The number of times this article was shared on Twitter and Facebook.

Shows estimated monthly search traffic to this article according to Ahrefs data. The actual search traffic (as reported in Google Analytics) is usually 3-5 times bigger.

Shows how many different websites are linking to this piece of content. As a general rule, the more websites link to you, the higher you rank in Google.

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.

FYI, I called this Ahrefs’ BlogScore™ 😉

Sidenote. Learn more about this algorithm + our methodology Learn more about this algorithm + our methodology here . I’m under no illusion that this grading system is perfect, but I do think it beats a subjective list.

I’ll share the results in a moment. But first, a quick poll.



What’s your favorite SEO blog? [Poll]

Got a favorite SEO blog? Let us know.

Pick your 3 favorite SEO blogs from our list! Ahrefs (20%, 1,279 Votes)

Backlinko (20%, 1,260 Votes)

Moz (14%, 906 Votes)

Search Engine Land (6%, 397 Votes)

Search Engine Journal (6%, 362 Votes)

SEMRush (5%, 322 Votes)

Diggity Marketing (4%, 231 Votes)

Yoast (3%, 187 Votes)

Search Engine Watch (3%, 165 Votes)

Matthew Woodward (2%, 137 Votes)

GotchSEO (2%, 132 Votes)

SEO by the Sea (2%, 131 Votes)

by the Sea Search Engine Roundtable (2%, 105 Votes)

Robbie Richards (1%, 79 Votes)

Builtvisible (1%, 73 Votes)

I’m From The Future (1%, 70 Votes)

Lion Zeal (1%, 68 Votes)

Cognitive SEO (1%, 60 Votes)

Kaiser the Sage (1%, 50 Votes)

Merj (1%, 49 Votes)

Dejan SEO (1%, 46 Votes)

Marie Haynes (1%, 45 Votes)

Distilled (1%, 42 Votes)

Buzzstream (0%, 31 Votes)

SEER Interactive (0%, 29 Votes)

Interactive Hobo-web (0%, 29 Votes)

Web Marketing School (0%, 26 Votes)

Evolving SEO (0%, 23 Votes)

Greenlane Marketing (0%, 18 Votes) Total Voters: 2,648

Loading … Loading …

I’ll be incorporating these votes into the BlogScore™ algorithm whenever I next update this post.

Don’t see your favorite SEO blog above? Suggest it here.

Now let’s get to the results, shall we?

Sidenote. All results below are ordered by BlogScore™. Make a copy of AR ), Domain Rating ( DR ), average number of words per post, average number of RDs (for the top 10 posts), estimated organic search traffic, or average number of new blog posts per month. All results below are ordered by BlogScore™. Make a copy of this spreadsheet if you would like to sort the results by Ahrefs Rank (), Domain Rating (), average number of words per post, average number of RDs (for the top 10 posts), estimated organic search traffic, or average number of new blog posts per month.

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.

Our favorite post: SEO Copywriting: 17 Powerful Secrets (Updated for 2018)

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

Good news. You’re already familiar with this one, as you’re reading it right now. 😉

(I don’t want to blow our own trumpet here, so I’ll spare you the cringe-worthy comments.)

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.

Our favorite post: I Just Deleted Your Outreach Email Without Reading. And NO, I Don’t Feel Sorry. (Evergreen)

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.

Our favorite post: 10 Illustrations of How Fresh Content May Influence Google Rankings (Updated)

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.

Sidenote. I should stress that Danny no longer owns the blog. In fact, he now I should stress that Danny no longer owns the blog. In fact, he now works for Google

Our favorite post: How To Hire A Great Link Builder

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.

He has 20 years experience in online marketing and it shows.

Our favorite post: How To SEO Meta Tags For Google & Other Search Engines in 2018

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.

Our favorite post: Are Nofollow Links Actually Good For SEO? Here Is Proof…

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.

Be warned, Matthew isn’t totally white-hat.

Our favorite post: The Ultimate Guide to Internal Link Building for Incredible Results

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.

Sidenote. Danny Danny stepped down from his role at SEL in 2017 , but he’s still an advisor to the company that owns the blog.

Our favorite post: The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors

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).

But they do publish the occasional “big” piece of content, such as their extensive history of Google algorithm updates. This is a must-read for anyone new to the SEO game.

Our favorite post: What Is Latent Semantic Indexing & Why It Won’t Help Your SEO

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.

Our favorite post: The definitive guide to higher rankings for WordPress sites

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.

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

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

Our favorite post: Do Social Signals Influence SEO? A 2016 Study on 23 Million Shares

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.

Our favorite post: How to Become an SEO Expert [Complete Guide]

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 SEO newbies. 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.

Our favorite post: Microdata, JSON-LD & Schema.org Rich Snippets

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!)

Our favorite post: 14 Killer Link Building Strategies for 2018 (with Examples and Scripts)

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.

Our favorite post: How Ryan Stewart is Everywhere — A behind the scenes look at his agency

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.

Our favorite post: Google Data Studio: The Beginner’s Tutorial

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.

Our favorite post: Google’s Reasonable Surfer: How the Value of a Link May Differ Based upon Link and Document Features and User Data

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.

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 SEO and marketing community.

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

Our favorite post: Screaming Frog Guide to Doing Almost Anything: 55+ Ways of Looking at a Tool

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.

Our favorite post: Audience First Link Building

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.

Our favorite post: How to Optimize Your Website’s Crawl Budget

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.

Our favorite post: Google Algo Updates and More – A Complete List of Changes that Could Affect Your Site’s Traffic.

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.

Our favorite post: RIP Roundup Posts: Here’s a 5 Step Process to Engage Influencers With Superior Content

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.

Our favorite post: SEO Link Pillowing: The Definitive Guide

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.

Our favorite post: Technical SEO Roundup May 2018

Founder: Dan Shure

Blog type: Single-author

Ahrefs Rank: 360,271

Domain Rating (DR): 56

Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 3,106

Average posts per month: 2

Average post length: 616 words

Evolving SEO, created by Dan Shure, isn’t really an SEO blog in the traditional sense.

He doesn’t publish a lot of written content. It’s all about podcasts.

Every couple of weeks, he interviews another SEO about a specific topic. Topic-wise, it’s usually quite specific and based on each individual’s personal experience and specialties.

For example, when he interviewed Bill Slawski last year, the topic was Google’s most significant search patents. (What else!?)

Our favorite post: 093: Earn Links By Building Your Own Stock Photo Library w/Jay Thibault

Founder: Martin MacDonald

Blog type: Single-author

Ahrefs Rank: 583,224

Domain Rating (DR): 52

Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 114

Average posts per month: 2

Average post length: 716 words

Martin MacDonald is yet another SEO that doesn’t care much for search volumes.

He simply reports on things that he deems to be important, such as Google’s recent experiments with zero-results SERPs. Most of his posts are commentary about the goings on in the SEO world, be it his opinion on a particular SEO study or on Google’s latest attempt to make SEO harder than ever.

Bottomline: you’re unlikely to see Martin ranking for the “big” competitive SEO-related terms anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t publishing important stuff. You should definitely follow him.

Our favorite post: You don’t really hate SEO.

Founder: Dan Petrovic

Blog type: Single-author

Ahrefs Rank: 67,862

Domain Rating (DR): 72

Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 1,221

Average posts per month: 1

Average post length: 216 words

Almost everything that Dan publishes on his blog is an experiment or survey of some kind.

Here’s his research into why nobody reads your content. Here’s an experiment about ranking without links. And here’s him playing around with Google Search Console data to calculate CTR averages.

This kind of content isn’t going to be for everybody. But if you’re a die-hard SEO with a love for spreadsheets, I recommend checking out some of Dan’s stuff.

FYI, Dan has spoken at a lot of events. He also did a Whiteboard Friday video a few years back.

Our favorite post: Can quality content rank without links? [SEO Experiment]

Founder: Bill Sebald

Blog type: Multi-author

Ahrefs Rank: 344,170

Domain Rating (DR): 57

Estimated monthly organic search traffic: 3,223

Average posts per month: <1

Average post length: 438 words

Bill Sebald has been doing SEO since 1996.

(Just to be clear, that was before Google existed.)

He’s worked with the likes of Toys R Us, Dick’s Sporting Goods, PetSmart and Calvin Klein.

At Greenlane, he and his team blog about everything from link building to analytics to technical SEO. But I have to admit there is a slight bias towards technical topics.

Having said that, Bill does his best to simplify such topics and explain things to those less intelligent folk… like myself.

Our favorite post: How I Explain Ranking Algorithms in SEO

It’s your turn!

If you haven’t done so already, click here to vote for your three favorite SEO blogs in our poll.

Didn’t see your favorite SEO blog on the list? Suggest it here.