A Year In Review: Search Engine Land’s Top 10 Columns Of 2015

While 2015 saw some significant and exciting new developments in search, marketers this year were seemingly less reactive and more proactive — a sign of a maturing industry. Rather than scrambling to adapt to the latest algorithm change or rushing to implement the newest trend, readers instead gravitated towards high-level thought pieces and detailed, tactical how-tos.

This is evident in the fact that many of the most popular columns in 2015 were focused on getting the fundamentals right. Where do I get started with local SEO? How can I build links in an ethical manner to avoid penalties? What’s the best way to manage my AdWords campaigns? How do I optimize video content on YouTube? These are all questions that were addressed by our top columns on Search Engine Land this year.

And despite 2015 arguably being the true “year of mobile” in search — we lived through Mobilegeddon and we saw mobile searches overtake desktop searches on Google — only one of the top 10 pieces dealt specifically with mobile search, and that was Emily Grossman’s piece on Apple Search and iOS app indexing. Indeed, app indexing became a hot topic this year as search engines began surfacing more and more app content within their search engine results pages.

The most widely read column on the site by far was Adam Audette’s piece on how Google handles JavaScript. Search marketers have long wondered to what extent the search engine can crawl this content, and Audette’s column (which summarized the findings of original research performed by Merkle | RKG) shed some light on this previously underexplored topic.

So, here you have them — Search Engine Land’s top 10 columns of 2015!

1. We Tested How Googlebot Crawls JavaScript And Here’s What We Learned by Adam Audette, published on 5/8/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 2498, Google+ 1357, LinkedIn 1092
2. 5 Essential SEO Techniques To Master In 2015 by Jim Yu, published on 1/27/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 921, Google+ 399, LinkedIn 614
3. 10 WordPress SEO Questions That Took Me 10 Years To Answer! by Trond Lyngbø, published on 2/12/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 1371, Google+ 526, LinkedIn 769
4. 5 Techniques To Safely Get Links In 2015 by Neil Patel, published on 2/20/15 in the Link Week Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 733, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 32
5. Local SEO: How To Rank Your Local Business by Matthew Barby, published on 4/22/15 in the Local Search Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 710, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 43
6. They Fooled Us All: Why Google May No Longer Announce Major Algorithm Updates by Nate Dame, published on 3/27/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 585, Google+ 317, LinkedIn 621
7. How Google Won The PR Battle Over SEO, And Why That’s A Good Thing by Nate Dame, published on 10/9/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 779, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 473
8. The Secret To AdWords Success, Told By A Former Googler by Frederick Vallaeys, published on 1/21/15 in the Paid Search Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 686, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 100
9. App Indexing & The New Frontier of SEO: Apple Search + iOS App Indexing by Emily Grossman, published on 7/6/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
   Social activity: Facebook 552, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 503
10. YouTube Ranking Factors: Getting Ranked In The Second Largest Search Engine by Tony Edward, published on 7/24/15 in the All Things SEO Column.
    Social activity: Facebook 1276, Google+ 0, LinkedIn 717

Methodology: Columns published in 2015 are ranked in order of pageviews measured by Google Analytics. Data includes all columns published through November 30, 2015. Social data provided by SharedCount.