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 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?



Ignite Social Media