Eight Great Search Marketing Blogs
I have been reading and writing personal and contributing to community blogs since 2001, but only started reading industry and business-related blogs at the beginning of 2006. I am afraid I missed a lot while reading posts of friends to do lists and late night relationship rants. Now I read blogs with a purpose not to kill time or contribute to the never satisfied vacuum of human interest, but to learn. I don't read personal blogs much anymore, or entertainment blogs; I read Internet and search engine marketing blogs. Below are eight of my favorite industry blogs, a little about what each talks about, and why I like them. Traffick - Search Engine Enlightenment by Andrew Goodman Goodman wrote Winning Results with Google AdWords, and has been the only author's blog I have not been disappointed with after being referred by his/her book (including an author who wrote a book about blogging). He was one of the first ppc gurus, but he doesn't give away any secrets on his blog. He does cover the most important AdWords news breaks, general direct marketing news, company acquisitions, and cool marketing and web study results. I relate to his blog because his writing style is long winded and tries to sound educated (which he is). Search Engine Journal with editor Loren Baker Loren Baker, SEJ editor, now has a team of regular staff authors as well as reader post contributions (if deemed worthy). Although many of his writers post on many different topics, the undying theme, and what Baker focuses mostly on is being a news tiperster. He releases incredibly fresh news about new and innovative online companies coming to the market, Google search, and ppc observations. This blog reports in a very journalist style; always using quotes and keeping opinions to a minimum. Baker must read 100 rss feeds a day, but weeds through and reports only the most interesting. I have to read this blog, or I feel like I will miss something important. Jim Boykin's Blog Jim Boykin is the quirky CEO of webuildpages.com, a web development and SEO company out of New York State. He seems to be very up to date on the latest understandings of SEO, from all the conferences he attends, and is very generous with giving content and linking ideas. He is sort of a random character; he calls his SEO staff “link ninjas and his personal tag line is I'm feeling lucky.He definitely has a passion for SEO and even writes songs about it. I feel LevelTen can relate to this blog because our companies are about the same size. Stuntdubl by Todd Malicoat This guy is only a little older than me and used to work for Jim Boykin. He has some great ideas on Reputation Management, speaks at seminars, and is a Google AdWords Qualified Individual. Malicoat truly enjoys Internet Marketing and talks much about its collective players and culture surrounding it on his blog. SEOmoz's Blog authored by everyone in the company Over the last two years SEOmoz, lead by Rand Fiskin, has become the de facto of industry blogs to read. On his blog he teaches SEO basics, hypothesizes, tests and publishes the results, as well as maps out SEO with multi-level hierarchy of importance factors based on guru opinion and experience. He does not portray the knowledge of SEO as voodoo magic, as some companies would like clients to believe. His willingness to explain many of the most important concepts in an easily digestible language has positioned the company as experts and propelled it to massive success. His company is small employee-wise, but has a waiting list of fortune 500 clients. Plentyoffish.com's Blog by CEO Markus Frind This is somewhat of a fun blog because of the size of the author's ego. He is the sole employee of the largest free dating site on the Internet, gets countless interviews and makes over a million dollars a year from AdSense on the site. He mostly talks about the latest interviews he has participated in or how his competitors (match.com, true.com, eharmony.com, okcupid.com) are inferior for one reason or another. He always backs everything up with numbers, which makes it all the more entertaining. Matt Cutts' Blog, a Google employee Matt Cutts has worked for Google since 2000, and advertising a blog from within the Googleplex was one of Google's first attempts to be more communicative with the audience that cares the most about it. I mostly look to his blog not for how to do SEO, but what not to do. He makes that abundantly clear. I am also able to get Google search, indexing, and SPAM news straight from the horse's mouth. Aaron Wall's Blog Aaron's blog was the first blog I ran across when I first started studying SEO. Come to find out, he wrote the book on it, literally. I'm amazed at how entrenched he is in the industry lingo, and how people new to SEO might have a hard time at first fully understanding his posts that he posts in a matter-of fact way. I guess he knows his audience. He writes thought provoking rhetorical pieces, makes predictions, and comments on certain hypocritical actions by different search companies from time to time. His book outshines his blog. Nonetheless, when the topic of SEO is brought up, Aaron Wall and Seobook soon follow. There you have it folks, eight great search marketing blogs. Who's on your blog role?
