I thought it might be fun to see which articles people viewed the most this year on this blog.

The interesting thing about doing this is that you often don’t anticipate which articles are going to be the big influencers.

I’ve heard many bloggers say the same thing. “I pine for hours over an article and I get no response. And I throw something up in 20 minutes and people love it.”

The admissions director of my kid’s school, Spring Garden Waldorf, brings this up to me almost every time I see her.

One of her all time most engaged Facebook page posts is this:

It was a quick post she tossed up about an upcoming children’s festival. She shakes her head about it every time the topic comes up. Of all the really interesting, useful, “important” posts, this one gets the most engagement.

I’d like to say “because I’m the expert” it happened because of X,Y and Z. But I have no clue why people like what they like.

If I were going to pick some of the articles I thought would make the biggest impact, this would be my list:

4 Free Web Marketing Tips To Netflix

Journalism in 2011 – Information Wants To Be Free

Why You Should Never Use Google’s “Free” AdWords Service

How To Find 20 New GOOD Twitter People To Follow

SageRock SEO Pricing Guide Revealed

Let’s Skin This Social Media Link Building Cat

Google+ Resource Guide

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

These are the 10 most viewed articles for 2011:

 

Title	Views	Date	Author
Title Tag and Meta Description Length for Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask	28,094	AUGUST 5, 2009	GREG HABERMANN
Google Mobile Keyword Tool	1,447	MAY 21, 2009	JOE
WolframAlpha – Not a Google Killer	769	MAY 11, 2009	GREG HABERMANN
Google AdWords vs MSN adCenter – Comparison Chart	733	DECEMBER 8, 2010	GREG HABERMANN
You Can Find SEO at the Top of the Mountain if You Bring the SEO with You.	607	FEBRUARY 25, 2009	BRIAN
Product Listing Ads – Google’s PPC Christmas Gift	602	DECEMBER 6, 2010	GREG HABERMANN
Separate Twitter from Facebook	498	JULY 20, 2009	GREG HABERMANN
Google Adwords Preview Tool	410	MARCH 16, 2009	GREG HABERMANN
Why You Should Never Use Google’s “Free” AdWords Service	404	NOVEMBER 9, 2011	SAGE LEWIS
Google Search Query Report	403	JUNE 26, 2009	KATE FALCONER

The most viewed one, written by Greg, is 20x’s the amount of traffic of anything else on our site. It drives more traffic than the other 10 top pages combined. Maybe even closer to the 20 top pages, now that I look at it.

There are two particularly interesting pieces of information that jump out here to me:

1. Only one of those articles was written by me. That’s concerning to me simply because I’m now the primary writer of the blog. I don’t particularly care if I’m not the best writer (which I’m quite sure I’m not, in our group), I just want the best, most interesting content for our blog. If other people’s content is better than mine it makes me think that maybe I should be doing something else with my time and get one of these people to write the blog.
1. That said, most of these articles were written at a time when I wasn’t the primary writer. We were all writing for the blog. (Also Greg’s idea.) Maybe people enjoyed seeing the variety.
2. But why would they care about the variety now? It’s just an article in a sea of articles.
2. All of these articles, except for that last one were written before 2011! 7 of those 10 articles were written in 2009. Only one was written in 2011. That means that this blog has been years in the making.

I have three possible theories for why this has happened:

1. It takes time to build up links to an article. And then it takes time for those links to be given weight by Google. I think I might put on my calendar this time next year to compare these stats with the stats of 2012. If the winners of 2012 continue to be these articles then we can assume they are just better articles… or are better optimized for the search engines.
2. These are just, plain and simple, good articles. They resonated with the audience and continue to do so.
3. These articles were marketed well. I know, for example, that Brian had an in with a big design blog. He wrote a series of articles for them and they linked back to us. Greg also does a good job of posting his stuff to places like Digg and Stumble.

We might be able to gain some more knowledge if we take a step back.

Here is a list of the top 10 articles of all time:

Title	Views	Date	Author	On 2011 Top 10?
Title Tag and Meta Description Length for Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask	49,986	AUGUST 5, 2009	GREG HABERMANN	Yes
WolframAlpha – Not a Google Killer	4,679	MAY 11, 2009	GREG HABERMANN	Yes
Google Mobile Keyword Tool	3,356	MAY 21, 2009	JOE	Yes
FAVRD – Let Your Caged Bird Sing.. on Twitter	2,336	APRIL 14, 2009	GREG HABERMANN	No
You Can Find SEO at the Top of the Mountain if You Bring the SEO with You.	2,065	FEBRUARY 25, 2009	BRIAN	Yes
Increase Web Traffic: Part 1 of 4	1,853	MARCH 11, 2009	BRIAN	No
Google Adwords Preview Tool	1,302	MARCH 16, 2009	GREG HABERMANN	Yes
Separate Twitter from Facebook	1,265	JULY 20, 2009	GREG HABERMANN	Yes
Google Search Query Report	1,257	JUNE 26, 2009	KATE FALCONER	Yes
Increase Web Traffic: Part 2 of 4	1,128	APRIL 8, 2009	BRIAN	No

Every single one of those articles was written in 2009. And every single one of those was NOT written by me.

Why was 2009 such a good year for our blog posts? More people writing? More variety? But that shouldn’t matter in these stats. These articles continue to get traffic because of search traffic. But they are getting the search traffic because people linked to them.

I don’t know. (Don’t think you are going to get to the end of this article to find some big “ah ha!” moment. I don’t know why this is happening.)

And while we are slicing and dicing facts, here are all the users that have posted to the blog over time, including their total number of posts:

I have posted 10 times more than Greg. Yet he has been in the top 10 articles WAY more than me.

Looking at these numbers, I would say that he is, by far, the better writer, or better said, he is the writer people appreciate the most.

However, I am the “Long Tail” of this story. I actually still win in total traffic.

If you look at the total number of views of articles that I have written and Greg has written here are those stats:

• Sage: 188,140 views
• Greg: 119,748 views

I beat him on brute force.

Here are a couple bar graphs representing views and posts comparisons of Greg and me:

An aside:

So this has actually turned into an analysis that represents the fundamental role I play in the world.

As I look at the people in our business and my friends, I can’t think of one person who I would consider myself equal to on smarts, intuition, emotional intelligence. I consider all of them (every single one) more advanced than me.

If I were to let other people who are better than me do the work I would have nothing to do. I’m pretty sure I have someone around me who could do pretty much every single thing I do better than me.

The only reason I think they agree to hang around me at all is because I don’t quit. I am an endless wave of pressure. That’s my one and only gift.

So the mystery of this analysis is: If Greg wrote 256 articles for us would he be able to out do my total amount of 188,140 views. I would say that’s probably no mystery at all. Of course he would.

But Greg has many talents. And some of his talents surpass me so far that I shouldn’t be allowed to ever go near some of the things he does (Quickbooks, payroll, overall operations organization, etc.).

There are some areas that I’m trying to get him to let go so that he could do other things… like write here at the blog. But he is a methodical person and wants to make those transitions carefully and slowly (another skill I completely lack and can’t even really comprehend).

 Conclusion

While I can’t tell you why things are happening here, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can learn. This is what the data tells us:

• Who cares what people like. Give the people what they want. The longer you try to stuff a square peg into a round hole the longer you will make your life harder for yourself.
• Take a moment and look at the total page views of your site. See what people have liked the most from you and give them more of that.
• Appreciate the long tail. I am very comfortable in admitting I’m not as compelling as someone like Greg. But I also don’t totally suck. Don’t feel like you need to be a Pulitzer prize writer to put out a blog. Just Do It. It’s the “doing” and “trying” that will make you successful.
• Trust the stats – not what you “think” and “believe.” This drives me crazy. I see focus groups, committees and C-level executives making decisions completely in a vacuum. Don’t trust your intuition. Trust your stats. Test everything!
• I could go on and on about this one point (and maybe some day I will). But just because you are the “expert” and know your industry better than anyone doesn’t mean you know shit. In fact, you probably know less than most everyone else. Your perspective is myopic and warped. You actually should be the last person making any “executive” decisions on what your customers want. (Phew. I had to get that out. I feel better now.)
• People usually look at stats and then change things to get visitors to do more of what they want them to do… like increase conversion rates on a form. What if you looked at your stats as a public survey? “The visitors say they like this. Let’s give them more of that.” It’s a reverse view than the one we most often take. But it’s probably the view that will give us a better return ultimately.

There you have it: The Top 10 most viewed SageRock blog articles and what the stats mean to you. I’m excited to start digging into 2012.