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If you ask anyone what makes a blog popular, they’ll say content. No matter how many clever headlines tell you otherwise, content is still king. If your content does not offer value in one way or another, people will simply not visit your site. The two steps to building a successful and popular blog are simply: writing great content and having people talk about it.
Blog’s don’t grow on their own; they grow through people sharing them. By having people “talk about” your content, I simply mean people sharing your content. This could be via word of mouth, Twitter, Facebook, or even a link from their own blog. The latter example, surprisingly (or not) is what I’m going to look at today.
What are the most popular posts on the top blogs out there? What are they writing that gets people talking and linking to them? To answer that, I decided to study the most linked to blog posts on four of the most popular blogs in the world and analyse what made them so popular. Based on the findings here, you can apply the results to your own blogging ventures and produce the type of content that you know people respond to. After all, it’s been proven to work for these guys, so why shouldn’t it for you?
Problogger is the authority website when it comes to blogging, authored by Darren Rowse. Darren has been kind enough to let me write on his site multiple times so I decided to list him first here. With over 5,000 blog posts to choose from, I was curious to see exactly what those top posts were.
1. Blogging Tips for Beginners (Link)
This is a resource post which combines all of the top blog posts on Problogger which offer advice for beginner bloggers. Everyone was a beginner once, and with over 100 million blogs out there, this definitely has mass appeal.
2. How To Market Your Blog in 2007 (Link)
A great post that shows the number of ways you can promote your website over the coming year. Interestingly, this was a guest post by a Problogger reader.
3. Top 5 – Group Writing Project (Link)
One of the most linked to blog posts on Darren’s site happens to be a competition where he is giving away $1,001 to the winner. The idea was that people write a blog post around a “top 5” theme and they would be guaranteed to get a link from Darren himself. I’m sure a vast majority of people taking part also linked to the original post.
4. 10 Techniques to Get More Comments On Your Blog (Link)
As the title suggests, this is a list post that teaches people how to overcome a dilemma that most bloggers face at one point or another: how to get more comments.
5. 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog (Link)
Every blogger wants to gain subscribers but rarely do people look at the possibility of losing subscribers once they have them. This post provides a wealth of information for anyone to combat the issue.
Apart from being one of my favourite blogs, Copyblogger has established their authority via Brian Clark to tens of thousands of readers. Self defined as “copywriting tips for online marketing success” Copyblogger certainly delivers its promise with excellent content published on a regular basis.
1. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Forumlas That Work (Link)
Headlines are without a doubt the most important part of a blog post. Here, Brian shares tips to help you create headlines that people are naturally drawn t0.
2. How to Write Magnetic Headlines (Link)
Again, on the theme of helping people with the most important aspect of blogging, this “how to” guide from Copyblogger shares a list of the sites top posts on the subject collected in one place.
3. How to Attract Links and Increase Traffic (Link)
Yet another resource post of Copyblogger articles on a specific subject. This one looks at quite possibly the most important aspect to growing your blog: getting more links to your content and increasing traffic. The links here aren’t to other Copyblogger posts, however, but to posts by other posts across the web.
4. Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Copywriting (Link)
Another great resource by Brian, sharing his top tips on Copywriting. It is unsurprising that Copyblogger shares a resource on this topic, seeing as this is the theme of the site.
5. 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers (Link)
A great list topic on a subject that all bloggers want, more subscribers. Brian shares 10 simple but quick ways to do just that.
Guy’s blog, How to Change the World, is perhaps one of the longest running blogs I’ve come across. Guy gives his excellent, unique, and first-hand view on business life as a successful investor and entrepreneur.
1. The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint (Link)
After having sat through what is probably more presentations than anyone reading this combined, Guy shares his thoughts on how presentations should really be done.
2. 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn (Link)
LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks in the world and is focused around business networking. Guy put together this great post which shows different ways to use the service.
3. How to Use Twitter as a Twool (Link)
In December 08, Twitter was experiencing its first major growth surge as it started to attract people outside of the tech industry. Guy, with over 100,000 followers, shows how he uses Twitter as a tool to market his businesses.
4. How I Built a Web 2.0 Social Media Site for $12,107.09 (Link)
Guy shares a rare insight into how entrepreneurs build businesses online and in this case, his social voting website Truemors. It is great to see so much transparency and especially from someone in the spotlight as much as Guy.
5. The Art of the Start Video (Link)
Guy shares a long video which is his guide to entrepreneurship and building successful startups. This received a standing ovation in person, so was also received well online.
Authored by my friend Aaron Wall, SEO book is the top resource online about increasing your search engine rankings and getting more website traffic. Not only is Aaron an expert on the subject, but he is also a genuinely nice guy, allowing me to interview him for this website when I was only 16 years old.
1. 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity (Link)
It’s funny to see Brian Clark (Copyblogger) commenting on this excellent link building post by Aaron and Andy when, I assume, he was not a web celeb. This massive resource article shares excellent tips on how to build the most important factor in search engine rankings: backlinks.
2. The Bloggers Guide to SEO (Link)
Another massive article by Aaron and his Wife Giovanna gives bloggers tips on how they can improve the on-site optimisation of their blogs. Something like this was sorely missing for quite a while in my opinion.
3. New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding (Link)
Aaron goes in-depth on a new Google update showing a lot of figures and ranking reports since the changes. Aaron has been known for breaking content like this since writing about the Google Florida update back in 2003.
4. Track Google Adsense Clicks via Google Analytics (Link)
Here Aaron shares a handy way to find out which visitors are clicking on your ads. From there, you can try to increase the traffic from that source and thus earn more money via Google Adsense.
5. Search Engine Algorithm Comparison (Link)
Although this was written over three years ago, a lot of the advice is both useful today (if less relevant). Another monster guide from Aaron shows the differences between the top search engines and how they rank websites.
Hopefully with these 20 examples you have tons of ideas for blog posts in your industry. Although this took me hours to put together (and to find the most linked to blog posts) I believe there is more than enough value in this post to make up for it. Here are three things that really stood out for me while writing and researching this article:
1. Length Matters – What you say is far more important than how much you say, but length does matter (don’t worry, I won’t be putting penis englargement links here). The longest post had 9,334 words while the shortest only had 232. On average, however, the posts had 1,610 words.
I don’t know about you, but the majority of blogs I see don’t put 1,610 words worth of value into their posts. Maybe it’s time to start?
2. Resource Posts Get Links – This actually amazes me, but blog posts that just linked to other blog posts (on the same sites) managed to get thousands of links. Of course it helps if you have an established blog already, but I’m surprised other bloggers are linking to these pages. This is definitely something I’m going to incorporate into my own sites in the future.
3. Show How to Utilise Services – A good majority of these 20 posts were showing people how to utilise services — whether that was social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, or stats programs like Google Analytics. If you can teach people how to get the most out of a service, it seems like they are more than happy to talk about you.
Of course, it would be best to pick something relevant to your niche rather than just the examples posted here.
So, 2,250 words later, I’ll find out if this blogging analysis has helped me write blog posts that get links.
Amazing analysis Glen, you are providing real value here. I’ll take some time to study further these posts but thanks a lot for the time you took for your research. It helps!
Cheeers Oscar, you’re very welcome.
Thanks a lot for your comment, buddy!
Brilliant you are spot on. I personally don’t like nor do I read some of the blogs you posted because they are popular. I like finding obscure blogs by people that have something to say and not regurgitated content. Granted it may not be that way for most but for me well…Thanks for taking the time to share this analysis. If you ever want to post for us let me know 😉
Thanks Gabriella,
I’m sure these blogs aren’t for everyone, but there’s no doubt they often give very good advice.
Thank you for your comment!
Sweet, Glen! You gave me a quite a few ideas here that I’m going to try out.
We can always use more analysis of successful people who do what we want to do. And you did all the hard analyzing work here for us 🙂
(Btw, the link to “10 ways to use linked in” is broken. I had to google the article instead.)
Thanks for the heads up buddy, I’ll fix that now.
Hope it gets your creative juices flowing.
Thanks for this great analysis Glen, it never seizes to amaze me what kind of information you can find on the internet and this blogpost certainly is a little gem in that respect. Deeplinking within your own blog (or sneezing as Darren puts is) really does help get more views.
Getting an average of more than 1600 words will be my biggest challenge I think, I’m always for “the Tao of the short blogpost” As I put it on my blog or in other words: Make a statement, do it fast and get away with it. Although trends seem to be developing towards longer blogposts these days on almost all blogs I read. It’s seems bloggers are getting more skilled over time and write better, longer and most certainly “deeper” blogposts as time goes on. Going deeper into their their field of interest as their blogs mature.
Thanks again, this blogpost really is a great help
Hi Christiaan,
I don’t really think the trend is moving towards longer blog posts, I’m actually seeing the opposite. In the internet marketing field at least, I don’t see many articles that go over 500 words.
Seth Godin has over 290,000 subscribers to his blog and only writes a couple of hundred words here and there. So, there’s definitely an interest in short content so if that’s your thing, keep it up.
However, definitely the most linkable content out there tends to be information that is long and packed with value. Something I’m trying to bring back to the IM niche with this blog.
This is a well-researched and well-thought out piece! really great writing. It has really good tips for struggling bloggers. I look forward to more posts from you that I could actually use and implement. 😀
Thanks Mighty, really glad you enjoyed it.
Definitely more to come!
Hey Glen!
Totally awesome post, I agree that it is one of the best ones you’ve written 🙂 No lies!
I have so much that I can learn from this, going to start reading all these articles that you linked to here! Thanks so much 🙂
Cheers
D
Hey buddy,
Thanks, I really appreciate that. It’s nice to know the hard work pays off 😉
You’re welcome!
– Deej
What I notice about most of these posts is that they are ‘pillar’ content. By that I mean, that once written they can easily be referred back to and are easily ‘tagged’ by other blogs.
This is something I try to do on my own blog, as well. For example, I wrote a 4k word post on ‘negotiation’. Now, anytime I reference negotiation, I have a insanely value resource to link back to. In addition, that post makes it easy for others to link back in there content.
Find out what topics you are regularly talking about and concentrate on making a kick-ass post on it. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. 😉
Great job, Glen. Now to Retweet this with a su.pr link…
Great suggestion Baker,
I often refer to it as flagship / pillar content so definitely know what you’re talking about. Something I will be doing with this site soon is writing guides to the top sites like Twitter / Mixx etc so that when I reference them in a post, I will link to that guide.
I would rather you didn’t tweet if you’re going to do that 😉
– Glen
I might add being aware of trends in your industry and discussing those trends before others on a consistent basis. I noticed that upcoming trends are frequently out there for several years before they really break onto the scene, then everybody is trying to find information on the topic to write their own posts.
Definitely Frank, I think Aaron is a good example of someone who does that on a regular basis.
Thanks for your comment!
Insightful. I’m still amazed about how much link popularity is a key factor in notoriety. Coincidentally, I am running some sort of similar analysis, but not as technical as yours. Would love your opinion on it when it’s ready. Also, congrats for that subtle search engine hook about penis enlargement, these types of SEO optimizations must be learned in school ;-).
As for the length, I also appreciate blog posts which are full of content. The number of words doesn’t always mean good content, though 😉 I guess the point is to differentiate yourself from other posting platforms like twitter or posterous/tumbler when you’re usually posting just bits and pieces. I just checked my wordpress dashboard and found out that my average is 1550 words per post in the last month. Seems I’m on the right track here 🙂
Keep those posts coming. I love them 🙂
Hey man, sure. I would be happy to take a look
As far as words making good content, you’re absolutely right. As I say, it matters far more what you are writing, rather than how much.
Glad you liked it!
I simply have to put this link on my new writing blog under the topic, resourceful articles for authors. It’s not only for my readers, but also for me to dip back into regularly. This is such a fantastically helpful post. Thanks
That would be awesome Anne, thanks!
You’re very welcome.
The problem with these sites is that they all appeal to people who own or manage a blog or website and are capable of making links. It would be far more interesting to look at travel, sports, politics, or celebrity blogs to see how they get link.
Constantly referring to sites within the same niche really isn’t that instructive.
The thing about most of those is that they are simply news so to get links: break the news first.
I actually don’t think they would have differed much and would have made quite a boring analysis. Here there is a total variety of content, even if they are in a similar niche.
Invaluable post Glen! Any thoughts on blogs that are mostly picture based?
Thanks!
Do you have an example of some picture blogs that you know are popular?
I’ve got a good one… cribcandy.com
Funky new/old/concept stuff for your Crib.
I know that unusual pictures or things that are simply amazing tend to do well on Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. The reddit community seems to be a huge fan of images so you might want to try getting some leverage there.
The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever…
What are the most popular posts on the top blogs out there? What are they writing that gets people talking and linking to them? To answer that, I decided to study the most linked to blog posts on four of the most popular blogs in the world and analyse …
I learned some good stuff here and can see you spent a lot of time creating this post. I imagine it will end up on a top 10 someday! Like Gary, I would have found it helpful to see an analysis that included blogs in another niche as well as blogging or seo. I’m kind of a concrete thinker I guess but it would be interesting to me to see how the trends are similar across niches.
Point taken.
– Glen
Definitely some good tips and insights here. I see one flaw here. These are all essentially “How To” / “Tips and Tricks” types of blogs. By their very nature, they are supposed to be offering the keys to the kingdom.
They’re also not the top 3 blogs, which makes me question why you chose them except to promote friends who might link back to you and help promote your post.
I’d RATHER see you write a second post, but this time look at an industry not revolved around tips, tricks, or how to’s, and evaluate THEIR biggest baddest posts. When your audience isn’t coming to learn how to make their own blogs and websites gain more traffic, what tips are the best bloggers using?
We live in this bubble of Tips based blog communities that probably don’t make up the majority of blogs out there. How do people who talk about REAL human interest topics accomplish the same goals? That’s what I would love to read.
Hope you’re game. Would love to read and link to such an article.
The write content that people link too. That was simply what I wanted to highlight here.
Never was it mentioned they are the top 3 blogs. There’s actually 4, and I said they are part of the biggest blogs in the world (all are / have been in the Technorati Top 100).
Give me an example…
I mean that sincerely. I hope you’ll write it. You’ve got great research skills and an eye for details. I just want someone to break further out of the mold and use a different blog genre as case study fodder.
Sure, no problem.
I’m always open to criticism. Just give some examples and I’ll consider it…
Glen, thanks for the great insight! I was wondering what tools you used to analyze these popular blogs. I’d like to do some analysis of the top blogs in my niche.
Good question Monica, I’m surprised you’re the first to ask.
I did try Link Diagnosis (Free) but that was going to take over 3 hours and I’m not specifically sure it would give me what I was after. Instead, I used the SEOmoz Pro Tools and there is a tool for this in their labs feature. It simply showed me the most linked to blog posts and then I calculated the rest (links + words) manually.
I hope that helps
– Glen
Gapingvoid
Hugh is in a world of his own 😉
Hi Glen,
You had complied some great link bait articles over here. Learning from this successful example is definitely helpful for us to learn more about creating content that attract links. Great article!
Cheers,
Vincent
Hey Glen,
Thanks for this meaty post. This not only contains great information on important posts we might have missed but does a great job in laying out steps for bloggers to follow so they can emulate successful bloggers. Extremely helpful.
Appreciate it!
Take Care,
Jill
Great advice here Glen! As usual 😀 I will definitely hang on to this post and reference it.
This is an excellent analysis, thank you very much for posting! Our agency is in the early stages of launching its own blog, so I have passed this on to several others as a great reference.
With the similar post at seomoz we’re getting quite an interesting look at this topic.
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/what-makes-a-link-worthy-post-part-2
[…] The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever, ViperChill […]
Man this is mind-blowing. You are tearing it up with this site!
I have never thought content was king personally because there are too many average blogs with huge followings and vice versa.
Not totally surprised by your findings regarding what gets the heavy traffic, but it was still really fascinating to see the stats.
Thank you Tim, really great to see you here.
They may be mediocre to you, but show me a popular blog that has content people haven’t talked about. I actually don’t think that will be possible 😉
Glad you enjoyed it.
Brilliant stuff Glen. Already got a few insanely long articles in the works (that aren’t just fluff of course). Now I’m even more motivated to actually get them done. 🙂
Awesome buddy!
Be sure to tweet me a link once they’re live.
Nothing short of fantastic.
Bookmarked for future reference.
So I didn’t overhype then Brett? 😉
Wow Glen, you’ve once again given me much to sink my teeth into…can’t wait….And by the way, despite the fact that I’ve never been tech savvy, through the help of your ebook (Cloud Living) I set up my first blog on WordPress today, from start to finish, and even set it up using Thesis. It was literally like you were holding my hand, which was absolutely necessary in my case, but we got ‘er done;-)…thanks for writing a book an average Joe like me can understand.
Hey Marcus,
Good to hear. Really glad that you got your blog setup successfully as well! Congratulations buddy 🙂
– Glen
Hi Glen,
This is a great post pack filled with useful information. I have 4 blogs that I work on diligently to make both relevant and content driven. However, I am more creative than I am technical so I appreciate the tips on how to get my blogs appreciated.
At least now I can implement some of the strategies that you listed, check out your examples and make my blogs a success. I am now expired where I was previously worn.
Thanks again,
Andrea
Top notch analysis here Glen.
This will be one of those posts with thousands of links!
Sadly, people tend to ‘talk’ via their Twitter accounts these days, but the content necessary for them to do that is still the same 🙂
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much packed into one blog post. I’m supposed to go to a Rebarcamp (Real Estate) on blogging and social media. If I hadn’t paid $12 for the lunch I’d be tempted to stay home and work my way through all of the linked articles and be a lot smarter for it. Congratulations.
Great points, Glen. Nice to meet you man.
SEOMoz has had some fascinating posts up lately about some of their most popular articles. The conclusion there was that a healthy mixture of video/audio/images along with text tends to increase greatly the likelihood of getting lots of backlinks. I agree.
Would be good if you went back through the posts you listed here and reported on their use of multiple media formats.
Man, I think I’ve never done a post with over 700 words and thinking of doing it seems just to be impossible for me. Anyways, with this post MAYBE I could start looking into it and use it to my advantage as well.
Thanks for this post…
Oh my, I’ve got a lot to learn. You are so generous in sharing this valuable information for your reader, I think all the information one needs to success in blogging is compiled here. Thank you for this. 🙂
[…] The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever […]
Hey Glen!
That is excellent information … a completely new perspective on how to plan and organize your posts.
Interesting re the length of posts. Just yesterday I had a conversation with a Twitter expert. Her comment was that blogs tend to be too wordy and today’s internet residents only want sound bites. Hmmmm….. there are obviously a lot of different residents in the world of the internet.
Thanks for the insight. best…………valentina
Glen I believe that you are master blogger. As you said I have never seen a blogging analysis like this one. I am an aspiring blogger; I know some of the points which you mentioned and also gained vast knowledge after reading your blog post here. It is best source of information for the beginners who start blogging from scratch. I am very thankful to you for posting such nice information about blogging.
Yes this is definitely worthy of a link. This is a great post on blogging technique. How many words was this post?
Just over 2,000 🙂
This is a great post. I have just gone to all of these websites and added them to my Google reader. I know I am a bit behind the rest of the world but I have decided to try and keep up to date with some of the top bloggers out there. This is the longest winded post I think I have ever seen but thank you for the energy you put into it.
Ssammy
Just don’t forget to subscribe here 😉
Yes the 2000 plus words you typed out and researched here are great. Thanks for the thoughtful evaluation of the best linked blog posts.
Rick
I just made the decision to jump into Internet Marketing. I have a background in radio and writing copy. Now that radio is automated and satellite fed, our jobs are going away. I have discovered another source of good articles. It’s http://www.IMBYRick.com. He seems to have been at it a long time and has lot’s of good pointers on his site.
Wow–really insightful! I especially like the “lesson” you’ve listed for each post, and the summary at the end. You can bet I’ll be back for further study.
(Found you via ProBlogger, btw. Darren just sent out a tweet. Very glad I clicked the link!)
thank-you for this excellent AND informative post! i’m new to blogging and i am going to thoroughly investigate all links and tips.
[…] improves your chances of getting good links, but how do you come up with good ideas? Of course, analyzing success stories is a good starting strategy, and from their on, it’s basically just thinking […]
[…] The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever By Glen […]
[…] how to get your blogs read. But this is one of the best articles on that subject I have read yet: The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever. The title seems like a bit of hubris until you actually dig into the article. Exaggerated for […]
[…] this post on how I rank for 66,000 visitors worth of keywords on Google and the lessons behind the most popular blog posts (in terms of links) on some big blogs. That second post went down very well, so I’ve decided […]
Problogger is tops. There is so much useful information and he has a new post a least once or twice a day. Almost too overwhelming. Definitely deserves all the awards he receives.
Simply OUTSTANDING post. Thanks for keeping up the great work, Glen.
Great post Glen. This analysis on creating great blog posts has given me some ideas to play with.
[…] also highly recommend you read The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever to get an understanding of what content goes hot online, and what your audience is looking to […]
Wow, awesome post. The lessons you got are helpful to me, too. I need to bookmark this post to read and think carefully about all things. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and analysis.
This is actually good information, many thanks.
Hi Glen,
I read this post and though “good links to valuable blogging advices, but not that interesting for me though” (at least currently).
I started to read another post and asked myself: Why is this post so popular? When I came across the answer, I had to smile: It’s a resource post on its own! And as you found out, people tend to like them. *g
Just saw a mistake: It’s “Danke” in german, not “Dankie”.
It’s Afrikaans 😉
Awesome Glen, not only are these great ideas, only two of these sites I’ve actually visited.
The link for guy’s site doesn’t work. The twitter twool one.
Nevermind, it works. I just disconnected shortly
incredible post, looking forward to reading more.
they’re valuable as it takes time, effort and energy to compile such content.
thank you!
now, a quick question:
I’m not sure how did you come up with the links count as featured next to each case study? are these “outbound” links, how did you count them? 🙂
I think your article demonstrates another important point – writing about a topic and then using outbound links to authority sites – builds the authority of the post itself to readers and greatly enhances the search engine ranking.
Wow thanks glen for such a detailed outline of the recommended number of words – Hadn’t heard of these sites until now and after further inspection – they look great!
Brilliant post Glen. It’s going to be worth taking a coupleof days locked in the office to follow all the links. Hope the brain can take the imput.
Thanks.
D
An awesome post,i love this site ,will visiting it regularly…
Yup, length matters and its does not really mean long words but long epic words that has meaning.
Sheyi
Completely agree, and I should say there has to be a balance between the quality of the post and the length. % sentences are better than 2000 words that are meant just for stuffing.
Great ideas and links! I have hours and hours of reading ahead of me haha I’ve literally spent the past 3 days just reading articles on here.
Hi, all is going fine here and ofcourse every one is sharing facts, that’s genuinely good,
keep up writing.