The 68 Most Authoritative Search Marketing Blogs In One Custom Search Engine

Update: Although I wouldn't try to read these 68 eMarketing websites simultaneously, I realized that some people would be interested in integrating this A-list into a their RSS reader. Therefore, I made a Google Reader bundle of these websites. The bundle page includes subscription button for Google Reader users as well as link to an OPML file for other readers users

When I started to explore web marketing I used to track some major blogs like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Bruce Clay, and Social Media Examiner. As time went on I discovered more blogs and it became harder to track all these blogs.

Of course I could add them to Google Reader, but as time went by it would get hard to read all the posts in chronological order.

So then I would probably just use Google Reader's search feature to research new subjects.

That has two main drawbacks:

1. Google Reader can order posts only by publication date
2. Some feeds have only an excerpt so we can't use full-text search.

That's why a custom-built search engine is more efficient.

Instead of using trial and error in adding and removing blogs I thought it would be nice if to start with a list of authoritative blogs.

Finding The Authoritative Search Blogs

Source 1: Alexa

Over the years, there've been many critics about the Alexa ranking, and there are plenty ways to game its ranking. There is even one search engine that screens Alexa top ranked websites. Stil, Alexa Rank became a status symbol.

In any case, Alexa is probably the most reliable traffic measurement tool today. But, as Alexa states, only the top 100,000 results should be regarded as reliable. (I.e. if one website is ranked higher then other website and both are ranked less than 100K , it's probably has more traffic than the other).

Source 2: MyWOT

The WOT (Web Of Trust) service tries to help user establish the level of trust of a site through its toolbar which lets users rate websites trust.

Although there is critique on its evaluation methods and reliability the more than 600 million user community poses a serious reputation risk for website owners.

Again, while it may rate some websites unfairly, a real eMarketing firm should know by now how to protect its deal with negative reviews. In addition, if a website is really one of the top 100K websites it should probably have enough proponents in this community, and if not they probably gained traffic in illegitimate ways.

Source 3: Technorati Niche Authority

I found about 190 websites using these sources. Now it was time to weed out the best from the good.