Over the last few weeks, I've realized that I really need to optimize my processes for working. It's been a long, steady slog, but I've finally got at least one item nailed down, and since it was so popular last time, I figured I'd once again share my Firefox Sidebar. Of course, this means I'm also re-ranking the blogs that I read (old list here), trimming many off the list and adding a great number of new ones, too. I'll share my sidebar first, then get into the blog list more specifically.
That's pretty much what it looks like. I have a few other folders and links that I'm not showing off, but they're probably of less interest/value to people that aren't me :) Here's what you're seeing:
- Email - no surprise that it's up first, as this is usually 70% of my workday. I keep my tasklist in email (SEOmoz uses Google's hosted applications platform for the nominal cost $50/user/year), star everything that needs attention, archive everything I've finished and try to literally answer every email I'm sent (although getting back to search community folks who email me for the first time can take almost a week nowadays).
- Conversion History - this shows a view of what happened on SEOmoz - how many users signed up, how many bought premium accounts, how many cancelled, new comments, new questions in Q+A, new YOUmoz posts, the works!
- SEOmoz Q+A - It's taking us between 48-72 hours to complete a response to a Q+A thread, and I'm hoping to drop that down to 24-36 in the near future. This link takes me directly to the unanswered questions and open threads, which I try to run through in reverse chronological order.
- SEOmoz Tracker - This is actually publicly available; it's the recent posts updater that shows all the threads that have new comments that your SEOmoz account hasn't yet read. It's good for responding to questions in comments and booting out any spam that finds its way in.
- IndexTools Analytics - It's true; I'm obsessed with our stats - daily visitors, visits, page views, and, of course, referring URLs.
- Social Buzz - These are aggregator-type sites that I use to make sure I'm aware of the latest in the world of search and the web. Even I'm shocked how soon after a story breaks the journalists and phone calls and emails pour in, and I think I've branded myself at this point as someone who pays attention, so I feel embarassed and probably look like an ass when I'm not on top of the news.
- Blogs - I'll cover these after the bookmarks. Basically, I'm one of those insane people who actually visits blogs rather than use a feedreader. I've tried 'em - I really have. I just need comments and the ability to comment right away, even though I probably only leave comments on other blogs 1-2X a day.
- Forums - Like many in the SEO space, I've drifted away from forums towards blogs. I still try to visit Cre8asite every day, but it often ends up being once every 2-3, and the other forums I'm lucky if I stop in once a month.
- News - This is what I read while I'm at my desk eating lunch (probably 2-3 days each week). I hate being uninformed about current events and Reddit+Daily Show only takes you so far. I have to include the BBC as my top source because US News is so skewed/local it barely gives you a worldview at all.
- Bookmarklets - I trimmed these to only the ones I use. Basically, you click them while you're surfing a domain and get the Yahoo! & Google data. The SEOmoz dashboard is really amazing, too. If you're not using that now, I'd highly recommend it - saves me tons of time when I'm investigating a site. You can take any of these and drag them into your toolbar and they should work:
- Reputation Management - This handy folder lets me track down mentions of our brand across most of the visible web. If you repurpose it for your own brand, personal name or clients, it's very useful - just make sure you're checking on a regular basis.
- SEOmoz - Google Blog Search (ordered by date)
- SEOmoz - Google Web Search (last 24 hours only)
- SEOmoz - Google News (ordered by date)
- SEOmoz - Technorati
- Seattle Info - Weather, maps, traffic, bus times (yes, I still don't own a car, but I walk to work most days so I only need this if I'm catching a bus to downtown to see Mystery Guest or it's pouring rain and I forgot a coat)
I used to have a lot more in the sidebar, but I'm a minimalist in all things including my browser. Maybe that's why I can relate so well to Swedish design :)
On to the blogs - the following is NOT a list of the most important blogs in the search space. It's NOT even a recommendation of what you should be reading. It's simply a list of blogs that I find valuable, ordered by how often I usually read them. Thus, the first 5-10 I visit almost every day, while the last 20 or so, I might only check once a week. And, yes, this can also be considered SEOmoz's blogroll:
- SearchEngineLand - Like the NYTimes in the offline world, it's all the search news that's fit to print
- SEO Book - Probably still the best strategist and deep thinker on search and online marketing topics
- SERoundtable - Coverage of relevant chatter in the search forums
- Matt Cutts - When he posts something useful, almost everyone in search covers it anyway, so I could probably move him further down at some point
- Gray Wolf - Michael's tough on Google, and really smart when it comes to revealing strategies or discussing the news
- Marketing Pilgrim - Between Andy & Jordan, the coverage here is terrific
- SE Journal - Loren Baker and his colmunists cover a lot of great technical material as well as
- TopRank - Consistently good material and lots of event coverage to boot.
- Copyblogger - Brian Clark's impressive foray into the sphere has become one of the most popular blogs on the web. Now he's got several other contributors helping out.
- Stuntdubl - If only he'd blog more often; the material's extremely high quality.
- Cre8PC - Kim Krause's work covers usability, accessibility and a beautifully dichotomous outsider/insider perspective on search.
- Webmaster Central Blog - The Webmaster Trends Analysts do a good job clearly explaining their tools and some ways that Google crawls and interprets web pages.
- Google Blogoscoped - Philipp Lenssen says it's 80% Google; it's also about 80% must-read :)
- ProNet - The major writers here are some of SMM's best and brightest
- Lisa Barone - Great coverage and clever writing combine to make Lisa eminently readable
- SEO by the Sea - Bill Slawksi's in-depth patent analysis blog is a must read for engineers and optmizers alike
- Vanessa Fox - The creator of Google's Webmaster Central and current ad director for Zillow authors terrifically valuable posts.
- Shoemoney - Many of his posts are a fluff, but there's still lots of good material, too.
- Jon Mendez - A brilliant conversion specialist with an unrivaled depth of experience.
- Fantomaster - Ralph's black hat knowledge makes for consistently good material.
- Eric Enge - Eric & Stone Temple have been on a roll for the last 9 months, scoring great interviews and putting out impressively comprehensive posts.
- Sugarrae - The amount of enjoyment you get from Rae's blog is in direct relation to how much you enjoy snark with your learning.
- DaveN - Dave's gotten more serious about blogging lately, and his deep intelligence on search subjects
- Matt McGee - Matt's expertise with local search topics and his charismatic writing style makes for a terrific blog.
- Grokdotcom - The Eisenbergs' client list speaks for itself, and their blog on web marketing and conversions is one of the best.
I won't cover the rest in detail, but they're all worthwhile reads. My best suggestion is to check them out and see which ones prove valuable to your business.
- Donna
- SEO Black Hat
- Traffick
- MindValley Labs
- Scobleizer
- Live Search Blog
- Tropical SEO
- Greg Linden
- John Battelle
- Johnon
- Muhammad Saleem
- 10e20
- Greg Boser
- Jim Boykin
- Tamar Weinberg
- WebProBlog
- Cartoon Barry
- eKstreme
- Scoreboard Media
- Neil Patel
- Bill Hartzer
- ResourceShelf
- Out of My Gord
- Dennis Mortensen
- Ian Lurie
- IR Thoughts
- aimClear
- UltraGeek
- Performancing
- SEOPedia
- Daggle
Hopefully, this list and the bookmarks are valuable to you. Please feel free to post links in the comments to your own favorite sources for any of the above that I might have glossed over.
You forgot to write a blurb about Matt McGee!
Edit: Okay, now you have but neglected to respond to my comment saying so, thus making me look like a crazy lady.
Talking to yourself again crazy lady?
She does that alot, the doctors say to just nod and say "hmmm" every once in awhile :)
sidenote - you might want to have the dashboard produce an error like 'this is only for premium members' when the user isn't one - I hadn't heard of it before so I threw it on the bookmark bar, navigated to a site and clicked on the bookmark and I just get an empty seomoz page.
Twasn't until I did a quick site search that I found it was premium content!
Just a suggestion :)
Excellent idea, I'll definitely take that back to the team :)
Hmmm, on reputation management, there are a couple of SEOmoz members who have great products...
Will Critchlow of Distilled has a great online reputation monitor
And Niel Patel of course has the useful serph buzz monitor
Thanks for the shout-out, ftb.
(thanks for the link ftb!)
On the topic of online reputation monitoring - if you notice that Rand monitors buzz about SEOmoz online so if your blog isn't listed but you want the moz to read your post simply write a post, mention (and link to) seomoz and write a killer headline and you can be sure someone from over there will swing by at some point and read it.
I think I should coin a new term: Rand-bait.
Baiting mozzers again Tom? Behave yourself.
I told you last week about constantly bugging Rebecca for sphinns and diggs...
Lol - you should have seen what I asked Rebecca for last week!!!
Unfortuantely, the moz-borg isn't set up to give me the info I need which means my killer youmoz post is rather worthless....
Lovely post, that´s the reason why you have a lot of incomming links from everywhere.
As a newbie, I am reminded again why I am so glad I found SEOmoz. If nothing else you can rely on it to reveal more of the iceberg...
Sweet! I made a vow over the weekend to get organized. My physical desk, office and both computers strongly resemble my teenage daughter's bedroom.
I'm thinking you have some ideas I can use...thank you (and for the recognition/links as well. Santa will be good to you this year.)
I'm surprised you don't have Bob Massa's blog on there. I feel like he's got a really great view on just about everything that has to do with SEO/SEM. He often seems to have an opinion or something to say that I find not many other people talking about, rather than regurgitating what everyone else is already saying.
For someone starting out it is a real treat to see where the pros are going for information. Its valuable because finding good sources is not always obvious - especially when we are still filling our shoes. Nice!
Ok, I think I just got at least 10 more links to follow...thanks Rand (like this already wasn't enough :P)
This is great bookmark material.
almost feel smarter because I have a lot of the same sites in my readers....almost.
Rand, do you just use a plain text signature. I use the company version of Google Apps as well and that handles our emails.
I know google mail doesnt allow HTML signatures, which is annoying as hell so I have to copy and paste in my signature every time...
No - I'm using the HTML email signature plugin for GMail. It at least let's me place a link in there :)
Thanks for this tip Rand!! Looking at moving off of Outlook with my gmail but hated not having the signature.
I feel as though I should respectfully point out that it's actually the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog, not Lisa's. This Lisa person is all an illusion. :)
Yeah, but we all know it's the Lisa Barone Variety Hour over there, starring Lisa Barone.
I totally agree with the BBC comment.
I live smack dab in the middle of Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington DC. So my local news is often times mashed up with national news.
But for everything international I go to the BBC (I put their audio content on in the background while I work).
For a long time I went to every blog I wanted to on a daily basis. I had them all set up in a bookmark folder and then just did the old "Open All in Tabs". Big waste of time since most don't post on a daily basis.
Then I tried adding them all to a MyYahoo page - along with some news searches, etc. Less time wasted, but still not productive.
I had tried RSS readers in the past - but none never stuck. A few months ago I started using Google Reader. It only took a day or so for me to get hooked and now I love it.
It has probably been the single best thing for me to keep up on all news and blogs. Organized neatly into different segments (SEO and Blogging, Technology, Local and National News, etc.). I can use the list view to review things quickly, and I make liberal use of the "Mark all as read" button.
But I too am a bit of a minimalist and I often wonder if I'd miss out on anything significant in SEO if I only went to one aggregator site (Search Engine Land Daily Recaps would probably be the best one).
I find this fascinating - as a UK resident you always assume that the BBC is pretty much mainly a UK (or at least european) thing. To hear that they kick ass overseas is pretty cool (and also must say a lot about the quality of news coverage in the US).
You guys get ads on the site too right? It's not ad supported over here but I think it might be coming soon (read that they were trialing it somewhere)
Rand, thanks for sharing your control panel of the Shuttle Discovery.
You are the pilot in control of all the instuments.
And the order of priority is perfect.
Rand, I'm honored and surprised to see my personal blog listed. Much thanks.
By the way, someone stole this very post over at Moneypumps.net
moneypumps.net/search-engine-optimization/re-ranking-the-seo-blogosphere-and-my-updated-firefox-sidebar/
Raj - they're certainly not the only ones. We get scraped and copied by a few dozen blogs every time we post. It's frustrating, but not worth the effort to try and issue copyright violations against all of them. I only wish the search engines could do a better job weeding out pure scrapers (doesn't seem that technically challenging to me, at least for the obvious ones I keep coming across).
www.copyscape.com
Seems like a cool site to check who is copying your stuff. I don’t have a premium account but the concept is good!
I'm always pleased when my blog bookmarks are similar to an industry ninja such as yourfineself.
'Course, I'm a bit of a knobend as I only went to comment to suggest that you read Tropical SEO too... which I now see is in your list. Heh.
Ta for sharing though. Any chance you'll share the other blogs you dig, or are there too many NasteeHomeAloneWife.freeblogsite.com ones in there? Hahahahhaaaaaa...
Man, it's great to know I already have a simliar list of news, blogs, and resources!
I'm honored to be on your list and humbled by the company it keeps.
and what a great idea for a post!
Thanks Rand. Not that I plan on copying everything you do, but it's still helpful to see since I'm trying to streamline my own process.
I'm like you with the feeds. I've tried using a reader, but I still like visiting the sites. My feeds are in the diebar via Sage and I will make decisions on a lot of posts based on the title and the description I get mousing over the title, but I still like to visit the page.
Sometimes I want to comment, but most of the time I just find it easier to read the content that way. I've tried Google Reader a few times and never could get used to it.
Just out of curiosity, do use Live Bookmarks for RSS or a reader (and, if the latter, which one)? I like the speed of Live Bookmarks (being app-based and not a separate web-page) but having to actively go to each blog to see if it was updated was killing me, productivity wise. I've been much happier since switching to Netvibes.
Please forgive me Pete for mentioning your arch enemies reputation tool :)
I'm recruiting an army :). Thanks ftb.
Hehe, I'll keep e-maiing you if I post anything news worthy I see ;)
Nice list Rand, I'd be interested in knowing what your fellow mozzers read too :)
Thanks for sharing your sources.
I have a question: There´s any update to this post? Please, answer, I´m very interested in that topic.
Probably the only ones that aren't here are the local tech press.
Technology & Media Guardian (especially the PDA blog); lots of interesting stuff about technology, media & the increasing overlap.
Also New Media Age & Revolution often have interesting stuff.