BIGLIST Update: Local Search Marketing Blogs 010710

Welcome to the first BIGLIST review of SEM and SEO blogs for 2010!  What a year it will be. We reviewed hundreds of marketing blogs in 2009 and well over a thousand since we started the original list. Today’s BIGLIST update focuses on a few local search marketing blogs we’ve recently discovered.

Expand2Web Blog – The design winner for this BIGLIST Update Local SEM Blog Edition goes to Expand3Web by Don Campbell. This blog offers a rich mix of WordPress and Local search marketing advice as well as how to screencasts & videos as well as a podcast.

And now on to the other Local Search Marketing additions to TopRank’s BIGLIST this week:

• GEO Local SEO – Steve Hatcher aka Stever recently branched out from his main blog to this new local SEO focused blog that offers specific, firsthand and actionable tips for local search marketing. The first posts focus on Google Local & Maps and promises to cover “just about anything pertaining to local web marketing”.

• Optimized! – Mary Bowling  is an experienced online marketer who writes for a Local Search Marketing column for ClickZ. She’s also blogged her observations and insights about a range of SEO topics and of course, local SEM since December 2007.

• Mihmorandum – David Mihm is a well known local search marketer and designer out of Portland that blogs about his involvement in the search marketing industry and offers opinions and observations of what small businesses should know about local SEO. This blog is well worth adding to your RSS reader.

• Local Search Simplified – Shagun Vatsa is a consultant in Toronto and with her blog, she focuses on adding value to tried and tested online marketing strategies and offering quality advice on how small businesses can leverage local search, Google maps, SEO and SEM.

• Local Search Optimization – Netherlands based Martijn Beijk blogs about local search optimization, Universal search, mobile, Google’s Local Business Center and location-based services.  He also reviews tools, which is handy and a definitive guide to KML and sitemaps for SEO.

• Search Marketing Insights – Dev Basu is another Toronto based search marketer and he promises “no BS marketing strategies for small and big biz alike”. He writes about local search, small business marketing, online yellow pages and social media. He also writes about industry involvement such as speaking at conferences like Search Engine Strategies.

For reference, here are a few Local Search Marketing Blogs already included in TopRank’s BIGLIST:

• Small Business SEM by Matt McGee
• Screenwerk – Greg Sterling
• Local SEO Guide by Andrew Shotland
• Kelsey Group Blog
• Understanding Google Maps & Local Search by Mike Blumenthal
• Local MN Blog by Paul Jahn

If you’ve been included in the BIGLIST of SEM Blogs, then be sure to add some BIGLIST Badge flair to your blog.

What Local search engine marketing or online marketing blogs would you add to BIGLIST?

BIGLIST Development Note: We’ve been working to develop a more effective and interesting way to organize and manage the BIGLIST of marketing blogs, which will offer categorization, sorting and ranking as well as many other pieces of information about each blog. The all new BIGLIST will launch in February 2010.