The Social Side Of Search Engine Land: Our Top 25 Most Shared Stories Of 2014

Well, dear readers, here we are! The last day of 2014 has arrived, and in a few short hours (depending on your timezone), the New Year will unfold before us.

Whether you’ve been following along with our news stories for the past 12 months or quickly brought yourself up to speed with our ongoing Most Popular Stories series here on Search Engine Land, you’ve no doubt noticed that this year has been a pretty eventful one for our industry. (Understatement of the century?)

Over the past few days, we’ve explored the year’s most popular SEO evolutions, paid search articles, link building lessons, and everything in between. Now, however, we want to shift the focus a bit, zoom out to a bigger picture, and head over to the social side of things.

A fascinating takeaway from our SMX conference series this year was the concept of a hierarchy of social engagement. Within this hierarchy, likes and favorites are treated as “pretty cool,” comments are considered better, and shares are regarded as a supreme achievement.

Put simply, shares are where it’s at. More than likes and comments, they serve to validate that the content you’ve created is worth something, so much so that people feel compelled to, well, share it with their personal circle of contacts. That’s amazing.

So, across the invaluable cornerstones of our work and our professional lives — SEO, SEM, links, etc. — which stories did you, our readers, share the most?

Let’s find out…

Search Engine Land’s Most Shared Stories Of 2014

1. It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results by Eric Enge. Published on 8/28/14. 13.6K shares across all platforms.
2. Google Releases Penguin 3.0 — First Penguin Update In Over A Year by Barry Schwartz. Published on 10/19/14. 9.1K social shares across all platforms.
3. Experiment Shows Up To 60% Of “Direct” Traffic Is Actually Organic Search by Gene McKenna. Published on 5/8/14. 5.3K shares across all platforms.
4. Facebook Search Finally Lets You Search For Posts Again by Martin Beck. Published on 12/8/14. 4.5K social shares across all platforms.
5. Google Analytics Rolls Out New Tag Manager Tools by Amy Gesenhues. Published on 10/15/14. 4.4K social shares across all platforms.
6. Google Starts Giving A Ranking Boost To Secure HTTPS/SSL Sites by Barry Schwartz. Published on 8/7/14. 4K social shares across all platforms.
7. How To Write A Meta Description That Gets Click-Throughs by Neil Patel. Published on 11/26/14. 3.7K social shares across all platforms.
8. How To Win At SEO & Content Marketing In 2015 by Nate Dame. Published on 11/7/14. 3.6K social shares across all platforms.
9. 37 Awesome Tools To Get The Most From Your SEO Campaigns by Matthew Barby. Published on 11/5/14. 3.1K shares across all platforms.
10. Pinterest SEO: 7 Tips From A Pinterest Engineer [#SMX] by Martin Beck. Published on 10/3/14. 2.8K social shares across all platforms.
11. Google Keyword Planner Now Shows Conversion Estimates by Ginny Marvin. Published on 11/20/14. 2.7K social shares across all platforms.
12. Google Says Penguin To Shift To “Continuous Updates” by Barry Schwartz. Published on 12/20/14. 2.7K social shares across all platforms.
13. Was Your Site Hit By Google’s Panda Or Penguin? This Flowchart May Help You Find Out. by Janet Driscoll Miller. Published on 12/4/14. 2.5K social shares across all platforms.
14. Facebook Launches New Places Directory by Greg Sterling. Published 11/12/14. 2.5K social shares across all platforms.
15. Facebook Drops Bing From Facebook Search Results by Martin Beck. Published on 12/12/14. 2.5K social shares across all platforms.
16. Learning SEO From Google Employees by Chris Marentis. Published on 11/24/14. 2.5K social shares across all platforms.
17. 4 Easy & Honest SEO Mistakes That Could Penalize Your Site by Neil Patel. Published on 11/14/14. 2.4K social shares across all platforms.
18. Advanced SEO Experiments: Google’s Title Tag Changes by Tom Schmitz. Published on 4/25/14. 2.4K shares across all platforms.
19. These 10 Analytics Reports Will Improve Your AdWords Results by Frederick Vallaeys. Published on 8/13/14. 2.3K shares across all platforms.
20. Simple Tips To Set The Stage For Local SEO In 2015 by Greg Gifford. Published on 11/10/14. 2.3K social shares across all platforms.
21. The 4 Hardest Parts Of SEO by Eric Enge. Published on 12/8/14. 2.3K social shares across all platforms.
22. Google Analytics Begins To Roll Out New Benchmark Reports by Amy Gesenhues. Published on 9/10/14. 2.2K social shares across all platforms.
23. Google Penguin 3.0: Worldwide Rollout Still In Process, Impacting 1% Of English Queries by Barry Schwartz. Published on 10/21/14. 2.2K social shares across all platforms.
24. The Decade Is Half-Over: Where SEO Has Been & Where It’s Going by Tom Schmitz. Published on 12/5/14. 2.1K social shares across all platforms.
25. 4 Revealing Facts About How Consumers Search And Buy Online by Nathan Safran. Published on 4/3/14. 2K social shares across all platforms.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Methodology: For this roundup, we used Social Crawlytics, a free tool that analyzes each URL of a site to show how it’s been shared across top social sites. It’s a super useful tool to capture social plugin data and illuminate how  content resonates socially.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Lauren Donovan

Lauren Donovan has worked in online marketing since 2006, specializing in organic social media, cradle-to-grave community management, search and social creative, real-time journalism, holistic social befriending, as well as content aggregation, creation, and strategic syndication. She currently serves as Community Editor for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. You can find her on Twitter @beebow.