A Year in Review: The Most Popular Articles of 2016

December 27, 2016 — In many ways 2016 was one of the craziest years we can remember. Fortunately Topretirements’ 10th year was interesting, but not full of upheaval. As an annual tradition we like to see which articles grabbed the attention of the Topretirements.com community during the year. As always, there are at least a few surprise articles that generate more readership and Comments than we expected. Here is our annual review of the best of Topretirements for 2016.

We Do Appreciate
This seems to be a great time to note our appreciation to the Topretirements community. So many of you read our articles, take the time to post Comments to Blog articles, suggest new topics to cover – thank you. Special thanks to our loyal advertisers who make this site possible. Many have been with us almost since our beginnings in 2007 – thank you for your support of this vibrant online community.

Overall
So far in 2016 Topretirements had over 1.8 million visitors – not bad! You looked at over 5 million of pages. How you access the site is definitely changing – although desktop users still predominate (54% of visits), the switch to mobile and tablet viewing continues. The new #2 type of device used is mobile (23% of visits), which makes us happy that we completed our new mobile-friendly version of the site this year. Tablets are close behind in terms of use.

Most viewed pages overall
Other than the Home page, the #1 page viewed at Topretirements is our Florida Directory, which was opened up almost 100,000 times during the year. This pages lists all of the Florida towns we have reviewed (105), plus all of the active adult and 55+ communities in the our Sunshine State database (about 500).

The Florida Retirement Guide was next, followed by the Arizona 55+ Community Directory.

The most read city review page was the one for Green Valley, Arizona. Sarasota, Florida was in second place.

The most read active adult or 55+ community review for 2016 was The Villages in Florida, the giant community in Central Florida.

Most Read Articles of 2016
The most read article of the year was no surprise –
our annual 100 Best Places to Retire feature almost always leads the hit parade.

Articles from Previous Years
1. The most popular article of all time on this site is our piece on the “100 Best Places to Retire“.

2. 11 Affordable Places to Retire on the Waterfront This feature from 2010 continues to get read over and over again, mainly because the topic has great appeal and many outside sites link to it.

3. Worst States for Retirement 2014. Lots and lots of people are interested in finding out where they shouldn’t retire, which is the reason why this one is so popular. We plan on updating this article in 2017, since some of the states have shifted around.

Most commented upon articles
The features that generate the most comments are in our view the most successful ones, because they clearly bring up subjects you folks want to discuss. These are the most commented upon articles of 2016:
1. 10 Small Cities Perfect for Your Retirement 199 Comments.

2. These States Want You to Retire There. 105 comments.

3. Survey Results Show Our Members Will Retire Out Of State-and-More 83 comments.

4. 10 Very Friendly Places for Retirement 79 comments

5. 3 More Retirement Planning Case Studies: Vic, Karen and George 66 comments. Part of a 3 part series, this was a reader suggested topic from Robert M.

Best Member Generated Articles
Every year we are delighted by at least a couple of reader generated articles or ideas for articles.

Judith Reports Back: Her 2 Week Tour of South Carolina

Why Not Live in a Pocket Neighborhood. The idea for this article was a great suggestion from 2 different members, huntley61 and janeAnn.

Member Case Studies series

Editor’s Picks
We think these are articles were worth an encore:

Living the Adventurous Mobile Lifestyle by Betty Fitterman The 5 part series was originally in our Tips and Picks section, but we moved it over to the Blog so that readers could generate Comments.

New Changes to Social Security Upend File and Suspend Strategies. This article announced a game changer from the SSA.

For further reading:
Best Articles of 2014
The Best of 2015 – From Best Places to Funky Towns in Florida

Comments. Do you a personal favorite article that you enjoyed or found particularly useful? If so, please let us all know in the Comments section below. And please, if you have an idea for an topic we should cover in 2017 – please let use this section to let us know.