I have a huge list of blogs I read daily, about 60-70 in total. Comes with the job, I guess. So today I decided to share some of the best ones with you (ours is a given). Of course, there is no need to read all of them, but some are just too important to ignore. Here is my Top 10 SEM Blogs list:
1. SEOBook - in my opinion, by far the best SEM blog out there. Very little news discussion and a lot of insightful analysis on PPC, SEO, affiliate marketing, branding, you name it. Too bad I still can’t convince Aaron to write for the magazine; he’s always so busy.
2. SEOmoz Blog - Rand Fishkin and his team run a superb blog. A lot of useful information and a great writing style.
3. Stuntdubl - Todd’s posts are always a great read and he manages to discuss the things that you won’t find on any other SEM blogs. And when I say “things”, I mean things that are very much relevant to your business.
4. Jim Boykin’s Blog - another very good blog. I find the information posted there extremely useful and fairly easy to digest, even for a novice.
5. Search Engine Roundtable - Barry is doing a phenomenal job, but I wish there was a bit less news and a bit more of his own analysis. Barry, you are a great SEM expert, why don’t you want to share what’s really going on in your head? 
6. Google Blogoscoped - Googleplex is the Hollywood of the search engine marketing industry. We all want to know what’s going on inside those walls. Philipp always has an inside scoop on what’s new at Google.
7. JenSense - too bad Jennifer’s posts are few and far in between. Every post is a pearl, especially if you are doing contextual advertising.
8. SEO by the SEA - some of the posts are a bit complex to digest but the information is great.
9. Matt Cutts - how can we have a list of top SEM blogs and not include Matt Cutts? There is a reason why everyone is listening to what Matt might say next…you should too.
10. John Battelle’s Searchblog - not as useful to the beginner/intermediate reader, but John knows his stuff so I would recommend reading his posts from time to time.
Yes, I know, I know. I haven’t included Search Engine Watch in my list. It’s not a mistake though. After Barry and Danny left, there wasn’t much posted on the blog. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to recover and start posting some interesting things again.
I also haven’t included Marketing Pilgrim. No hard feelings, Andy, but lately your posts have included nothing but links to news articles. I assume this is due to the lack of time but I would really like to see your opinion and some analysis.
Search Engine Land promises to be an interesting read, but so far Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz are not willing to posts anything but news.
I also left out a few other good blogs, but most of them discuss things of interest only to the small number of search engine marketers. For the business owner or the search engine advertiser these blogs are not very useful.
As you can see, the blogs on the list have a few things in common. For one, all of them concentrate on important issues (to the advertiser) and analyze them, instead of posting every time Google sneezes. Second, they discuss things that are relevant to the advertiser and not just ten or twenty other bloggers. And finally, the language and writing style used is easy to digest.
Posted on December 8, 2006
