I know I promised to blog my interview with our in-house Global Paid Search Marketing Manager this week but due to some scheduling difficulties we’ve had to do some shifting – but it will come, I promise.  In the mean time, however, I wanted to recognize a couple of previous colleagues in their addition to Lee Odden's (of TopRank) BIGLIST Search Marketing -Best Blogs on the Net. 

First, I see that Michael Brito’s online marketing blog recently made the list and Paul O’Brien’s search and online marketing blog has been there for a while.  Congrats to them both – well deserved!  Paul and Michael have been blogging for some time now and I’ve been following their blogs as I know both from when they worked with me at HP and respect their great work.  I just started blogging for HP in April and am still trying to get into the groove – to figure out what people want to hear from a large in-house SEO of a global organization.  

Now I’m sure there are a lot of things readers would love for me to share, but I also have to consider what is acceptable to share broadly when it comes to our in-house SEO strategy.  I’ve always wondered how Matt Cutts manages to draw the line between what he should write about and what is considered Google’s secret sauce when writing his blog.  I’m also not your typical blogger; I assume no one really cares where I went on vacation, where I ate lunch or how many dogs I have, but I see that a lot of bloggers do share much of their personal lives and interests with their readers. 

Do typical blog readers want the personal stuff?  It does make for a more interesting read – especially if it is weaved into a post where it’s relevant (I’m a true SEO – all about relevancy!).  But I kind of like getting right into the meat as I don’t have much time to read blogs so I want to make the most of it.  Maybe I am the anomaly? 

I do hope, however, that what I write about is of interest to other in-house SEOs (feel free to leave a comment on the matter!). SEO is an exciting and fun field to be in but it can also be mind-boggling and challenging in many ways so I think many in-house SEOs want to hear how others are managing some of the struggles (or successes) they also encounter.  Or maybe it’s just that we’re all geeks in our own way and we really just want to talk to and read blogs by other geeks? 

I have been given some signals that people want to hear what I have to say about in-house SEO. Some examples: I was on the In-house Big SEO panel (SES NY 07 and SES San Jose 06), also listed as a TOP In-House SEO by Natural Search Blog, Interviewed by Jessical Bowman as her In-house SEM Spotlight at Search Engine Journal, elected to the Board of Directors for SEMPO in 2007 and recently Danny Sullivan even Sphunn my blog posts on integration of SEO and on-site search (after someone else originated the Sphinn).  Perhaps the icing on the cake would be an addition to the TopRank BIGLIST?