Thursday, April 16, 2015

2015 The Web Shown in Numbers!

Are you curious as to what happened in 2010 on the Web, well you have come to the right place as Pingdom recently released some stats from a large set of different sources and I am going to also share those here for your viewing pleasure.



Here we go.....


Email

* 607 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2015.
* 994 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
* 480 million – New email users since the year before.
* 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
* 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
* 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.
* 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate.

Websites

* 855 million – The number of websites as of December 2015.
* 81.4 million – Added websites in 2015.

Web Servers

* 39.1% – Growth in the number of Apache websites in 2010.
* 15.3% – Growth in the number of IIS websites in 2010.
* 4.1% – Growth in the number of nginx websites in 2010.
* 5.8% – Growth in the number of Google GWS websites in 2010.
* 55.7% – Growth in the number of Lighttpd websites in 2010.


Domain Names

* 88.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2010.
* 13.2 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2010.
* 8.6 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2010.
* 79.2 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2010).
* 7% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet Users

* 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
* 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 825.1 million – Internet users in Asia.
* 475.1 million – Internet users in Europe.
* 266.2 million – Internet users in North America.
* 204.7 million – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 110.9 million – Internet users in Africa.
* 63.2 million – Internet users in the Middle East.
* 21.3 million – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.


Social Media
* 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
* 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
* 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
* 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
* 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
* 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
* 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
* 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
* 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.

Web Browsers


Videos

* 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
* 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
* 186 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
* 84% – Share of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
* 14% – Share of Internet users that have uploaded videos online (USA).
* 2+ billion – The number of videos watched per month on Facebook.
* 20 million – Videos uploaded to Facebook per month.

Images

* 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
* 3000+ – Photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.
* 130 million – At the above rate, the number of photos uploaded per month to Flickr.
* 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.
* 36 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.


Data sources and notes: Spam percentage from MessageLabs (PDF). Email user numbers and counts from Radicati Group (the number of sent emails was their prediction for 2010, so it’s very much an estimate). Website numbers from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user numbers and distribution from Internet World Stats. Facebook stats from Facebook and Business Insider. Twitter stats from Twitter (and here), TwitterCounter and TechCrunch. Web browser stats from StatCounter. YouTube video numbers from Google. Facebook video numbers from GigaOM. US online video stats from Comscore and the Pew Research Center. Flickr image numbers from Flickr.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

SEO strategy for every website

As a marketing strategy

SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective like paid advertising through pay per click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals.[48] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting upanalytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[49]
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[50] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's placement, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[51] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[52]

International markets

Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[53] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[54] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[55] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[55] As of June 2008, the marketshare of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[56] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.
As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable example markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the Czech Republic where respectively BaiduYahoo! JapanNaverYandex andSeznam are market leaders.
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[55]

Legal precedents

On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[57][58]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. Kinderstart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.

SEO techniques

White hat versus black hat techniques

SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[42] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[43]
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[31][32][44] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[45] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between black hat and white hat approaches where the methods employed avoid the site being penalised however do not act in producing the best content for users, rather entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMWGermany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[46] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.

Seo Methods

Methods

Getting indexed

Search engines use complex mathematical algorithms to guess which websites a user seeks. In this diagram, if each bubble represents a web site, programs sometimes calledspiders examine which sites link to which other sites, with arrows representing these links. Websites getting more inbound links, or stronger links, are presumed to be more important and what the user is searching for. In this example, since website B is the recipient of numerous inbound links, it ranks more highly in a web search. And the links "carry through", such that website C, even though it only has one inbound link, has an inbound link from a highly popular site (B) while site E does not. Note: percentages are rounded.
The leading search engines, such as GoogleBing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ both require manual submission and human editorial review.[34] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links.[35] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed crawling for a cost per click;[36]this was discontinued in 2009.[37]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[38]

Preventing crawling

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[39]

Increasing prominence

A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to most important pages may improve its visibility.[40] Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic.[40] Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's meta data, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the canonical link element[41] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the url all count towards the page's link popularity score.

Seo Method

Search engines use complex mathematical algorithms to

 guess which websites a user seeks. In this diagram, if 

each bubble represents a web site, programs 

sometimes 


calledspiders examine which sites link to which other 

sites, with arrows representing these links. Websites 

getting more inbound links, or stronger links, are 

presumed to be more important and what the user is 

searching for. In this example, since website B is the 

recipient of numerous inbound links, it ranks more 

highly in a web search. And the links "carry through", 

such that website C, even though it only has one 

inbound link, has an inbound link from a highly popular 

site (B) while site E does not. Note: percentages are 

rounded.

SEO Relationship with search engines

By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[26]
In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web was created to bring together practitioners and researchers concerned with search engine optimisation and related topics.[27]
Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company,Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[28] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[29] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[30]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.[31][32] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[33] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the crawl rate, and track the web pages index status.

SEO History

History

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[2] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.[3] On May 2, 2007,[4] Jason Gambert attempted to trademark the term SEO by convincing the Trademark Office in Arizona[5] that SEO is a "process" involving manipulation of keywords, and not a "marketing service." The reviewing attorney basically bought his incoherent argument that while "SEO" can't be trademarked when it refers to a generic process of manipulated keywords, it can be a service mark for providing "marketing services...in the field of computers."[6]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[7][dubious ] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[8]
By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. Graduate students at Stanford UniversityLarry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[9] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[10] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[11] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[12]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[13] The leading search engines, GoogleBing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions[14] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[15]
In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[16] In 2008, Bruce Clay said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. He opined that it would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.[17]
In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[18] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat nofollowed links in the same way, in order to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[19] As a result of this change the usage of nofollow leads to evaporation of pagerank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated Javascript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframesFlash and Javascript.[20]
In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[21]
On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[22]
Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[23]
In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice, however Google implemented a new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique.[24]
In April 2012, Google launched the Google Penguin update the goal of which was to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[25]
In September 2013, Google released the Google Hummingbird update, an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image searchlocal searchvideo searchacademic search,[1] news search and industry-specific vertical searchengines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
The plural of the abbreviation SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", those who provide SEO services.

What is Search Engine Results Page (SERP)?

Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine's spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine's directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.

What is SEO Services?

SEO services (SEO Service Provider)

An SEO service provider utilizes the practice of search engine optimization to increase the amount of visitors to a Web site by obtaining high-ranking placements in the search results page ofsearch engines (SERP). Typically, a business will hire a service provider to improve its organic Google search result listings.
SEO services help to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found and ranked highly by the search engine. SEO service providers offer a wide range of packages and options for search engine optimization, ranging from one-time fees for smaller sites to monthly subscriptions for ongoing SEO efforts and support.

What is Black Hat SEO?

black hat SEO (search engine optimization)


In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.
Some examples of black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, adding unrelated keywords to the page content or page swapping (changing the webpage entirely after it has been ranked by search engines).

Black Hat SEO Usage

Black hat SEO is more frequently used by those who are looking for a quick financial return on their Web site, rather than a long-term investment on their Web site. Black hat SEO can possibly result in your Web site being banned from a search engine, however since the focus is usually on quick high return business models, most experts who use Black Hat SEO tactics consider being banned from search engines a somewhat irrelevant risk

white hat SEO (search engine optimization)

In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.
For example, a website that is optimized for search engines, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinkinglink building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers.
White Hat SEO is more frequently used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their website. Also called Ethical SEO.

What is Organic SEO?

Organic SEO

Organic SEO (search engine optimization) is the phrase used to describe processes to obtain a natural placement on organic search engine results pages (SERPs).
Some examples of techniques used for organic SEO include usingkeywords and keyword analysis, backlinkinglink building to improve link popularity, and writing content relevant for human readers.

Marketing Blogs: TopRank’s BIGLIST of Internet Marketing Blogs

Welcome to the BIGLIST of Marketing blogs!
Below is a collection of SEO, Content, Social Media and Online Marketing related blogs assembled by the staff at TopRank Online Marketing. This excellent list includes blogs that cover a range of internet marketing topics ranging from SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) to blog marketing, marketing with social media, content marketing and online public relations.
If you’re listed, you can add a Big List badge to your site.
Save or Share this Page!
Check out the @BIGLIST of SEO Blogs! http://tprk.us/seoblogs
How do you get on the list?
You can’t. We’re not adding any new blogs at this time. When we were adding new blogs, we’d find most reading blogrolls of other BIGLIST inductees or SEM social news sites. Rarely do we add a blog based on a direct request. Two fundamental requirements: Blogs must cover search marketing and must post 4-5 times per month at a bare minimum. Other considerations include, blog design, usability, writing style and quality.
How do you get off the list?
No one has ever asked how to get off this list, in fact, many have gone out of their way to get ON the list. However, we do drop anywhere from 70-100 blogs off the list every quarter due to a variety of reasons ranging from infrequent blog postings, off topic postings, site not longer working or on occasion, sites that get bought and turned into splogs.
Making Changes
Our goal is to provide a useful and accurate list of actively SEO. Managing such a large list over time means we may not catch every change. Common changes include moving from a third party hosting service to a domain name or sub-domain address, writer changes and topics covered. If you have changes that need to be made in your BIGLIST entry, then contact TopRank using the web form.
BIGLIST
  • Seperator
  • About: Web Search – Wendy Boswell covers the search engines for About.com.
  • Accessible Web Design – Minnesota based Joe Dolson on accessibiliy.
  • Adam Sherk Blog – Adam Sherk works as a Search/PR Strategist for Define Search Strategies, part of The New York Times Company and writes about the publishing industry, enterprise SEO and social media.
  • AimClear Search Marketing Blog – Another Minnesota based blogger makes the list with Marty Weintraub blogging about paid search marketing and organic SEO with the purpose of demystifying common topics that come up in his interactions with clients.
  • Apple Pie & Custard Blog– Originally added to BIGLIST 2 years ago, this blog is written mostly by Kelvin Newman, John McElborough and someone named “Jennie” from Site Visibility about SEM, social media and PPC topics.
  • Ask Kalena – Kalena Jordan offers search engine tips and advice.
  • Audette Media Blog – Adam Audette has a new blog for his internet marketing consulting business and while it’s a new blog, we’re adding it to the BIGLIST because if it evolves into anything like what Adam does on LED Digest, it’s sure to be a hit. Check out the link building primer.
  • Seperator
  • Beanstalk SEO Blog – Dave Davies blogs about news in the search engine and online marketing industry.
  • Being Peter Kim – Previously with Forrester Research, Peter Kim now works with an Austin based strategic consulting practice that is developing an enterprise class Social Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite. He continues to blog about social computing, social media marketing and insights of high value to internet marketers and business leaders.
  • Beyond the Paid – Melissa Mackey who is a Search Marketing Director for MagazineLine and recent winner of a free pass to Search Marketing Expo blogs about search engine marketing.
  • Bill Hartzer – Bill has redone his site and blogs about a wide variety of topics ranging from the search marketing industry to linking to monetizing web site content.
  • Biznology - Former IBM Distinguished Engineer Mike Moran’s blog on search and digital marketing.
  • Blizzard Internet Marketing – Group blog and newsletter from the team at Blizzard Internet Marketing.
  • BlogStorm – Popular UK blogger Patrick Altoft offers an abundance of tips on internet marketing and SEO.
  • Bruce Clay Blog – Virginia Nussey performs her blog magic covering the search marketing industry.
  • Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg – Best selling author of multiple books, Bryan Eisenberg begged me for months to add his new blog to the BIGLIST. I challenged Bryan to write another best selling book, start a new company, become a keynote speaker at several popular industry conferences and lose at least 30 pounds. (Hey, we set the bar high for the BIGLIST).  Of course, I’m kidding about the challenge (and the begging). Bryan has accomplished all of those things and much more while writing an excellent blog on conversion optimization and internet marketing strategy with his brother Jeffrey, who is also a best selling author, keynote speaker and online marketing strategist for major brands.
  • builtvisible blog – Formerly SEOGadget, this is Richard Baxter’s renamed blog about topics mostly related to SEO.
  • Seperator
  • CanuckSEO – Long time internet marketing veteran Jim Rudnick writes with passion and flair about “Canadian SEO for Google Success!” as well as small business, local SEM and plenty of flavorful opinion posts on a variety of search marketing industry topics. Go for the tips, stay for the story telling and enthusiasm.
  • Capture the Conversation – Internet Marketing Methodologies from Room 214, Inc co-founders James Clark & Jason Cormier.
  • ClickRain Blog – Based in Sioux Falls, Paul Ten Haken blogs about his agency, online marketing tips/how to’s and personal observations. There isn’t a slant towards SEO tactics dujour or limited to agency chest beating, you get a mix of everything which is good for an agency blog.
  • ClickZ Marketing News – The newly designed ClickZ web site continues to offer first class coverage of the search and interactive marketing industry as well as insight from leading industry experts.
  • Compete Blog – Online trends and insightful findings from the team at Compete.com.
  • comScore Networks – Feed for comScore press releases.
  • Content Marketing Institute – The mac daddy resource for content marketing plus all that goes with it from social media to SEO and beyond – Joe Pulizzi, Michele Linn and team help make the content marketing world go ’round.
  • Conversation Marketing – Long time internet marketer Ian Lurie pulls together search, design, development and more with this compliment blog to the free online book, Conversation Marketing.
  • Copyblogger – Brian Clark’s most excellent blog on copywriting and marketing.
  • Cornwall SEO blog – Lyndon Antcliff’s SEO & social media blog.
  • Cruces – Michael Myers, COO of FreshCurrent, blogs smart about social media and marketing online.
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  • Daily Blog Tips – As it’s name implies, this blog with a huge number of subscribers is about blogging but also has a robust category for SEO and internet marketing related topics.
  • David Naylor – DaveN, a favorite UK based search marketer who isn’t afraid of wearing a black hat from time to time.
  • DigiTales Blog – Microsoft’s UK man in the know, Mel Carson blogs for BrandRepublic on all things related to digital marketing. Unfortunately, Brand Republic has decided you must login to see the full posts.
  • Distilled Blog-Will Critchlow and the team at Distilled, a London based SEO/PPC agency write this blog on search and online reputation management issues along with geo location, mobile and web design topics.
  • Dream Systems Media Blog – Mat Siltala, David Mink and Andrew Melchior “blog” in the true sense of the word, about their experiences as an internet marketing agency as well as a range of web marketing topics and tips ranging from SEO to social media marketing.
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  • eCommerce Blog – Ethan from Baltimore based Groove eCommerce posts on this newer blog about industry and company news followed by topics ranging from SEO to analytics.
  • E-Marketing Performance – Stoney deGeyter and the team from Pole Position Marketing offer up search marketing information to render your competition powerless.
  • Epiphany Digital Marketing Blog – This UK agency offers a mix of internet marketing posts from agency staffers on search, social and industry topics.  Many of the posts go into detail about insights, testing and general observations from solving digital marketing problems.
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  • Fathom SEO Blog – SEO news, trends & analysis from Mike Murray and the team at Fathom SEO.
  • Flyte Blog – Rich Brooks writes about web marketing for small business.
  • Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing – Excellent group blog from Forrester on various aspects of interactive marketing from B2B social media to search marketing to research and industry news.
  • Fresh Egg Blog –  This cleverly designed agency blog is written by a team of contributors primarily about SEO, Social Media and Web Design.
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  • Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog – The team at Vancouver BC based Elastic Path, an ecommerce platform, blog all angles of conducting tansactional business online ranging from general marketing to usability to social media. There’s are also a series of podcasts from last summer worth checking out.
  • Google Code Blog – Google API’s and more.
  • Google Operating System – Ionut Alex Chitu offers uUnofficial news and tips about Google.
  • Google Webmaster Central blog – Posts from the Google Webmaster Central team.
  • Great Finds – iCrossing company blog about marketing online.
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  • Hallam Internet Marketing BlogThis blog out of Knottingham is a mix of posts about industry news & observations, training programs offered by Susan Hallam and aggregated Tweets. Making all of one’s tweets for the day into a blog post is automatic and therefore easy for the blogger to create an entry, but the real question is whether it offers useful info to blog readers? In this case I think sometimes yes and sometimes no.
  • Hitwise Intelligence – The HitWise team posts tasty insights about search trends.
  • Hubspot Marketing Blog – The team at HubSpot writes about internet marketing and online lead generation for small business.
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  • Ignite Social Media – Ignite is a social media consultancy with the company web site running as a blog. Topics logically emphasize social media with some optimization flavorings. More information on the post authors and a fix to the 404 on the job openings page would be nice.
  • Industrial Search Engine Marketing Blog – Minnesota based Ecreativeworks blogs about search engine marketing from a B2B, industrial and manufacturing perspective.
  • Inside AdSense – Official blog for Google AdSense.
  • Inside AdWords – Official blog for Google AdWords.
  • Inside the Marketers Studio – David Berkowitz’s blog on internet marketing.
  • Internet Marketing Blog – Chris Garrett of Performancing fame.
  • Internet News – A general internet marketing and search news blog by Gwen Harris.
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  • Jacob Morgan – A nice mix of social, viral, SEO and marketing strategy from the founder of the SF Search Marketing Salon.
  • Jeff Bullas’s Blog – Jeff works as a sales and marketing manager at Infinity Technologies and his self-titled blog flavors towards social media – offering examples, case studies, lists of tips posts and insights from setting aside his traditional marketing roots and current focus on building trust and relationships with customers through social media, permission and inbound marketing.
  • John Battelle’s Searchblog – Famous co-founder of Wired magazine posts about the search engine industry. I just wish he’d write about search marketing once in a while.
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  • Kelsey Group Blog – For all things related to local search marketing and online yellow pages, this blog is an excellent resource on industry news and observations from the team at Kelsey Group.
  • KoMarketing Associates SEM Blog – A group/company blog covering SEO, PPC, events, industry news/trends, tips and a lot of personal insight. These folks are clearly involved in, and have an opinion on, what goes on in the industry.
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  • Mannix Marketing Blog – This agency blog focuses mostly on SEO, web design & Internet marketing as well as agency news and involvement with industry events.
  • Marketing Experiments Blog – Real-time data, insights, answers, and advice from Flint McGlaughlin’s team at MEC
  • Marketing Land – A true nod to social media, Danny Sullivan’s search marketing community resource on topics and discussions related to search and online marketing. This Digg style site based on the Pligg platform, allows readers to register and create profiles, submit, comment and vote on stories.
  • Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal’s super stupendous blog on search engine industry news. :)
  • Marketing Profs Daily Fix – With managing editor, Ann Handley, this group blog posts on all things marketing with participants ranging from Eric Ward to Stephan Spencer to BL Ochman.
  • Marketingsherpa Blog – The famous Marketing Sherpa site publishes this well written & cross referenced blog on a range of internet marketing topics from email to search engine optimization by reporters Natalie Myers, Sean Donahue and Adam T. Sutton.
  • MarketingVOX – Previously Marketing Wonk, this post I-Search publication founded by Tig Tillinghast.
  • Matt Cutts – Google’s famous engineer and search spam fighter dispels wisdom, insight and squashes SEO myths.
  • MediaVision Blog – This is an agency blog with numerous contributors writing about online marketing and search engine industry news, observations and malarkey.
  • Microsoft Advertising Community Blogs – This is Microsoft”s official support blog for AdCenter advertisers.
  • Modern B2B Marketing – Staff from Marketo blogs about a range of BtoB marketing marketing topics.
  • MoreVisibility SEM Blog – The team at MoreVisibility cover industry news & events, online advertising, CPC, analytics and updates on the Search Engines.
  • Multilingual Search – Andy Atkins Kruger and friends around the world blog about search engines and search marketing news happening outside North America.
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  • Occam’s Razor – Avinash Kaushik offers quantitative and qualitative insights into online marketing.
  • Official Google Webmaster Central Blog – Official blog from Google’s Webmasters.
  • Online Marketing Blog – Lee Odden and TopRank team members blog about search marketing, social media as well as interviews, reader polls, SEO blog reviews, marketing tips, guest posts from industry leaders and SEM conference coverage.
  • Original Signal – Transmitting Marketing – A little bit of everything from Peter van der Noord, Patrick Huisinga, Tako Steinz and Gert Goet.
  • Original Signal Transmitting SEO – Aggregation of the 15 most popular SEO blogs and web sites ranging from Search Engine Watch to Search Engine Land and TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.
  • Own Page One SEV Blog – Ann Arbor, Michigan based search marketing agency Pure Visibility runs the gamut of search marketing topics on this company blog ranging from PPC to local to SEO and even has a category just for Twitter.
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  • Phil Bradley’s Blog – Internet searching, web design & search engine developments for librarians.
  • Proactive Report – Sally Falkow blogs about online PR and social media
  • ProBlogger Blog Tips – Darren Rowse helps bloggers add income to their blogs.
  • PushONline Marketing – Great blog from the UK doing the full social media thing: images, videos, MySpace and some nods to Twitter. Not without a dose of good humor, check out the videos, “Number One on the Google”, or even better, “Bitch Got Wide Feed”. Brilliant.
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  • Ramblings About SEO – I was very suprised to see that Eric Enge’s blog, which covers a wide range of topics related to search engine optimization, was not on our list yet, but that’s fixed now.
  • Raven SEO Tools Blog – Jon Henshaw and Lee Smith-Bryan of Nashville based Sitening blog mostly about SEO tactics along with the ususal fare of search industry topics and commentary.
  • Read/WriteWeb – Next generation web technology from Richard MacManus.
  • Receptional – The team at UK internet marketing agency Receptional blog the gamut of web marketing topics including affiliate and search marketing, usability, analytics and social media.
  • Reel Video SEO and SEM – Need to know about optimizing video for search? This is the place to find tips, tactics and information on all things related to optimizing and marketing video online written by Mark Robertson.
  • ResourceShelf – Gary Price & Shirl Kennedy’s observations on news in the information & web industry.
  • ReveNews – Publisher Jim Kukral and friends blog about the affiliate marketing industry covering topics from ecommerce to analytics to blogging.
  • RKG Blog – Alan Rimm-Kaufman of the Rimm-Kaufman Group blogs about various online marketing news items and tips along with his own commentary.
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  • Search Agents-The November winner for the best looking Search Marketing blog. Not only does it offer a clever theme, but content and usability to boot. There are more contributors listed than most SEM agencies have in their employ. Content is balanced between SEO and SEM followed by everybody’s friend, Social Media. The Search Agents is the official corporate blog of The Search Agency, an integrated online marketing firm headquartered in Santa Monica, CA.
  • SearchCap: Daily Search Engine News Recap – Search is completely covered by Danny Sullivan, Barry Schwartz, Chris Sherman and Bill Slawski.
  • Search Engine Guide Blog – Group blog about search engine optimization.
  • Search Engine Journal – Excellent search engine news site by Loren Baker and friends.
  • Search Engine Land – Danny Sullivan group blog about search engines and the search marketing industry.
  • Search Engine Optimization Facts – Weekly SEO news from Axandra.
  • Search Engine People Blog – Based near Toronto Ontario, the SEP team blog about a wide range of search marketing topics with an emphasis on SEO, social media and opinion.
  • Search Engine Roundtable – Barry Schwartz aka RustyBrick and friends cover the search engine forums.
  • Search Engine Watch blog – Group blog let by Kevin Newcomb posting news from Search Engine Watch and around the web on search engines and marketing online.
  • Search Engines – Topix.net – Search engine news from all over the net in one place.
  • SemAngel – Gary Angel, President and CTO of Semphonic, writes about all aspects of web analytics for search marketing. This is a great example of a thought leader and subject matter expert blog.
  • SEO by the SEA – William Slawski provides Internet marketing & search engine optimization research & services.
  • SEO.com Blog – The team at SEO.com blog definitvely about search engine optimization from some pretty creative angles from “If your SEO skills were a song, what would it be?” to movie references like “Transformers of SEO” and Wall-e. There are also plenty of tips and how to’s.
  • SEO Copywriting – Let’s celebrate the launch of SEO and wordsmith guru Heather Lloyd-Martin’s snappy new blog about the magic of writing for users and search engines.
  • SEO Scoop – Donna Fontenot, aka DazzlinDonna, discusses everything seo.
  • SEO Theory – Michael Martinez focuses on search engine optimization theory.
  • SEOmoz – News, tips & highlights from the search marketing industry.
  • Seth’s Blog – Seth Godin’s blog about marketing.
  • Shoemoney – Jeremy Shoemaker’s very popular blog about making money online.
  • Shop.org Blog – Group Blog from Shop.org
  • SitePoint’s Search Engine Marketing Blog – company blog for SitePoint.
  • Sochable – Another new blog on social media. This one is from James Rucker covering the gamut of Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook and more.
  • Social Media Club – Official blog for Social Media Club written primarily by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells for the social media community and those seeking to learn more about social media. Promotes sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and media literacy.
  • Social Media Podcast and Blog – JD Lasica blogs about new media, social networks and computing.
  • State of Digital – What’s going on in the search and social media marketing space? This new blog from Dutch internet marketer, Bas van den Beld of Search Cowboys fame, and friends promises to be a source for what’s happening in the world of search and social. It also compliments a weekly radio show on WebmasterRadio.fm of the same name.
  • Stepforth SEO News Blog – Since 2003 the Stepforth blog has covered a range of search marketing industry news and sets a great standard for SEM blog writing. Kudos to Ross Dunn for a great job.
  • Straightupsearch – OneUpWeb’s company blog for anyone in advertising, marketing and pr.
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  • Tamar Search Blog – This isn’t the superwoman blogger Tamar you’re probably thinking of, it’s the Tamar Search Conversion Agency based in London and Capetown with blog topics ranging from search and social media marketing to usability and conversion analytics.
  • TechCrunch – Michael Arrington’s popular web 2.0 blog.
  • Techmeme – Gabe Rivera’s software agent that covers all the news in technology in one location.
  • The Acquisio Blog – Naoise Osborne writes this “Canadian Flavoured Marketing Soup” blog mostly on PPC but a little Foo makes it interesting.
  • The Future Buzz – Adam Singer of  TopRank Online Marketing blogs about blogging, social media and internet marketing.
  • The Internet Marketing Driver – Glenn Gabe covers the gamut of internet marketing topics in this blog and makes up for infrequent posting by going deep on a lot of posts with detialed how to’s and insights into tools, SEO and media.
  • The Search Insider – Not to be confused with MediaPost’s “Search Insider”, this blog from Wpromote’s Mike Mothner provides insight into pay per click and the business of search marketing.
  • The Social Media Marketing Blog – Scott Monty’s perspectives on B2B & social media.
  • Think Traffic – This blog by internet entreprenuer Corbett Barr  makes some serious promises: “…teach you the techniques, tools and knowledge you need to build real, sustainable web traffic without a big budget.”  Sounds pretty good to me. Corbett relates his experiences with past projects and growing an audience for Think Traffic to the benefit of readers.  This very new blog offers practical tips and is well designed enough to get our top listing for this week’s review.
  • Traffick – Andrew Goodman writes one of the oldest blogs on search marketing.
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  • Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search – The title of this blog by Mike Blumenthal says it all.
  • Unofficial SEO Blog – Navneet Kaushal posts news about the SEO industry.
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  • Vertical Leap Blog – This UK agency blog  covers practical search marketing tips, insights specific to UK search engines and industry news. Comments are turned off, which is a disappointment.
  • Vertical Measures Blog – This Phoenix, AZ agency blog focuses on SEO, link building, agency events and industry observations, Posts are written mostly by Social Media Architect, Kaila Strong.
  • VIZION Blog – Search Engine Watch columnist Mark Jackson and his team at VIZION blog about a wide range of SEO topics, worth subscribing to for sure.
  • Volusion’s eCommerce Blog – Articles and resources to boost your online business.
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  • Web Analytics World – Manoj Jasra from Enquiro shares his wisdom and observations about analytics and search marketing.
  • Web Ink Now – David Meerman Scott helps innovative marketers use digital information effectively.
  • WebmasterWorld – News and discussions for the Web professional.
  • Web Metrics Guru – Marshall Sponder of IBM writes about web analytics and the search marketing industry.
  • Website Magazine Blog – A group blog from the publishers of Website Magazine which covers the search engine industry as well as general topics related to online marketing.
  • Web Strategy by Jeremiah – Jeremiah Owyang provides web tools to help connect with customers.
  • We Build Pages Blog – As the search marketing industry has evolved, so has We Build Pages with a new blog  that includes posts from WBP staff, CEO Jim Boykin and the excellent writing style of Lisa Barone.
  • What’s Next – BL Ochman’s blog about marketing online and life in NYC.
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  • Yahoo! Search blog – Official blog about the Yahoo search engine.
  • Yahoo! Search Marketing blog – Official blog for Yahoo Search Marketing.
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There is no way to get on this list by “submitting” or requesting. I must notice your blog, read it and like it. It’s totally subjective and not an attempt to be a comprehensive resource, but one the we’ve found to be useful at TopRank.