My Popular Posts

September 22nd, 2013

This summer I spent too much time working on my website. I spent a lot of time revising my WordPress theme, appeasing the Googlebot, adding structured meta data, improving social network integration, revising text, deleting crap, and for what? I don’t even want to be popular. It seems popularity is equated with success, especially online. Popularity is not synonymous with Quality, and it certainly isn’t synonymous with Success.

I’d like to think all my time wasn’t completely wasted. I’d like to think I improved the quality of my blog, of my website. I’m not sure Googlebot will love everything I’ve done, but sometimes you have to make decisions that please people not Googlebot. Sometimes you have to make decisions that you can live with, that let you sleep at night knowing you tried your best, knowing you told the truth.

Anyway here are the top 10 blog posts according to Google Analytics for the most recent 30 day period:

Over 9 years later I reviewed which blog posts were still popular and the top three listed here, remained the top three most popular posts I’ve ever published. So apparently most of the time I’ve spent on this blog and website in the last 9 years did not generate a positive

There is more than one way to measure popularity, which 30 day period you choose in Google Analytics will definitely alter the list, but certain posts have proven popular, basically anything where I give advice and study materials for the CFA exam and any post where I include a picture of an asian woman, especially fit attractive asian women proves popular with real people and the Googlebot.

I also looked into what posts were popular on social networks. I really only looked at Facebook and Twitter as they are the two social networks I and my friends probably use the most. I definitely prefer Twitter, but this rainy Sunday I spent a lot of time on Pinterest and I reworked my homepage to include my pins.

So what is popular on Facebook, the various CFA posts got a number of shares, but the number one most shared blog post ever on Muskblog is the man whose arms exploded, which is a short post I dashed off after seeing a documentary on Greg Valentino on TLC. I also included this picture, I found in a forum. Pictures in WordPress are very important, pictures are also important on Facebook and in Google search results, that is one of the reasons I’ve switched to using featured images on my blog.

My most shared post on Twitter very much reflects how many times I personally retweeted one post as I was upset at some people who were spamming #quotation.

I’ve started actually using Google+ which amazingly some claimed is the best social network to use, at least if you want to improve your search results in Google. I also plan to continue to edit old posts so that they have featured images. My increased usage of structured meta data may also affect my search engine rankings, especially for content shared on social media. I think I missed my best opportunities to be famous or popular, but what can I say I was very sick, now I’ve learned my lesson some people are just not trustworthy.

This entry was originaly posted on September 22nd, 2013, it was last edited on January 5th, 2022 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Google Analytics, Popularity, Top 10.