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- Using Data to Rank 2011′s Top 20 Internet, Social Media and SEO blogs
  
  For three years now, the folks at Cision have ranked the Top 100 blogs in our category by looking at specific data points. These data points are designed to reward actual site performance versus popularity or “Internet fame.” Last year, Ignite Social Media was ranked second, only to the blog powerhouse Mashable. This year, Cision [...]
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Ignite Social Media Blog

Using Data to Rank 2011′s Top 20 Internet, Social Media and SEO blogs

Jim Tobin | April 14, 2011 | View Comments

For three years now, the folks at Cision have ranked the Top 100 blogs in our category by looking at specific data points. These data points are designed to reward actual site performance versus popularity or “Internet fame.”

Last year, Ignite Social Media was ranked second, only to the blog powerhouse Mashable. This year, Cision added a bunch more blogs (including folks who write about SEO). As a result, there’s a new number one, in Social Media Examiner, and Mashable has dropped to number three.

Ignite Social Media is still ranked #2 in the world.

Blog Rankings Data

So how does Cision rank the blogs? Specifically, they are ranked by:

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,

The last three data points come from Compete.com. They evaluated blogs in Cision’s media database, to find 400+ covering social media, online marketing and search engines and then did the ranking.

Ranking the Top 20 Social Media, Internet, SEO Blogs

2011 Rank	Blog	Change from 2010	2010 Rankings	Blog
1	Social Media Examiner	unranked	1	Mashable
2	Ignite Social Media	no change	2	Ignite Social Media
3	Mashable	-2	3	Problogger
4	Search Engine Land	unranked	4	ReadWriteWeb
5	SEOmoz Blog	unranked	5	MediaShift
6	Local SEO Guide	unranked	6	Danny Brown
7	HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog	5	7	aimClear Blog
8	Occam’s Razor	unranked	8	Seth Godin’s Blog
9	ViperChill	unranked	9	Social Media Today
10	Find and Convert	63	10	Social Business
11	SEO Book.com	unranked	11	Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence Blog
12	Fathom SEO Search Engine Marketing Blog	unranked	12	HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog
13	ChrisBrogan.com	1	13	Inside Facebook
14	Seth Godin’s Blog	-6	14	ChrisBrogan.com
15	Zac Johnson	unranked	15	Small Business Search Marketing
16	Outspoken Media	unranked	16	digiday:DAILY
17	Social Media Today	-10	17	Dealer Refresh
18	Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence Blog	-8	18	Threeminds
19	Graywolf’s SEO Blog	unranked	19	MackCollier.com
20	All Facebook	unranked	20	Daily Blog Tips

Summary

We value this ranking for a lot of reasons:

First, being ranked #2 in the world in anything is exciting.
Second, staying at #2 when they added a lot more blogs was really gratifying.
This ranking isn’t based on someone’s “favorites.” Cision is doing their best to get an empirical ranking of the blogs in our space. (In fact, Cision had the guts to show that their own blog dropped 56 places in this year’s rankings.)
To do well on this list, you have to attract traffic and that traffic has to stick around when they arrive, and then come back. We’re honored that people do that on our site.

That’s about it. Didn’t see a blog you expected to see? Jump over to Cision’s blog to see the full Top 100.

What surprised you about the list?

http://www.jasonfpeck.com JasonPeck

Congrats on getting recognized again for all the time/effort that goes into creating great content here. I’m actually surprised Mashable wasn’t #1 again, but SME has definitely been putting out some great content so not too shocked I guess.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HIPSI7GH45CH7GIQELHZJI3WIM fannie Carnes

This blog is going to be impressive resource. Thanks a lot for a collection of good tips. I look forward to reading more in the future. Keep up the excellent work!
Business Loan
http://twitter.com/SMMagic SocialMediaMagic

What an honor! Congratulations!

Great information on your blogs, I can see why you rank so high!

J. Souza
SocialMediaMagic.Com
http://investinsocial.com Jason Keath

Congrats Jim. Question, why do you think your content is doing so much better than a lot of very capable blogs on this list? What do you think you are doing differently?
http://twitter.com/jtobin Jim Tobin

That’s the million dollar question @jasonkeath:disqus , isn’t it? I guess I’d say that we have a large number of writers so we don’t force people to write when they have nothing to say. So a fair percentage of our posts have something to say. Sometimes, when you feel compelled to blog X times per day or per week, the content ends up being mixed.

Truly, I’m not really sure, but that’s my guess…
http://investinsocial.com Jason Keath

Or maybe it is just the NC water?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EQKAY3UP3YNSJWU5BTYS7ZVDBM bessie Talbot

I wonder how you got so good. This is really a fascinating blog, lots of stuff that I can get into. One thing I just want to say is that your Blog is so perfect!
BUSINESS CASH ADVANCE
Guest

What happened to ReadWriteWeb? It’s not even in the top 100 anymore.
netfirms coupon

This is good data of popular 20 blogs with their details. Blogs and Social media are important for Internet marketing. This is really great post.
http://www.evanfrangos.com Evan Frangos

Occam’s Razor, I find to be the most useful blog on the net! His books are also great!
Anonymous

Hi Jim, thanks for your blog! I am honored that the two blogs on the values of our ranking. We just wanted to be as transparent as possible with them!
SEO Company India | SEO Services India
http://www.anitaclarkrealtor.com/ Anita Clark Realtor

Good to see several I follow on the list! Headed over to check out the rest on this excellent list.
http://www.directbusinesslending.com/ Business Financing

Wow. Thanks so much for this post. This is really great. :)