A little bit fed up with all the ‘best of 2011‘ and ‘trends for 2012‘ blog posts already emerging on the web, I figured I’d do my own list to make sure that at least one of these types of posts, inevitable in this time of year, had some measure of value:

State of Search: Top 10 Blogs That Are Not About SEO But You Should Be Reading Anyway

I figured if such lists get published anyway, I might as well make one of my own – but this time I’ll make one that could actually break the mold and, you know, be useful. So I thought I’d compose a slightly different list. Specifically, a list of blogs that are NOT about SEO – or only mention it in passing – but that you should be reading anyway. Because the stuff that gets published there is, simply put, epically awesome.

Also on State of Search I wrote a rant that was triggered by a blog post on SEOmoz, in which Rand Fishkin argues in favour of ‘outing’ bad SEO practices. I am against outing, and I explain why:

State of Search: The Division Within SEO: Google is our friend/enemy

Some pro-Google SEOs make comparisons between web spammers and criminals (like Rand does in the Twitter debates), justifying outing them as turning them in to the police. This is, of course, entirely farcical, as web spammers break no laws (generally speaking) except Google’s own arbitrary guidelines. And these guidelines do not exist for the greater good of the internet – they exist only because Google wants to make money.

Top non-SEO Blogs / Division within SEO is a blog post from Barry Adams.