This is a guest post from Beth Blanchard – Supervisor, Internet Media – and Kristen Sala – Senior Manager, Electronic Media – at Cision.
Once again, Cision is pleased to present our Top 100 U.S. Social Media, Internet Marketing and SEO blogs.With this year’s list we’ve considered only US-based blogs, which has allowed us to shine a spotlight on some blogs that did not make previous lists. In addition, many industry heavy-weights have moved down, making way for new voices and fresh perspectives. Nearly half of the titles are first-timers.
To compile the list, we chose four Web audience metrics from Compete.com: Average Unique Visitors per Month (available in CisionPoint), Average Page Views per Month per Unique Visitor, Average Time (seconds) per Month per Unique Visitor, and Average Visits per Month per Unique Visitor. Using Cision’s media database, we were able to find over 400 blogs covering social media, online marketing and SEO. From there, we winnowed it down to US-based blogs that primarily focus on these topics. Finally, we ranked the blogs based on the four Compete metrics. Tied scores were broken by UVPM.
As an added bonus (and as part of our on-going campaign to list social profiles for media outlets and contacts in CisionPoint) we’ve taken special care to seek out the Twitter Handles, as well as Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn pages affiliated with these prestigious blogs. We’ve also noted the movement in rankings compared to last year. Without further ado, here are the results.
Disclaimer: a question we’ve addressed often on this blog and in many of our free Cision Webinars, with all the metrics available for determining influence on the social Web, how can you determine which blogs really matter? Unfortunately there isn’t one metric that serves as a reliable indicator. As Jay noted in his original list, influence is subjective by nature and we’ve read a lot of great posts by bloggers who didn’t make the list. Some of them wield more influence in social media education endeavors outside of their blogs, such as conferences, Webinars, podcasts and white papers.
UPDATE 4/17/12: Our original analysis accidentally overlooked 1 top 100 blog, which has since been added to the list below. It was an accidental oversight on our part, and our apologies go out to Olivier Blanchard… an amazing blogger who should have been on the original list.
Tags: bloggers, blogging, blogs, Internet marketing, SEO, social media










Thanks for including us on the list again Cision – I'm glad to see that our blog has climbed so many spots! If you gave me a badge – I'd gladly use it in my sidebar to link from our blog to this post.
While I appreciate the disclaimer, I still have to wonder about the rankings when there's no mention of Danny brown, Geoff Livingston or Olivier Blanchard, probably the three best and most original social media blogs around today.
Even Hubspot recognized Danny's blog as their #1 marketing blog:
http://hot100.hubspot.com/
Something for future lists?
Hi Marianna! We’ve added Olivier Blanchard’s The BrainBuilder Blog to the list at number 92. We apologize for the oversight! Unfortunately, Geoff Livingston’s blog doesn’t rank high enough for this list and Danny Brown is a Canada-based blogger. Thanks for your feedback.
Where is "Mashable"
Hi Ayman, thanks for your feedback. Good question! For this list, we considered only blogs. Since Mashable considers itself more of a news website than a blog, it didn't make our list.
Great list of SEO and Internet marketing blog. It's totally brilliant for me bcoz I have 2011 list yet. Here I have found so many new rankings.
Anyway I would like to say thanks for update 2012 list indeed.
Keep it up!
Thanks for sharing..I will have a busy day perusing the best.
Our pleasure Anne!! Hope you enjoy the list!
Thanks for the mention of @prconversations (#63), but I should point out that none of the three principals (UK's Heather Yaxley/ http://twitter.com/greenbanana, Austria's Markus Pirchner/ http://twitter.com/pirchner or Canadian moi) are based in the US per the blog post heading. And we are positioned as an international, collaborative blog about public relations (the first of its kind I believe, perhaps still the only true one), rather than as a Social Media, Internet Marketing or SEO blog.
But thanks for reading and citing us!
Cheers,
Judy Gombita
Thanks so much for including the HubSpot Blog, Beth! We're honored to be #2
Best,
Pamela Vaughan | HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog Manager
Of course Pam! HubSpot always has great content
These blogs are great Beth thanks for the post!
Thanks for updating this list. I'm humbled to be on the list again. Many new blogs to add to my list of valuable content on SEO & social marketing.
There are so many great blogs (yours included!!) and it's tough to narrow it down. Congrats on making the list again!!
I'm honored to be included and more than a little flabbergasted.
Thank you for the shout-out. I do appreciate it.
Congrats Cathy!!
We are honored to be included on this list! Thank you Beth!
What an excellent list, there are many new blogs for me to discover. SEO Book and Seth Godin are both go-to blogs for me. I will save this list to explore more for ideas and info. Thanks! And congrats to all who made the list.
Great list of top 100 blogs. Thanks for sharing!
My blog was included on this list @ #43 (Amplify Interactive SEM Blog), so my team created a page on our site with a LIVE STREAM of all the blog posts and tweets from the Top 100 blogs/bloggers. Check it out here: http://www.amplify-interactive.com/cision-top-100…
This is a pretty extensive list and just what I was looking for. There are a bunch I have never heard of before so I guess I will be bookmarking this page. Time to start browsing. Hopefully my blog can make it in there next year! Time to start pumping out the fresh perspective!
I am a follower of some of the blogs included in the list. Thanks for compiling. I agree that there is no perfect metrics to gauge the real influence of these blogs…but this list will serve as a challenge to those who were not included.
Wow! There are quite a lot of new blogs that I haven't heard of included on the list. Thanks for sharing. Time to check those stuff and see what they've got.
Great list.Thanks for sharing it with us.
Hi guys, I have a new blog related to internet marketing and seo, could you check out a few of my articles and leave a reply? thanks! here is my latest: Google vs Bing!
http://www.hypetactics.com/seo-for-google-and-bin…
Thanks for posting this list. It really gives you several avenues to look at with SEO.
Thanks to Beth and Kristen, for the list of top 100 U.S. Social Media, Internet Marketing & SEO Blogs – 2012.
Web Listings Inc
Super list Beth! SEOmoz is certainly one of the best SEO blogs online. Their blackboard Friday is very useful and informative
.
Thanks you SO much for this list… I've been looking for something a bit more definitive than a google search
Great reference.
Thanks for providing updated list. It'll be so helpful for me. Keep sharing it in future too.