best SEO blogs to read in 2018

Looking for a list of the best SEO blogs to read in 2018? Then look no further.

Most lists of top SEO blogs are entirely subjective.

It’s one person’s biased opinion of what’s best.

That’s why I decided to take a data‐driven approach.

Here’s what I did:
Compiled a list of well‐known SEO blogs;
Pulled in a bunch of metrics for each (average blog post length, Domain Rating, estimated organic traffic, and so forth);
Made a simple scoring algorithm to grade each blog.


1. Backlinko




Founder: Brian Dean
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 5,194
Domain Rating (DR): 84
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 110,078
Average posts per month: 5
Average post length: 3,401 words

Heard of the Skyscraper Technique? Then you’re already familiar with Brian’s work.

Backlinko is perhaps the most famous single‐author SEO blog. Brian rarely publishes new content, but when he does, you’ll certainly know about it. He doesn’t do things by halves. His approach is quality over quantity.

I think most SEO’s will happily admit that they’ve learned a lot from Brian over the years, myself included. He’s definitely one to follow closely.


2. Ahrefs




Founder: Dmitry Gerasimenko
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 3,648
Domain Rating (DR): 86
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 61,399
Average posts per month: 9
Average post length: 3,186 words
For those that haven’t read much of our stuff before, we typically publish 1–2 posts per week, and we try to focus on quality over quantity. We also publish many studies, such as our analysis of 2 million featured snippets and our dissection of 1.4 billion “long tail” keywords.

3. MOZ




Founder: Rand Fishkin
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 562
Domain Rating (DR): 91
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 217,714
Average posts per month: 16
Average post length: 2,036 words

Moz is almost certainly the most well‐known SEO blog, and for a good reason.

Rand and his team have published a ton of great stuff over the years, and they continue to do so on a regular basis. Some notable examples include their now infamous “beginners guide to SEO” and their ever‐growing collection of Whiteboard Friday videos.

I’ll happily admit that I’ve learned a lot from Moz. I know Tim has too. I don’t think I’d have a career in SEO if it weren’t for the Moz blog.

That being said, many of their posts are growing increasing stale—some have gone years without an update.


4. Search Engine Watch




Founder: Danny Sullivan
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 1,709
Domain Rating (DR): 89
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 311,662
Average posts per month: 29
Average post length: 1,699 words

Launched in 1996 by Danny Sullivan, SEW is perhaps the oldest SEO blog on our list.

I’d say SEW is halfway between a blog and a news website as they publish a mixture of guides and news articles. They publish a lot, too—around 29 posts per month.

They also have some well‐known contributors and columnists, such as Ann Smarty.

5. Hobo‐web




Founder: Shaun Anderson
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 46,978
Domain Rating (DR): 73
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 57,815
Average posts per month: 2
Average post length: 3,733 words

For whatever reason, Hobo‐web doesn’t usually get mentioned on such lists, which is a shame.

It’s almost certainly one of the best single‐author SEO blogs out there.

Shaun’s posts are few and far between but when he does publish something, you can bet it’s worth reading. His posts regularly pass the 5K word mark, and although word count isn’t everything, they’re well‐structured and a pleasure to read.


6. SEMRush




Founders: Dmitri Melnikov & Oleg Schegolev
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 2,343
Domain Rating (DR): 87
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 53,377
Average posts per month: 28
Average post length: 2,056 words

SEMRush kicks out a lot of SEO‐related content—roughly one post per day.

They have published ~3,000 blog posts in total.

Many well‐known names have contributed to their blog including Gael Breton (Authority Hacker), Ryan Stewart (WEBRIS / From The Future), and more.


7. Matthew Woodward




Founder: Matthew Woodward
Blog type: Single‐author (w/ occasional guest post)

Ahrefs Rank: 50,019
Domain Rating (DR): 73
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 48,536
Average posts per month: 9
Average post length: 3,414 words

Started in 2012, Matthew Woodward’s blog began as an experiment. He wondered what would happen should he do SEO without link building.

The result? He grew the blog to six figures in under a year.

Nowadays, Matthew regularly publishes in‐depth posts and tutorials on everything from internal linking to affiliate marketing. So, while his blog isn’t 100% focused on SEO, he does write about that a lot.


8. Search Engine Land




Founder: Danny Sullivan
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 766
Domain Rating (DR): 90
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 1,205,476
Average posts per month: 135
Average post length: 1,055 words

No. You’re not seeing double—this is another site founded by Danny Sullivan.

He founded the site in 2006 after leaving Search Engine Watch, and unlike SEW, this blog is entirely focussed on SEO news.

As such, they publish a lot of content. Roughly 135 posts per month. (That’s 4–5 per day).

If you want to stay up to speed with the state of the SEO industry, SEL is definitely worth following.

9. Search Engine Journal




Founder: Loren Baker
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 2,209
Domain Rating (DR): 88
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 307,227
Average posts per month: 130
Average post length: 906 words

SEJ is another well‐known SEO news blog, founded in 2003.

Much like Search Engine Land, they’re almost exclusively focussed on SEO news. As such, their publishing schedule is similarly hectic (4–5 posts per day, on average).


10. Yoast




Founder: Joost de Valk
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 1,685
Domain Rating (DR): 89
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 217,201
Average posts per month: 33
Average post length: 989 words

Does your website run on WordPress? Then you may be familiar with the Yoast SEO plugin.

But did you know that they have an SEO blog?

Most of their content is focussed on content SEO, technical SEO, and WordPress SEO (that one’s to be expected, right?). I’ll admit that not all of their posts are in‐depth masterpieces, but there are certainly some gems in there.


11. Cognitive SEO




Founder: Razvan Gavrilas
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 54,031
Domain Rating (DR): 73
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 17,931
Average posts per month: 5
Average post length: 4,212 words

These guys have been publishing some good stuff lately, and judging by their performance in organic search, I’d say it’s starting to pay off.


Organic traffic graph from Site Explorer, showing an increase of ~170% in the past 12 months.

They’ve tripled their organic search traffic in less than a year!

Check out some of their stuff, and you’ll see why.


12. GotchSEO




Founder: Nathan Gotch
Blog type: Single‐author (w/ occasional guest post)
Ahrefs Rank: 218,916
Domain Rating (DR): 62
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 22,654
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 3,572 words

Founded by Nathan Gotch in 2013, GotchSEO has been making a big splash over the past year or two.

He consistently puts out HUGE, in‐depth guides. Some are even custom designed.

I’ve seen at least one of his posts garner 750+ comments.

The downside? Putting together such massive guides clearly isn’t the easiest job ever, as Nathan only publishes one post per month on average. Regardless, Nathan is undoubtedly one to watch.


13. Builtvisible




Founder: Richard Baxter
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 46,675
Domain Rating (DR): 73
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 31,917
Average posts per month: 3
Average post length: 1,048 words

Could Builtvisible be the best looking SEO blog? Quite possibly.

But it doesn’t just look good; it’s packed with tons of top‐notch content, much of which was written by Richard himself—an industry veteran with 15+ years experience.

Richard is a technical guy and to be honest, this isn’t really a blog for SEOnewbies. Sure, there are some posts aimed at beginners and intermediates—this post on link reclamation springs to mind—but most others are quite technical in nature.

If you want to learn about scraping Google Analytics, VLOOKUPs and so forth, this is the blog for you.


14. Robbie Richards




Founder: Robbie Richards
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 212,684
Domain Rating (DR): 62
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 6,837
Average posts per month: <1
Average post length: 12,030 words

Robbie Richards is responsible for publishing some of the most in‐depth guides in the industry.

His average post length (last three months) is a staggering 12K+ words. No wonder he only manages to publish <1 post per month, on average.

Fun fact: he’s also the only Australian on our list (I think — correct me if I’m wrong, Robbie!)


15. Lion Zeal




Founder: Daryl Rosser
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 1,417,166
Domain Rating (DR): 41
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 3,039
Average posts per month: 8
Average post length: 5,313 words

Daryl Rosser is a relative newcomer to the SEO world, but he’s already becoming a household name.

He started out as a PBN guy (here’s the super‐extensive PBN guide he published 3–4 years back), but he’s now more well‐known for his interviews with successful SEOs. You can find these on his YouTube channel and also on his blog alongside a full video transcript.

Some of his past interviewees include Ryan Stewart, Venchito Tampon, Matt Diggity, Nathan Gotch, and our very own Tim Soulo.




16. Distilled




Founder: Will Critchlow & Duncan Morris
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 23,768
Domain Rating (DR): 77
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 6,953
Average posts per month: 5
Average post length: 1,763 words

Will Critchlow is a guy you may have heard of once or twice.

He co‐founded Distilled in 2005, co‐created an online SEO university (DistilledU), and co‐founded an SEO conference (SearchLove), amongst other things. He’s also built an incredibly talented team at Distilled, many of whom regularly contribute excellent posts to the Distilled blog.

Some of Will’s posts present somewhat unique and novel ideas, such as this one about internal linking.


17. SEO by the Sea




Founder: Bill Slawski
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 41,869
Domain Rating (DR): 74
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 4,160
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 1,445 words

Bill Slawski is the guy to follow if you want to know how Google works, how Google might work, and how Google could work in future.

He’s most well‐known for breaking down and analyzing many Google patents and whitepapers, which makes his blog a great place to learn about why search engines do what they do.

SEO by the Sea was founded in 2005, but Bill has close to 30 years online marketing experience. I highly recommend that you follow his work.


18. Search Engine Roundtable




Founder: Barry Schwartz
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 6,240
Domain Rating (DR): 83
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 83,856
Average posts per month: 164
Average post length: 317 words

Founded in December 2003 by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable is an SEO news website publishing 5–6 posts per day (on average).

Most of the posts are admittedly quite short, but they serve their purpose of keeping the SEO community up to date with the goings‐on in the world of search.

SERoundtable also accepts submissions from the search community. So, if you spot some worthwhile search‐related news on a search marketing forum thread, you can use this form to let Barry and his team know about it.

19. SEER INTERACTIVE




Founder: Wil Reynolds
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 51,973
Domain Rating (DR): 73
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 11,472
Average posts per month: 7
Average post length: 1,174 words

Founded in 2002 by Wil Reynolds, SEER Interactive aims to “Do great things for our clients, our team and the community at large.”

That last part becomes particularly relevant when talking about their blog.

Unlike many SEO blogs, SEER doesn’t follow search trends or regurgitate information about topics that have been covered a thousand times. Their focus seems to be on publishing unique posts that provide genuine value to the SEOand marketing community.

Wil’s post about long‐tail keywords serves as a prime example of this mentality.


20. Kaiser the Sage




Founder: Jason Acidre
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 163,905
Domain Rating (DR): 65
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 3,019
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 2,019 words

Looking to learn about outreach‐based link building? Jason Acidre is your man.

Jason is extremely experienced when it comes to link building. He even took one website from 50K‐320K visits per month using competitive link acquisition campaigns.

I don’t want to brand Jason as “the outreach guy,” so I should probably stress the fact that link building isn’t the only topic on which he writes. He also talks about other SEO‐related topics, such as content creation and inbound marketing.

But for me, his link‐building posts have always been the most hard‐hitting and memorable.


21. From The Future




Founder: Nick Eubanks
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 386,915
Domain Rating (DR): 55
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 839
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 2,253 words

Most people know of Nick Eubanks as the keyword research guy.

He previously blogged for SEONick.net before selling it for $100,000.

IFTF, a technical SEO agency based in Philadelphia, is Nick’s latest venture.

But some of you may not have realized that Ryan Stewart (formerly of WEBRIS) has joined forces with Nick and now blogs for IFTF.

(That’s why I didn’t include the WEBRIS blog on this list.)

For those of you who don’t know Ryan, he built WEBRIS to $1.2 million ARR in ~2 years and made a name for himself as the link building automation guy.

Both of these guys are actively blogging at IFTF, so it’s definitely a blog you should follow.


22. Marie Haynes




Founder: Marie Haynes
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 350,946
Domain Rating (DR): 56
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 699
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 2,012 words

Marie Haynes has been helping businesses recover from Google penalties since 2008.

I don’t think anyone knows as much about Google penalties as Marie does. So if you feel you may be suffering from such a penalty, check out Marie’s blog. You can also check out our guide to Google Penalties, which we created with Marie’s help.

Her story is quite inspirational (check it out here)—in a previous life, she was a veterinarian.

She doesn’t publish new content too often, but she’s one to follow closely.


23. Buzzstream




Founder: Paul May
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 37,132
Domain Rating (DR): 74
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 1,045
Average posts per month: 2
Average post length: 1,450 words

Done link building outreach before? Then you’re likely already familiar with Buzzstream.

But aside from being arguably the best outreach software on the market, they also publish some great content on their blog. And as you may have guessed, it’s pretty heavily focussed on link building and outreach.

However, they don’t publish a huge amount of content. It’s usually limited to 1–2 posts per month.

Still, Paul and his team definitely deserve a follow.


24. Diggity Marketing




Founder: Matt Diggity
Blog type: Single‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 519,987
Domain Rating (DR): 53
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 1,254
Average posts per month: 2
Average post length: 2,709 words

Matt Diggity hasn’t been on the scene for long, but he’s already made quite a name for himself.

His unique selling point? He shares tips and advice based on actual test results. In other words, he doesn’t just blindly regurgitate stuff he’s read elsewhere. He tests ideas for himself and reports on what does and doesn’t work.

He also publishes a monthly SEO news roundup, which is well worth subscribing to.


25. Merj





Founder: Ryan Siddle
Blog type: Multi‐author
Ahrefs Rank: 5,556,426
Domain Rating (DR): 26
Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 31
Average posts per month: 1
Average post length: 2,725 words

Merj.com has a blog unlike any other on our list.

For starters, it’s 100% focussed on technical SEO. They also only publish one post per month, which is a technical SEO roundup. These posts follow a consistent format and distil the months technical SEO news into ~3K words.

They also include “action points” in each post, which advise on any changes you should make based on the months news.