoz, Glen opens up and tells us exactly what he's doing to rank well. Obviously the community loved it.

10. I'm Getting More Worried about the Effectiveness of Webspam

By randfish on August 17th, 2010
It looks like Rand isn't the only one worried about how well the webspam team is doing.

Top Posts of 2010 By Unique Visits

We've looked at the posts that the community decided were top notch, but what about if we look at traffic stats? Will we see the same posts in the top 10? No, actually. Only half of the top thumbed up posts, were also the top trafficked! If you take a look at these posts, you'll notice that the topics aren't necessarily the ones that the community wanted to see more of. Which says to me that the traffic we received on these posts mainly came from new visitors or non-regular mozzers.

1. Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics & Marketing
By randfish on November 9, 2010
That's right, our #1 trafficked blog post of 2010 didn't make the top 10 in thumbs up! This post made it on Delicious popular and Hackernews which made this our winner. It was also just published in November, and has 1,203 retweets (I believe this is our most ever to one page).

2. Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide
By timsoulo on July 14th 2010
Again, the Facebook Marketing Guide makes the top 10 list. Since this broke out of the SEO only crowd, it did really well in the social networks.

 3.  All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines' Valuation of Links
By randfish on May 27th, 2010
Our top post from the community is obviously a post about links. :)

4. 7 Cutting Edge Web Design Trends (that Can Actually Improve SEO)
By randfish on July 29, 2010
Once again Rand knocked this one outside the SEO stratosphere!

5. SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them (Part 2 of 2) 
By randfish on April 28th, 2010
Us SEOs, we sure love our tools. This post also has 416 Delicious bookmarks!

 6.  The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs
By laura on April 6th, 2010
 

7. Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO
By randfish on December 2nd, 2010
 

8. SEO Salaries - How Much Should You Make (updated May, 2010)
By randfish - originally posted in 2006, but updated in May 2010
What SEO doesn't want to know how much they should be getting paid? Even though this was an old post, the traffic spike caused when the post went up makes it relevant to the list.

9. Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements
By randfish on June 8, 2010
This post started a controversy among the SEO community which no doubt pushed this into the top 10 visited pages.

10. 30 SEO Bookmarklets to Save You Time
By randfish on February 9, 2010
More tools! Anything that saves us time, we're going to like.
  

Top Posts of 2010 By Linking Root Domains

In order to find the posts from 2010 with the most backlinks, specifically looking a total number of linking root domains, Casey Henry dipped into the Linksape API to help me grab the data. Only two of these posts are also in the other two lists, while finally two Whiteboard Friday's make their way into this top list. I wonder what makes someone link to a post, but not thumb it up? Either way it looks like Rand is our #1 linkbaiter. :)

1. Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements
By randfish on June 8, 2010

2. The Science of Ranking Correlations: How Does PageRank Perform?
By randfish on April 22nd, 2010

3.  All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines' Valuation of Links
By randfish on May 27th, 2010

4. SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them (Part 2 of 2) 
By randfish on April 28th, 2010

5. Whiteboard Friday - We Bought Links and It Worked!!
By Scott Willoughby on June 24th, 2010

6. Whiteboard Friday - Google's May Day Update & What It Means for You
By Scott Willoughby on May 13th, 2010

7. One Dead Simple Tactic for Better Rankings in Google Local
By randfish on March 2nd, 2010

8. 30 SEO Bookmarklets to Save You Time
By randfish on February 9, 2010

9. An Illustrated Guide to Matt Cutts' Comments on Crawling & Indexation
By randfish on March 17th, 2010

10. The 12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program [Infographic]
By Oli Gardner on July 26, 2010

 

Top Comments

Just for a little fun, let's take a look at the top 5 comments this year based on thumbs up:

1. Rand on "Using Anchor Links to Make Google Ignore The First Link" with a whopping 45 thumbs up.
2. Jane Copland on "It's Only a Clique if You're Not In It" with 27 thumbs up.
3. Lucas Ng on "The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs" with 17 thumbs up.
4. Darren Shaw on "Pagination: Best Practices for SEO & User Experience" with 15 thumbs up.
5. Jane Copland on "Whiteboard Friday - Click-Through-Rate and Usage Data in SEO" with 14 thumbs up (and 1 thumb down).

//Note: These top comments seem to be incorrect, I'll try to update this later today with the correct ones.

Top Posts of 2010 By Retweet - New!

Woo hoo! Thanks to the fine folks over at PostRank (specifically Ilya Grigorik), this morning I got a list of the top 10 retweeted SEOmoz posts of 2010. Since I got the data last minute, it doesn't look quite as pretty as the ones above, but seriously cool data! Thanks PostRank! It's interestng to see the differences in what gets retweeted and what gets traffic. About half of these posts are about social media... so does writing about social media get you more tweets? Could be an interesting test. :)

1. 7 Cutting Edge Web Design Trends (that Can Actually Improve SEO) with 2748 tweets (HOLY COW!)
2. Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements with 1629 tweets
3. Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics & Marketing with 961 tweets
4. Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide with 704 tweets
5. 5 Quick Google Analytics Hacks with 696 tweets
6. Best SEO Blogs: Top 10 Sources to Stay Up-to-Date with 638 tweets
7. Comparing SEO & Social Media as Marketing Channels with 632 tweets
8. Lessons Learned from 21 Case Studies in Conversion Rate Optimization with 620 tweets
9. Segmenting Social Traffic in Google Analytics with 606 tweets
10. Calculating and Improving Your Twitter Click-through-Rate with 594 tweets

Whew!! It was fun to go through the old posts, and personally I felt pretty good knowing that I had already read every single one of these great posts. I hope you'll take the time and read through the posts you've missed, this is our best content of the year! I think it's pretty obvious that for 2011 we all need to work on beating Rand. His posts won all three areas, plus he even got the most thumbs up on a comment. Come on people... we can do this. :)

We're hoping to get nominations for the Crunchies for "Best Internet Application" and "Best Technology Achievement" - we'd love your vote! It's easy... just click on the badges below, then nominate SEOmoz. Plus you can vote once per day in each category until Februrary 24th. Thanks much!