Most Popular Blogging Topics: The Wafflesatnoon.com Top 10

Below is a list of the Top 10 most popular articles on Wafflesatnoon.com over the past 6 months – from October 2011 through April 2012. Reviewing this list can provide us some insight to the most sought-after blogging topics, at least from our perspective. Keep in mind that the top article received 10 times the views that the #10 article received.  Let’s first take a look at the list itself, with annotations.

10. Stansberry Research Video: An Advertising Perspective posted 10/25/2011
This article was written after seeing the Stansberry Research ad at the end of 2011. Apparently quite a few people wanted to know more about this video, too, and found my blog entry in hopes of determining if it is legitimate or not.

9. Signs You Live With A Meth User posted 4/8/2008
This is one of two articles from 2008 in the Waffles Top 10. This is a candid testimony aimed at reaching out to others who have had a similar experience. Those who found this article were obviously driven to find answers to a sensitive topic. These readers spend more time on the site than almost any other.

8. Man Standing on Baby Photo: Abuse or Just Bizarre? posted 10/27/2011
After seeing this strange photo floating around on Facebook, we decided to research the photo via reverse image searches to see if it was being accurately depicted. Many Facebook users also sought answers regarding this photo and found this post.

Blogging topics that answer a question have performed best here at WafflesatNoon.com.

7. Michael Jackson Dead Body Gurney Photo posted 9/28/2011
When the Conrad Murray trial saw the release of Michael Jackson’s autopsy photos, the internet was flooded with searches to see them. We were the first to offer a large image of the photo and the hits poured in for several weeks, and still trickle in to this day.

6. Parrot the Dog DC Police Incident: Not Related to Occupy Movement posted 11/3/2011
As the Occupy Wall Street movement heated up, the story of a dog killed by police in Washington DC circulated, inaccurately attributing to to an Occupy event. Many people wanted answers regarding the highly-shared dog story, and we delivered.

5. If Your Zune Won’t Turn On posted 3/31/2008
This article dates from the very first month that WafflesatNoon.com existed, and remains one of the most popular on a daily basis. This article was written based on a personal experience in hopes of helping others who had problems with their Zune not turning on. Because Zune is more of a niche product than iPod, this article has become a mainstay in Google results.

4. Find the Cat in the Garbage Facebook Picture Revealed posted 11/22/2011
A very popular “find the cat” photo on Facebook provided an unusually tough challenge, and people found our article while seeking the solution to the photo.

3. Nigerian Christians Burnt Alive Photo: Hate Mongering Fake posted 10/16/2011
This highly-controversial, and inaccurate, story circulated on Facebook at the end of 2011. Our research answered many questions that were sought out via Google searches.

2. Investigating the Hanging Puppy Photo posted 10/4/2011
The photo of two men holding up a puppy sparked outrage, and we delved into an in-depth dissertation on the photo’s history and every shred of evidence we could find. People turned to Google to see if the photo was real, and if the story had been resolved. We went the extra mile in attempting to sort out conflicting information.

1. Seeing Unwanted Text Enhance Ads? posted 10/5/2011
This malware, known as Text Enhance, has plagued internet users for months. When this writer first noticed it, there were no articles on how to remove it. After figuring out some methods to get rid of it, an article was born, and tens of thousands of Googlers have stumbled across it in hopes of eliminating the problem themselves.

So what does all of this teach us?

There are two lessons to be learned from the list above. People want answers, and freshness counts. It’s quite clear that the most popular blog entries, at least from the Waffles perspective, are those that answer a question. Unless you have the weapons to compete against the big guns, answering questions on a smaller level are bound to be your bread and butter, especially if you have a niche. Also apparent is that the “freshness” factor plays a role. Aside from the two 2008 articles, the rest of the Top 10 are articles that were written in the past 7 months. Events fade into the past, and posts fade out of the Google rankings.

What hasn’t worked
While there have been quite a few articles posted on this site, the ones that didn’t answer a question never achieved the popularity of those on the list above. Why is that? Unless you’re a respected expert, or run a popular blog on a topic, your opinion-based blog will probably have limited appeal. Politics and news blogs have stiff competition from the major news sources, and the articles we wrote in that category were rather low in traffic. Blogs about blogging are also fine, except that there are already thousands of them out there, dominated by some towering figures in the blogosphere.

During the past 6 months, we’ve done more than just “answer a question” posts. There have been politics, opinion, reviews, and much more. Those blog entries which seek to answer a specific question clearly perform best in the WafflesatNoon universe.

In the next six months we’ll post another article reviewing what articles have done the best in that time. While it’s impossible to know now what that list will show, one can guess that many of the articles in the list above will still be there.

The bottom line is that constantly adding fresh, original content which answers a question has been our proven method to achieving optimal traffic via Google. That’s not to say that we won’t still post whatever we damn well please… but when it comes to posting our next article, finding a sought-after question to answer is our first choice.

Read more of our blog posts about blogging here.