Posted on by Jill Kocher Brown

My SEO Circle of Trust: The Short List

I’m often asked which SEO blogs can be trusted. Knowing which “experts” to trust in the nebulous world of SEO is a big challenge for those who don’t spend their daily lives steeped in it. Expertise comes from experience, but a shocking number of  candidates I’ve interviewed over the years for SEO jobs are convinced that their book learning and blog reading has made them experts. Worse yet, these folks feel free to preach the word as they’ve read it on their blogs and in social media.

In an industry as mercurial as SEO where algorithms change without warning and new data disproves old notions daily, how do you know who you can trust?

I read and respect many more SEOs than are listed here, but for those folks who can’t afford to spend hours keeping up on all the different perspectives and niches of search marketing these sites are my recommended short list.

Independent Search Marketing Sites
These sites write about SEO news, methodology, tools & tips. Most SEO agencies have a blog and some are quite good, but they’re typically trying to sell you something at least in passing. These sites feature authors from all over the SEO industry and are thus less beholden to one agency or set of tools and approaches than another. Of course, that’s not to say they’re not trying to sell you something….

SEOmoz

Search Engine Land

Search Engines’ Sites
If you’re looking for SEO truth, one side of that truth will come from the engines themselves. Their version of the truth may be less explicit than the SEO industry’s version, but at the end of the day the engines hold the algorithmic keys. Since the engines determine what ranks, it only makes sense to stay on top of what they’re dishing out. The industry blogs above will offer their interpretations of what the engines release, of course, but I like to go to the source on the really important things.

Google Webmaster Central

Bing Webmaster 

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.