Search Engine Optimization Blogs I Like

Some people may not know this about me, but I'm a search engine optimization guy. This is how I make my living. This isn't an SEO blog; it's a personal blog. But some people might not know that this is what I do for a living.

A few SEO bloggers out there have really done a great job of helping to educate me about search engine optimization, and I'd like to give a little credit where it's due here. These aren't necessarily the best SEO blogs out there, but they're some of my favorites.

1. Tropical SEO - Andy Hagans is one of my favorite SEO thinkers. If he posted more often, then I'd think maybe he was the best SEO blogger ever, but he's lazy. I want to be lazy like him too. His post How to Build an Affiliate Website You Can Sell for $1 Million should be required reading for any affiliate marketer. And his encouragement post is awesome too. I just wish he'd post more often.
   
2. Michael Martinez - Some people accuse him of being merely contrarian just for the sake of being contrary, but I like his blog a LOT. Some of his posts are really out there, and he seems to get irritated about some really odd things. But his criticism of people touting nofollow as a tool for shaping PR on a site is dead on perfect. (It's ludicrous.) And his hardcore SEO tips is one of my favorite SEO posts ever.
3. 100 Dollar SEO - I only recently found this blog while reading Martinez's blog, but it's good stuff. He posts consistently, and his analyses are thorough and well thought out. His recent post about different linking structures you can use when building a content rich site was one of the best treatments of the subject I've ever read.
4. SEO Book - Aaron Wall's blog almost doesn't need mentioning, because everyone already knows about it. But he's great - honest, sincere, helpful, and thoughtful. The guy really knows what he's doing, and it shows.
5. Eric Ward - This guy's been building links for a million, billion years. If you want an introduction to link building that ISN'T about spamming your links in a million places just so that you can rank in the search engines, this is the place to start. (Links are about more than ranking websites, after all.)

Those SEO blogs aren't listed in any particular order really. I just wrote down the 5 blogs that I read and enjoy the most. (And heck, Eric Ward's site isn't even really a blog. I just couldn't leave him off the list.)

Poker Movie - The Grand Trailer

Some people don't know this, but I'm an avid (albeit losing) poker player. I just started hanging out at the Ridge Poker forum, and I saw this Youtube trailer for what looks like it will be the greatest poker movie of all time. The name of the movie is The Grand. I guess it's an improv comedy kind of movie, in the tradition of This Is Spinal Tap.

Woody Harrelson looks like he'll be having a starring role in this, and David Cross has a prominent role too. And Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David's wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm, is also in the movie. The Grand is directed by Zak Penn, who has previously written a whole bunch of superhero movies.

The movie should come out March 21, 2008.

(And if you want to read my contributions to the poker discussion over there, look for a user named "BigTuna".)