e-marketing-news

Internet consultant Mike Grehan has the perfect job. He wanders around speaking with those "behind the velvet curtains" of the world's leading search engines. Somehow, over peanuts and margaritas he seems to always discover the real insider scoop you need to know to work the engines to your best advantage. He then shares this essential information with you in lengthy yet highly entertaining monthly diatribes in his complimentary newsletter. As author of the best-selling "Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide" he knows what he's talking about. A must-read.

EnginePaper Search Engine Newsletter

Andre le Roux, publisher of the 297-page behemoth Search Engine Yearbook 2004, offers a "just the facts, ma'am" email summarizing key search engine news developments. This prolific guy is well-networked within the industry, so the topics covered in EnginePaper are edited down to the essence of what really matters, with an occasional whimsical aside thrown in for good measure. If his SEY 2004 is any indication, he's forgotten more than most people have ever known about search engines, so this is a good one to keep on your radar.

High Rankings Advisor

The informed and witty Jill Whalen makes her High Ranking Advisor newsletter a pleasure to read. As an SEO consultant, she offers her hands-on expertise and commentary in every weekly edition. If you actually perform search engine optimization or marketing (or direct those who do) you will learn from this no-cost newsletter. Content includes news and company information, but the real benefit lies in Jill's tips, tricks and reviews of tactics and software. You'll also frequently find links to timely discussions conducted by industry experts in the High Rankings forums.

Pandia

Search engine information portal Pandia offers two no-cost newsletters. The weekly Pandia Search World is a news-focused publication. As such, it contains reporting on companies, tools and trends, with links to supporting articles and resources where appropriate. It also frequently includes guest articles on topical issues such as "Nightmares of an SEO Expert" and "Intro to PPC Search Engines."

Pandia Post is a newsletter on Internet searching for those who conduct Internet searches. Isn't that all of us? It includes tips on how to search better, how various search engines work and how to use that information to get higher rankings for you own site. While seemingly occasional in publication (it's not biweekly as claimed), the archives shelter buried nuggets of insight and information.

Search Engine Guide

What started as a list of all the search engines has grown into a robust resource for news and SEM information. The complimentary Search Engine Guide daily newsletter delivers a round up of news from various sources on search engines, tools and technology. The weekly Search Engine Marketing News email is also gratis, and contains a digest of articles from search engine marketing experts such as Andrew Goodman, Detlev Johnson, Jill Whalen and Eric Ward. Subjects range from submissions and optimization to pay-per-click, link popularity and the launch of new tools and services. One benefit of this site is that you can easily search the exhaustively archived news releases and articles by topic, by search engine, by author and more.

Search Engine Marketing Weekly

Launched in January 2004, Search Engine Marketing Weekly is the latest complimentary newsletter offering from DM News (which also publishes the daily DM News/iMarketing News and Email Marketing Weekly). Every Tuesday, subscribers receive a round up of the week's breaking news, research, and company and executive profiles. A quick scan of the paragraph-long summaries will bring you up-to-date. You can link to the complete articles on the DM News site for more details. DM News is basically parsing out their SEM-related articles in this topical publication.

Search Engine Watch

Danny Sullivan could be considered the "father of search engine optimization." Certainly he was one of the first Internet consultants to try to make sense of why some client websites were happily ranked on search engines and others weren't, waaaay back in 1995. Considerate journalist that he is, he chronicled his efforts. The resulting search engine information portal was acquired by Mecklermedia in 1997. Danny continues to manage this invaluable site.

Our focus here is the paid subscription service, which is $69(US) for six months and $99(US) for one year. What do you get? In brief, access to members-only premium content and an exclusive twice-monthly newsletter entitled Search Engine Update. In a bit more detail, you have at your fingertips in-depth guides on how each of the major search engines works, plus guides to optimizing your site to increase both organic traffic and improve paid placement results. You'll also learn from the masters how dynamic pages interact with search engines (or don't), how to build links that really impact your rankings, how to stay out of trouble with search engines and how to decipher the murky relationships between search engines. Portal and search engine features charts and Q&A with Danny himself are a few more of the premium features.

If you just want to get your feet wet, the no-cost Search Engine Report email drops an edited version of the latest news, articles and info into your IN box with a thud once a month, while the complimentary daily Search Day newsletter serves it up in smaller, more manageable bytes.

SearchDay

Search Engine Watch Associate Editor Chris Sherman is responsible for the daily publishing of the no-cost SearchDay email newsletter. If you already read the monthly Search Engine Report published by Search Engine Watch, you know that it's an in-depth review of search engines and related technology and developments. SearchDay was created to relay breaking search engine industry news, tips and techniques in a timely manner. In this quickly moving industry, a daily newsletter is clearly an essential. This is one of the best.

WebProNews/SearchNewz

WebProNews and sister publication SearchNewz are part of the iEntry Network of 70 topic-focused B2B sites. Each publishes a no-cost newsletter. WebProNews is essentially an article portal for Web pros. Most of the content is written by WebProWorld community members. Believe it or not, this newsletter has more than 800,000 subscribers, making it the most popular ebusiness publication in the world. For some time now, WebProNews has placed prominence on the topic of SEO in its newsletter, and the articles include tips, techniques and insider views from pros who deal with this stuff every day.

In contrast, SearchNewz tends to focus on news culled from other resources with the occasional article thrown in for good measure. Take your pick, but do check out the websites as well. The profusion of topics, resources, articles and forums available for Web professionals is astounding.