Happy Friday and End-of-November, folks! Putting this post together, I started to write about Christmas creep and ask if people are being bombarded with elves and ornaments yet, but then I had the eerie sensation that I had already written that – last year, when I wrapped up our best of November. But I was wrong. I actually wrote about that two years ago. On November 30, 2010:
Do you hear sleigh bells ring-a-ling, ding-ding-ding-a-ling too? Thanksgiving has come and gone, which means it's officially open season Christmas season in the eyes of the American advertising industry. Prepare yourself for the Xmas onslaught! (I once had "Here We Go A-Wassailing" stuck in my head for like three years. No joke.)
Good to know I’m still original. So what was our #1 post of November that year? It was “Real Life Link Building: Three Real Relationships You Can Turn Into Virtual Votes” by Tom Demers. And in 2011, November’s most popular post was “How Does the AdWords Auction Work?” (a handy visual guide to the AdWords system). I’m happy to see that both of these posts are still valuable. Evergreen content FTW!
Fast-forward to this year. Here are our top blog posts from the past 30 days:
- Who Will Win the Election Tomorrow? Obama by a Landslide*!– Larry predicted, based on a comparison of social media engagement metrics, that Obama would take the election – and he was right! Check out how he did it.
- How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps– I can’t say it works 100% of the time, but we’ve found a repeatable process for ranking on keywords with SEO content, and this is it.
- New Google SERP Changes Make Ads More Prominent than Ever– Earlier this month, Google shifted the search toolbar to the top of the screen, making the Knowledge Graph and ads more prominent.
- Psy Defeats Bieber: “Gangnam Style” Takes Best in Show for Most Viral Video of All Time!– Larry is a bit of a Psy fanatic, so he was right on top of the news when “Gangnam Style” surpassed Bieber’s “Baby” to become the most viewed YouTube video of all time. Check out this fun infographic about how it unfolded.
- How to Find Long-Tail Keywords: 9 Ways to Discover Long-Tail Terms– Go beyond Google’s keyword tool – here a bunch of other ways to find highly targeted long-tail terms for your marketing efforts.
- The Best Tweets of All Time: Our List of the Most Important, Record-Breaking Tweets Ever– Meg put together this great list of notable tweets, including celebrity tweets, news-related tweets and more.
- A Beginner's Guide to Content Strategy for the Web: 10 Things You Need to Know– Andre Van Kets, co-founder of Discover Africa Group, wrote this guest post on the 10 elements of content strategy, based on the recent Content Strategy Forum in Cape Town.
- Blog Management for Small Businesses: The Ultimate Guide– Learn six steps to strategizing, implementing, and maintaining an effective blog in this comprehensive management guide for SMBs.
- YouTube Advertising: How to Advertise in YouTube Videos– If YouTube was a search engine, it would be the #2 largest, nearly twice as big as Bing and Yahoo search combined. Learn how to take advantage of this untapped advertising opportunity with YouTube ads.
See you next week!
Image: "CHRISTMAS TIME!!!" via Luz Adriana Villa A.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.