Why SearchEngineLand and SERoundtable are heavy hitters

Look at my subscription trends. Brand Republic dominates. Brand Republic is closely followed by the ever cutting The Register and then, after a gap, Search Engine Land.

Okay. That's a big gap. Search Engine Land does not compete with the high volume, high quality professional sites... but compare it to TechCrunch. Search Engine Land, with Danny Sullivan at the helm, out posts TechCrunch who have just hired Heather Harde from Fox to act as CEO. If Danny is the CEO of Search Engine Land he's also the MD and editor in chief. That's a lot of responsibility and you would have to admit that he does very well.

Of course, at Search Engine Land there are other passionate and intelligent contributors - you'll have noted that I've come to really rate Bill Slawski and Barry Schwartz. You know Chris Sherman is a power of support behind the scenes. Slawski does quality. Schwartz seems to dedicate himself to writing about breaking news. A review of my trends shows that he has two - Cartoon Barry and SERoundtable - in my list. That's some achievement!

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, of course, does well as does UK favourite E-Consultancy. It's a shame that there isn't an US equivalent of E-Consultancy as I find myself only able to review the high level agency activity and the blog level SEO activity. I'm not sure how to classify Marketing Pilgrim. It seems bigger than a blog but also more personal than a news site like Search Engine Land or The Register. However I classify the site - I do get a positive and up-to-the-minute vibe from the site.

What Search Engine Land and SERoundtable do (and bare in mind that Barry Schwartz contributes to both) is to dedicate ample resources to monitoring the internet. They have people watching the Key Influencing Forums and Blogs (*gasp* social media optimisation) and have resources enough to post quick and intelligent replies.