Now that Yahoo and Microsoft have been granted regulatory approval for their search deal, what happens now? That is a question that many people in the search industry want answered.

Just for a recap, Microsoft will power Yahoo Search and Yahoo will become the exclusive search advertising provider for Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. Recently, WebProNews had the opportunity to sit down with Shashi Seth, the Senior Vice President of Yahoo Search Products, to learn more about how the alliance between the two companies would be integrated.

First of all, Seth points out that the full integration will take between 18-24 months. As it takes place, he is quick to say that users will continue to receive a compelling search experience from Yahoo that goes beyond the traditional search page.

In spite of the partnership, each engine will maintain its individual areas of focus. For Yahoo specifically, Seth says, “…What our users will continue to find is that not only can they find that great content that resides on [the] Yahoo network on Yahoo Search, but also that we can take people from Yahoo Search to the appropriate properties etc., in the right context…”

According to Seth, users will likely see slight modifications to Yahoo Search over the next several months as the Microsoft integration is completed. However, the companies have not yet decided if they will do a major launch with new features and functionalities.

There are still many questions regarding Yahoo such as the company’s level of commitment to search, implications on advertisers, future innovations, and more.  Keep watching WebProNews for more information on these very issues directly from Yahoo.

Posted by randfish

This week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this week’s sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I’d wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though, I need to provide some context (as this isn’t a wholly self-explanatory presentation).

Link building has, classically, been a tactic slapped on to a marketing campaign or website post-launch. I believe that those companies/sites that treat link acquisition as an afterthought, rather than building it into the product, will always lose out to those who treat link building strategically. In the deck below, I walk through a number of examples of sites, primarily startups, that have done this. These include:

• Twitter – every user of Twitter has an incentive to link to their profile so more people will follow them. This is also true of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Etsy & others
• Vimeo – nearly everyone who uses Vimeo appreciates the beautiful aesthetic they’ve created. The embeddable versions of Vimeo videos look and feel more professional and high quality than nearly any other player, hence they get embedded (a lot). This embed action automatically drives links back to the video on Vimeo’s site, Vimeo’s homepage and the user’s profile, all with targeted anchor text.
• Urbanspoon – not only do they give badges to restaurants like Yelp and have started an online reservations system like OpenTable, Urbanspoon also features reviews from bloggers and foodies, who are then incentivized to promote their inclusion on the site.
• Last.fm – the widgets users embed on their site to share their favorite music automatically creates links back to the service.
• SurveyMonkey – a truly viral product (anyone who’s surveyed is automatically exposed to the site), SurveyMonkey is inherently link acquisitive through the product. In order to use the service, you need to link to SurveyMonkey’s site, where your form is hosted.
• Scribd – just look at the embed and the link below; ’nuff said.
• Miibeian.gov.cn – possibly the greatest link building strategy ever devised. The Chinese government requires that all websites in the country link to this site in order to operate legally; not too shabby, eh?

Here’s the deck:

Strategic Link Building

As you can see, I’ve put in a shameless plug for Open Site Explorer at the end. If you haven’t seen the new features launched yesterday, you’re missing out. Tons of the data is completely free, and top pages is just about the easiest way to find traffic and link opportunities ever built (not that I’m biased or anything).

Look forward to your comments about the presentation and the concept of productizing link acquisition into a site.

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Posted by Danny Dover

 Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features!

New Features:

• Top Pages on a Domain
• Target URL
• Comprehensive CSV Export
• Usability Enhancements (The end of page reloads when applying filters!)
• Improved Filtering

Top Pages on a Domain

With the new version of Open Site Explorer you can get a sorted listed of the top 10,000 pages on a domain. This is essential for viewing your own site and for doing competitive analysis.

With this new feature, we can see that Microsoft is unwisely 302 redirecting their homepage! Doh!

You can also see which content is drawing the most links on your competitors websites. In this example we see that that these are the most linked to comics on XKCD.

Target URL

The new version of Open Site Explorer shows you which URL a given link is targeting when you sort by sub or root domains so you can see exactly where the given link is helping you. (This is also available for all links when the data is exported as a CSV)

With this new feature you can see which link is most important to Harvard.edu’s domain and which page it is linking to.

Comprehensive CSV Export

After lots of input, we are now offering more robust CSV exports.

The new CSV exports offer:

• The Target URL of the given link
• Numbers of links to the given source page
• Indication of whether or not the linked is followed
• Indication of whether the link is internal or external

Usability Enhancements

Remember how you used to have to reload the page every time you applied a filter in Yahoo! Site Explorer?

With the addition of the Filter Results button, these needless page reloads are a thing of the past.

Common Tasks are Easier to Perform

New buttons make performing common tasks easier and faster to do.

The new Explore and Compare buttons make it easier to get more information about any links you find interesting.

Improved Filtering

With the new version of this tool you can do even more filtering to drill down into what you think is important.

In this example, we filtered the data to show only followed (dofollow) and 301 redirecting external links to the specific page.

Open Site Explorer vs. Linkscape vs. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Throughout this process, we also heard a lot of questions about the differences between Yahoo! Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer and Linkscape. The chart below lays out the similarities and differences.

Help us Improve!

Are there other features you want to see? Are we moving in the right direction? We want know! Please feel free to share your suggestions and opinions via SEOmoz on Twitter, SEOmoz on Facebook or in the comments below

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Posted by Nick Gerner

Since the launch of Open Site Explorer and our API update, Chas, Ben and I have invested a lot of time and energy into improving the freshness and completeness of Linkscape’s data.  I’m pleased to announce that we’ve updated the Linkcape index with crawl data that’s between two and five weeks old—the freshest it’s ever been.  We’ve also changed how we select pages, in order to get deeper coverage on important domains and waste less time on prolific but unimportant domains. 

You may recall Rand’s recent post about prioritizing the best pages to crawl, and mine about churn in the web. We’ve applied some of the principles from these posts to our own crawling and indexing. Rand discussed how crawlers might discover good content on a domain by selecting well-linked-to entry points:

In the past, we’ve selected pages to crawl based purely on mozRank.  That turned out to favor some unsavory elements (you know who you are ).  Now, we look at each domain and determine how authoritative it is.  From there we select pages using the principle illustrated above:  Highly linked-to pages—the homepage, category pages, important pieces of deep content—link to other important pages we should crawl.  From intuition and experience we believe this gives the right behavior to crawl like a search engine would.

In a past post, I discussed the importance of fresh data.  After all, if 25% of pages on the web disappear after one month, data collected two or more months ago just isn’t actionable.

From now on, we’re focusing on that first bar in the graph above. By the time our data approaches that second bar (meaning most of it is out of date), we should have an index update for you.  If and when we show you historical data, we’ll mark it as such.

What this means for you is that all our tools powered by Linkscape will provide fresher, more relevant data, and we’ll have better coverage than ever.  This includes things like:

• Open Site Explorer
• Competitive Link Finder
• Linkscape Visualization

As well as products and tools developed outside SEOmoz using either the free or paid API:

• Buzzstream
• Quirk’s Search Status Toolbar
• Carter Cole’s Toolbar for Chrome

There are plenty more.  In fact, you could build one too!

Because I know how much everyone likes numbers, here are some stats from our latest index:

• URLs: 43,813,674,337
• Subdomains: 251,428,688
• Root Domains: 69,881,887
• Links: 9,204,328,536,611

Our last index update was on January 17th.  You might recall some bigger numbers in the last update.  Because of the changes to our crawl selection, our latest index should exclude a lot of duplicate content, spam pages, link farms, and spider traps while keeping high quality content.

Our next update is scheduled for March 11. But we’ll update the index before then if the data is ready early

As always, keep the feedback coming.  With our own toolset relying on this data, and dozens of partners using our API to develop their own applications, it’s critical that we hear what you guys think.

NOTE: we’re still updating the top 500 list at the moment.  We’ll tweet when that’s ready.

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Posted by RobOusbey

There are very few tactics which can guarantee success in linkbuilding. Executed correctly, giving something away is one that gets close to fulfilling that promise.

This post covers competitions and giveaways; I’ll share techniques and tactics you can use, and will include links to some interesting competitions seen online recently, and some that we’ve run for clients.

Running giveaways online typically offers a few different opportunities; of most immediate use to SEOs is that competitions can attract links from authoritative sites and a variety of domains. They can also be great for data collection – it’s fine to ask the entrants for their email address and whether they’d be happy for you to send them emails again in the future.

Furthermore, there’s a potential for increasing brand awareness amongst people who’ve not heard of you before.

Running a Giveaway

In the simplest competition users visit the website to fill out their details, possibly answer a simple question, and then a winner is picked out of the hat.

Competition Prizes

If you have high margin products, these can make attractive prizes without harming your bottom line too much (e.g.: giving away tickets for your theatre doesn’t cost anything if the show isn’t sold out.) You should also consider ‘money can’t buy’ prizes: a trip to watch a rugby match is cool, but spending the day working for a national team and getting a signed jersey is priceless.

Look out for partnerships: when Distilled recently ran a whisky giveaway (to create buzz around the brand prior to the launch of our US office) we were sent messages by Jura whisky and Master of Malt (neither of whom we knew beforehand) offering some quite exceptional additional prizes.

There’s potential to improve any competition by approaching suitable partners first, to offer some co-publicity and links. (I once emailed some contacts to ask for contributions to a competition, and ended up with £300 worth of books, £120 of CDs and DVDs, £50 of gift vouchers, two magazine subscriptions, a £120 digital camera, a wild animal adoption, a bottle of port and a towel that folded up into a beachbag.)

Of course, the flip side of this is that you could simply look out for people in industries related to you that are running competitions, and offer an additional prize for their promotion, in return for links, etc. You can use Google to find such opportunities: search for terms like ‘win’ and ‘competition’ alongside phrases used in relevant niches (eg: ‘win album’ for music prizes) and then filter down to results from the last week / month. For example: this Google search.

Get Listed

The ‘comping‘ community is a great place to seed your competitions to begin. Certainly in the UK, a listing on a few active sites will often send the first 2 – 5,000 entrants – and I’m sure it’s not just us limeys that love a freebie. Search around for sites to submit your competition to, but regional sites you could consider include:

• Loquax.co.uk (UK)
• ThePrizeFinder.com (UK)
• Compaholics (UK)
• CompetitionWinner.com.au (AU)

Each site may have specific restrictions, and can have a delay between a few days and few weeks before submissions are published, so submit your competition as early as possible.

 

Seeding

Send competition details directly to twitter users & bloggers who you either know well, or think would be interested in covering it. Remember that people can be less inclined to share a competition if it’s good enough (to give themselves better chances of winning.) There are various creative solutions to this issue, but you can just keep it simple and appeal to the blogger’s love of sharing cool stuff with their readers.

Furthermore, look for opportunities to find partners who have email lists. Let’s take two companies with email marketing lists: BigHotel (a large, fictional hotel chain) whoc is running a competition, and GreenTour (a successful, fictional eco-tourism site) which is launching a new feature. They have similar audiences, but there’s no overlap between their products; BigHotel can mention the feature launch in their next newsletter and EcoTour can promote the competition to their subscribers. This just required finding a partner and making a gentleman’s agreement; as Bonytoad is fond of saying: "Win-Win, For Teh Win."

Use Your Affiliates

Make sure that your affiliates can add their tracking codes to the entry URL, and they’ll help to spread awareness of the competition pretty quickly and to places you might not be able to reach to otherwise.

Create a video primer

The Irish rugby competition mentioned above was launched with a 60 second video promoting the prize.

Videos are particularly shareable: embed codes can be copied from the Youtube page, and lots of social sites (including Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit) allow for easy importing of videos. Given that people might be watching the video anywhere, make sure to prominently display the URL for the entry page in the video, either on-screen or using video annotations.

Get Press

Lots of magazines and newspapers are happy to mention competitions and link to them from their websites. Find publications that target the geographic area or niche targetted by the competition. Pick up the phone and give them a call – ask to speak to someone who deals with promotions, or in the editorial department. A few minutes later you might have a decent link and some coverage that will be read by a very targeted group of people.

Maintain Momentum

When people have entered, it’s a waste to just show them a ‘thanks for entering’ message. Use this opportunity to give a call to action – typically to share the competition with other people. Consider having a secondary prize that encourages people to share the competition. For example:

 

Upsell the Competition

Have a successful competition, and want to take advantage of this get more entries? Take the email addresses of everyone who entered so far, and send them a message during the week before the competition finishes.

I’ve not done this, but I think it could work really well to add an extra 10% to your number of entries. To be honest, I’m considering not mentioning it here, and saving it for myself for a while, but I want to see what CTR & results anyone who tries it gets. Let me know if you have a chance.

Other Competition Structures

Outside of the basic ‘name-out-of-a-hat’ competitions, there’s potential for all sorts of interesting competition structures.

Competitions to Encourage Engagement

Ooh.com run a competition with two $100 prizes each week. The winners are picked from the new ‘OOHs’ which have been uploaded, and encourages people to not only add their content, but to make sure it is as ‘rich’ as possible.

Sites with user generated content (such as a forum, social networking or social media site) could use similar techniques to reward particular contributions.

Twitter Competitions

A competition where the only entry requirement is to tweet a message including a link to a site / account / hashtag has very low barriers to entry for Twitter users. Once up and running, such competitions excel at keeping momentum – the more people hear about the competition, the more people enter – and help to improve brand awareness for companies and products.

The tactic’s been used by a variety of organisations; the most famous execution was probably the competitions run by Moonfruit. This did well, but the concept already feels a little bit passé – plus you have to have an awesome product and spring for $10,000 of prizes to have the same impact that Moonfruit enjoyed.

Consider modifying this viral ’self-fullfilling prophecy’ competition for other formats or networks; Umbro had people upload photos on Facebook – the Facebook ‘News Feed’ then showed entrants’ friends that they’d submitted an entry. If you’re looking to find similar success for your sites, Google Buzz is still new & cool… I’m just saying…

Procedural Points

A couple of miscellaneous points about operating a competition:

Conversion Rate Optimisation

If you’ve attracted people to the competition entry page, you should hope to see a very good conversion rate to completed entries. Try using some CRO techniques on the entry page, to maximise the number of entries received and the amount of useful data collected.

Avoid Cheats

Log the IP address along with each entry – you can then investigate any IP addresses which submit a lot of entries to identify people who are trying to cheat the system.

OK; I hope that this has been useful, or at least inspired you to go through the back of the cupboards, and see if you have anything interesting to give away. Using tactics like this can be an iterative process – it doesn’t need to go exactly right first time, and people will never get bored if you run a few competitions to improve your process. Good luck!

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“What should a blogger do in their first week of blogging to get their blog on the right track?”

I’ve been asked to write on this topic for a while now and while there is no one way to launch a blog I thought I’d jot down a few starting points over the coming weeks.

By no means is it an exhaustive list but I hope it’s helpful for those starting out.

Note: I’m presuming you’ve already set up a blog on a platform, domain and have a template sorted. Some of these tasks will be done by some bloggers before they go live – others after. I guess all I’m suggesting is that they are done early on as one starts blogging. Also note that the order I cover these tips in is not necessarily the order you’ll want to do them in.

Lastly – before I kick this off with the first post – thanks to the many bloggers who have added their own tips to my call for advice to bloggers in their first week. I’ll using some of the comments left on that post in posts on this series in the weeks ahead so feel free to keep adding your advice there.

I’ll update links to each of the posts in this series below (stay tuned for post #1 shortly):

• Create Compelling Content

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What to Do in Your First Week of Blogging

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guest post by Kelly Diels

I have been blogging for almost ten months. I quit my job – a really, really good job – last week. Today, I made $10,600.

In one day.

(Okay, not really in one day, but today I collected two cheques for writing projects that I secured because the clients saw my pieces at ProBlogger and hired me. True story.)

How did I use my blog to launch a business?

1. I didn’t know anything about blogging except that I wanted to do it, so I googled “how to blog” and landed on ProBlogger. Thank goodness. So I learned how to blog on ProBlogger. I literally started with a piece from the archives about what to include in your first post.
2. I started reading the blogs of people who were commenting at ProBlogger. I wrote a couple of adoring e-mails. Josh Hanagarne might know what I’m talking about. He’s easily flattered.
3. Then, as I gained confidence – in part because I read the trial-and-error stories of other bloggers, here –  I started guest posting on ProBlogger. I sent Darren Rowse a whole whack of wacky pieces.
4. Darren said, and I quote very loosely because I’m pretty sure he used proper grammar, hey I like your stuff, wanna write weekly?
5. I said, umm, let me think about it. (Don’t believe that ostentatious lie. I didn’t say that. Instead, I said  ”YES!!!!” and I launched (unbeknownst to him) into The Happy Shimmy wherein one drops it like it is lukewarm. And my awkward-girl-dance still looked better than this one. Maybe. Probably not. Shout out to bloggers: that’s a challenge. Let’s see your dance moves.)
6. My blog traffic exploded. I didn’t mind this, at all.
7. People started asking me to write for them. They’re even paying me. Lots.
8. I have true, passionate friends – other bloggers – who are part of my heart, now, in real life (such a thing actually exists) whom I met because of ProBlogger (see #2). Either I saw their piece and stalked them until they relented and befriended me, or vice versa.
9. A white hot meta-entrepreneur, and one of the people I admire most in this world, asked me to co-author a book with her.
10. Yes, I am TOTALLY FREAKING OUT. ProBlogger, lots of love, some dancing and a little effort (ok, a LOT of effort) changed my life.

My quit-my-job-in-ten-months lessons:

• when you’re figuring it out, the guidelines and tips and case studies at ProBlogger and other how-to-blog sites make the blogging world less intimidating
• find your voice and write good stuff
• be yourself. There’s no competition for that.
• make friends
• try lots of different techniques to promote your blog. As soon as you figure one out, keep doing that, and add another. (Did you read Jade Craven’s post about landing pages? Or Josh Hanagarne’s advice abouttricking his friends having a contest to get people to buy advertising? These are live-action case studies and that’s just useful.)
• investigate – and try – lots of different models for making money: ads, products, affiliate deals, offline work.
• play nice
• prepare to be tired. Very tired. You may as well cut off your cable, now, because TV is no longer part of your daily regime. Unless you’re a TV blogger. In which case you’re just screwed.

So yep, I’ve got big love for ProBlogger (though my cable company may have other opinions) because what I learned here empowered me. I don’t mean that in just a fluffy, feel-good, girl-power kind of way; I mean, I have money in my hand. I mean, I now write for a living.  In just ten months, ProBlogger helped me change my life.

And I’m pretty sure that Darren Rowse would have offered me the weekly gig even if I hadn’t written this piece as bait.

I’m just kidding. Really. He made me the offer two months ago and unlike some people (me), he’s immune to flattery. Don’t even try it. Call me instead.

Better yet, let’s dance.

___________________________

Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She’s also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage, a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How ProBlogger Changed My Life and I’m Not Saying That Just To Suck Up.

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Next week here on ProBlogger I will be beginning a series of posts with tips for bloggers in the first week (or month) of their blog.

I’m halfway through writing it (I’m hoping it’ll be useful to established bloggers starting second blogs too) already and have a heap of content written but thought it might be good to include a few reader and Twitter follower tips scattered through it as well.

I’m not so much looking for tips on Pre-Launch stuff like getting a domain, choosing a blog platform etc – I’m more looking for short tips on taking a blog that is set up to being an active blog.

So if you have any tips for bloggers starting out – I’d love to see them in comments below. I won’t be able to use them all but those I do I’ll certainly credit back with a link to your blog.

All I’d suggest is that you try to keep your tips relatively short and to the point as I’ll be using these as short snippets at the end of my posts.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The First Week Of Your New Blog – What Do You Do?

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Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we’ve ever had before.  In that same vein, today we’re announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it’s free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:

• Data for any URL in our index including
  • Domain and Page Authority
  • mozRank
  • total link count
  • external, followed link count
• The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
• Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
• The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
• The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain

You’re welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:

• Buzzstream
• Brandwatch
• HubSpot’s Grader Suite
• Quirk’s Search Status toolbar

Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we’re excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data.  The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you’re free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we’re expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:

• Additional metrics:
  • number of domains that link to you
  • mozTrust
  • number of links to all pages on your domain
  • and more
• A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
• Plenty of sorts on links:
  • domain authority
  • page authority
  • linking root domains
• Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you’ve got that many)

This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer.  So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job   If you do, drop me a line and I’ll take a look. We’d love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.

We don’t even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source

To sign up, just contact us, and we’ll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership.  A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge.  The paid API is extra.  Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

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In this post Jade Craven shares her thoughts on 30 bloggers worth keeping an eye on in the year ahead!

1. Dave Navarro

Dave was featured as one of tomorrows star bloggers in 2008 and has continued to impress in 2009. His tenacity and hard work have helped cement himself as a leading blogger and  coach. He has a truly impressive resume with guest posts on Copyblogger, two product reviews here on Problogger and joint ventures with other high profile bloggers.

2009 has been the year where he strategically built up his profile to become a respected member of the blogging community. In 2010, I expect he’ll be leveraging that profile to provide more awesome resources to help bloggers succeed. You can check him out at The Launch Coach and be sure to sign up for his advance discount list and for advanced notice of his More Buyers Every Month training.

More on Dave:

• Review of How to Launch the **** out of Your Ebook
• How 12 Experts Make Money Through Their Blogs (And How You Can Learn Their Secrets)

2. Skellie Wag

Skellie has kept quite for most of 2009. She has focused on her work at Envato and providing the occasional killer resource at Skelliewag. Despite her absence, many bloggers still credit her as one of their favorite bloggers.

I hope we will be seeing a lot more of Skellie in 2010.

More from Skellie:

• The Trust About Creating a High Traffic Blog
• How to Write Posts That Set Stumbleupon on Fire
• Blogging with Audacity

3. Sarah Prout

Sarah Prout runs a boutique publishing company called Sprout Publishing. She creates cool products targeting business, bloggers, social media professionals and entrepreneurs.

She has caused quite the stir in the local social media scene with her blog, Entreprenuerial sparkle. She has built a strong reputation on delivering quality products and being really useful to her twitter followers.

You can check out my review of her Twitter Success Blueprint at Twitip and find out about her new course, Sprout Buzz. I am so keen to learn what awesome projects she’ll be working on next year.

4. Johnny B Truant

Johnny B Truant was rocking it at his humor blog before getting the attention of Naomi Dunford. He offered to be a guinea pig of her Online Business School and started guest posting on Ittybiz about his attempts to build an online business.

He raised his profile quickly with strategic guest posts and free offers. He quickly became a fixture in the blogging community and restructured his online presence so that all posts are hosted at Johnnybtruant.com.

He now makes a considerable income through technology consulting, affiliate commissions and sales of his product Zero to Business. You can check his new venture with Charlie Gilkey at Charlie and Johnny Jam sessions.

I hope he expands his products available in 2010 and that he continues to provide his awesome guest posts.

More from Johnny:

• How One Blogger Made 3k a Month By Helping People – And How He Can Help You
• Six Ways to Make More Money as an Affiliate
• How to Boost Your Business By Developing Bulletproof Trust

5. Leo Babauta

Leo was already widely regarded in the blogosphere, but this year he has shown why he commands so much respect. He has released two new blogs – Mnmlist and Zen Family Habits as well as courses at A List blogging Bootcamps. He has also released the free minimalist theme, the ebook on minimalism and the motivation handbook.

He has done this on top of promoting his book The Power Of Less and maintaining the high caliber of writing at Zen Habits. He shows no signs of stopping in 2010 with rumors of more projects in the works.

More from Leo:

• The Essential Guide To Growing Your Blog On Minimal Time
• 7 Essential Things You Should Be Doing When Your Blog is Still Young
• How Passion Can Transform Your Blog

6. Ali Hale

Ali Hale has made waves in 2009 with her staff blogging, guest posts and subsequent release of her Staff Blogging Ebook. She has set a new standard for high quality guest posts.

She has recently launched her blog at Aliventures where she provides in depth articles and comprehensive product reviews. I believe she will be contributing even more to the blogging community in 2010.

More from Ali:

• Thirteen Steps to Write and Publish A Free Ebook in Thirteen Hours
• The Other Side Of Problogger: Making Money Right From the Start of Your Blogging Career
• Every Blogger Starts From Zero – You Could Be On the A-List Next Year

7. Yaro Starak

Yaro Starak has shown bloggers just what they can achieve if they dominate a niche. Yaro started blogging at Entreprenuers Journey and has created a drool-worthy product funnel.

He has released a series of membership sites targeting bloggers at all levels of success including the very successful Blog Mastermind. I’m hoping he releases some new products in 2010 and continues to show bloggers what can be achieved through perseverance and delivering high quality content.

More from Yaro:

• 10 Techniques for Finding Blog Readers
• Don’t Be an Insular Blogger
• Free Blogging Tips Podcast With Darren and Yaro

8. Joanna Penn

Joanna has been the hidden success story of 2010. Her blog, The Creative Penn, has had a lot of success in both the local and intentional blogging communities is developing a strong reputation for providing high quality content and is famous for providing high quality links on twitter.

She shows how rising stars can be useful and gracious. I know her blog is just going to get even better in 2010 and feel honored to be part of that journey.

9. Naomi Dunford

Naomi Dunford is awesome. She has a shaved head, conspires against a duck and likes to swear. She also has one of the freshest blogging voices online.

Her blog, Ittybiz, is one of the best resources on how to marketing your blog and business. She provides tonnes of free material and affordable courses as well as other courses like Marketing 101, Marketing School, SEO School and Online Business School. for her loyal customers. So many of my friends credit her for their inspiration and success. She is fresh from a recent redesign and I can’t wait to see how her site evolves in 2010.

10. Chris Guillebeau

Chris has received a lot of attention with his blog, the Art of Non Conformity. His unique philosophy and compelling writing style propelled him to authority blogger in less than 279 days.

He has released a number of unconventional guides and partnered with skilled writers to deliver niche products.

2010 will see Chris travel to fascinating countries, release more unconventional guides and the publication of his first book.

More from Chris:

• Blogging and Insecurity: Conquering the Fear of Presenting Your Big Ideas

11. Mike CJ

Mike has created a name for himself in the blogging niche. He become a Problogger in 2008 thanks to Mikes Life and his two travel blogs.

He stood out with his practical blog posts and fast developed a community around Mikes Life. In 2009, he released his blogging course  and twitter guide. In 2010, he has just released Beyond Blogging (cowritten with Nathan Hangen.)

12. Dan Schawbel

Dan Schwawbel is a brilliant example of an authority blogger. He has risen to the top of the personal branding niche having released a book, magazine and awards.

In 2009 he expanded the personal branding network with the creation of the Student Branding Blog. His content is syndicated by Forbes, Reuters and Fox Business.

In 2010, I think we will see Dan take niche blogging to a whole new level. I feel privileged to watch it happen.

More from Dan:

5 Ways Blogging Can Make a Difference For You in This Economy

13. Jonathan Fields

Some of you may not know Jonathan. He is the a blogger, author and speaker. Thats just the simple version, his bio described him as

a giddy dad, husband, New Yorker, multi-time health & fitness industry entrepreneur, recovering S.E.C./mega-firm hedge-fund lawyer, slightly-warped, unusually-stretchy, spiritually-inclined, obsessed with creation, small-biz and online marketing-catalyst, speaker, direct-response copywriter, entrepreneur-coach, yoga-teacher, columnist, author, once-a-decade hook-rug savant, pro-blogger and career renegade™ gone wild.

He wrote a fantastic book called Career Renegade and released a killer report, The Truth About Book Marketing. He’s spent this year helping as many people as possible – whether it be through his speaking events and workshops or the creation of new projects like Tribal author.

It will be fascinating to see what he accomplishes next year.

More from Jonathan:

• 3 High Powered Reader Engagement Tactics
• Are Your Readers Doing What You Want Them to Do?
• Bloggers Without Boundaries: Are the Lines Getting Too Blurred?

14. Marko Saric

Marko has had astonishing success during 2009. He marked a year at How To Make My Blog and successfully launched his Twitter Marketing ebook. He earns a consistent income through his Thesis theme reviews and blog consulting. He did a fantastic presentation about how to build a better blog at a recent meetup in London.

I hope 2010 brings more products and presentations because he brings a lot to the blogging community.

More from Marko:

• Get Inspiration From Blog Comments When Writing Your Next Post
• Create a Media Kit to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog

15. Charlie Gilky

Charlie Gilkey is many bloggers secret weapon. He is a business and productivity coach that writes at Productive Flourishing.

He recently launched Email Triage and has joined with Johnny B Truant to produce monthly Jam Sessions.

He will be released more affordable products in 2010, as well as helping more bloggers kick arse. I cant wait to see what he and his clients achieve.

16. Robb Sutton

Robb has impressed many with the success of Mountain Biking 198. He has received over $100′000 in review products which he spoke about in his book Ramped Reviews . He now works on his network while blogging about his journey to success at Robb Sutton. You can check out his comprehensive free ebook, Ramped Blogging, while there.

He shows how people can apply practical business schools to the blogosphere and what you can achieve when you don’t doubt yourself. He does done multiple guest posts and podcasts this year and I look forward to hearing about his future projects.

More from Robb:

• How To Treat Your Blog Like a Business
• How Getting an F On Your School Paper Makes You a Better Blogger

17. Gary Vaynerchuk

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? He crushed it during 2009.

He launched Vaynermedia, a business specializing in building brand equity. He signed a 7 figure book deal with Harper Studio and released his best-selling Crush it. He has had many high profile press mentions and television appearances.

Gary has given many bloggers something something to aspire to. Knowing him, he’ll give us even more next year.

18. Chris Brogan

Chris has accomplished so much this year. His book, Trust Agents, became a New York Times bestseller. He touched a lot of people with his overnight success video series and grew his blog to almost 40′000 subscribers. I’ve had trouble with keeping up with all he’s accomplished this year because he has done so darn much. He works incredibly hard to ensure that his work helps as many of us as possible.

Judging by his business wishlist, he will be achieving so much more in 2010.

19. Michael Martine

Remarkablogger has been a good friend this year and it has been a pleasure to watch his site grow. On top of his blogging and coaching duties, he helps market the Headway wordpress theme. This theme has really impressed a lot of my designer friends, and I know they have great plans for it.

Michael is definitely someone to watch in 2010. I just hope that, despite his success and accomplishments, he’ll always be the awesome guy I’ve come to respect.

20. Lea Woodward

Lea and her husband, Jonathan, have shown that you don’t need to stay in one place to rock the blogosphere. They have taken one blog, Location Independent, and developed an entire community around it.

The expanded the blog to create a network – using the birth of their daughter Mali as motivation for Location Independent Parents. She also expanded to develop a series of Location Independent guides.

2010 will see them expand their product range as well as develop the Location Independent community. If you are aspiring to blog while traveling, they are a must read.

• How Stressful Do You Find Blogging?
• Are Bloggers Really Putting Their Health At Risk?

21. David Risley

David is now a fixture in the blogging community. He tells it like it is at his DavidRisley.com blog and makes 6 figures a year from his PC Mech blog and products such as the Blog Masters Club.

He has taught us so much this year and will continue to do so during 2010. It will be interesting to see what new projects he comes up with.

More from David:

• Why Nobody Cares About Your Blog
• How A Blogger Creates a Real Full Time Income

22. Glen Allsopp

Glen Allsopp has a resume that would make many established bloggers envious. He has guest posted at many high profile blogs and is a successful staff blogger. He launched Cloud Living to much acclaim and has followed that up with another killer ebook - Reality Switch. I’ve loved learning about Glens story, both at PluginID and Viperchill.

More from Glen:

• You’re Losing Your Subscribers: How To Get Them Back
• How To Find Your Passion
• Analysis of StumbleUpons Top 50 Stumbles

I’m confident that his business will skyrocket in 2010 – especially with his $1 million case study.

23. Laura Roeder

Many bloggers owe a lot of their success to Laura Roeder. She has shown how you can leverage social media effectively and how to market with class. Her blog, and business, boomed in 2009. She released a paid version of The Dash, launched her Creating Fame course and developed that into the Creating Fame Classroom (and more like Backstage pass to Twitter).

I hope she continues to create more brilliant information products in the new year and that she continues to provide so much value to the community.

More from Laura:

How to Make Deals with Bigshots in Less Than 10 Minutes

24. DM Scott

DM Scott isn’t the sorta guy you normally see on these lists. I met him at a Social Media Masterclass and was blown away by his blogging knowledge. He has written two successful books – World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing and PR. He has released many killer free ebooks and blogs at Web Ink Now.

He is someone you should get to know if you want to learn how to get world wide attention using social media. He knows his stuff and I’m sure he’ll be providing high quality content beyond 2010.

25. Darren Rowse

Darren already rocks the blogging community. He has a top 100 technorati blog, is one of the co-founders of b5 media and is the inspiration for many leading bloggers.

He took things to a completely new level in 2009. He launched Problogger.com, a personal blog as well as 31 days to become a better blogger Workbook.

I’ve heard that he has amazing things planned for his other blogs and can’t wait to see how he develops Twitip and Digital Photography School.

26. Collis Ta’eed

Collis Ta’eed is many bloggers’ worst nightmare. I don’t want to know how much money I’ve spent on market places like Theme Forest and Graphic River.

Envato has grown so much this year. They have launched many new marketplaces, blogs and tutorial sites. They have cemented themselves in the creative communities.I’m really excited to see how Envato will develop next year. I hope that I can somehow even be part of it.

Also valuable are the E-books that Collis is part of from Rockable Press – how to be a Rockstar Wordpress designer and how to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

More from Collis:

• More On Hiring People To Write For You
• How To Climb Mountains

27. James Chartrand

2009 has certainly been a busy year for James. When he isn’t pumping out content on Men with Pens, he is actively commenting or connecting to the community via twitter.

2010 will be for interesting for James after the recent revelation that he is, actually, a she. James is still one of the best ‘blokes’ I know, but this story has really set the blogosphere on fire. It will be very interesting to see how it unfolds in the new year. Will she release a book? Will mainstream press pick up the story? I don’t care – as long as she continues to bring class to the blogosphere.

Also co-authored by James is the Unlimited Freelancer e-book.

28. Caroline Middlebrook

Caroline Middlebrook was one of the star bloggers during 2008 but has slowed things down this year to work on her software project.  Her income has been consistent despite only spending only one hour a week.

Caroline will be launching her software project later this month. It will be interesting to see how her blog and project evolves in 2010.

More on Caroline:

• The Power of Commenting on Blogs

29. Adam Baker

Adam shows that you don’t need to be a metablogger to be successful. He has indirectly taught me, and many others, so much about engaging your community. He writes at Man Vs Debt and has spent most of 2009 traveling/working in Australia and New Zealand.

Adam celebrated the 6 month anniversary of Man Vs Debt with a fantastic article about how NOT to suck at blogging. I’m genuinely excited to see how he develops the blog over the next 12 months.

More on Adam:

• Review this Blog – Man Vs Debt

30. Sonia Simone

As the senior editor at Copyblogger, Sonia has the finger on the pulse of the blogosphere. She shows how you can make writing informative and fun. She’s joint ventured on many awesome products this year including Freelance X Factor and Marketing For Nice People. She recently launched the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint – something I’m still annoyed I missed out on.

If you want to excel at content marketing, Sonia can help you. I’m sure she’ll be providing many opportunities to do so during 2010.

Who would go on your list?

These are the people that made it onto my radar this year, but I know there are many fabulous bloggers I haven’t met yet.

Share who you think are the bloggers to watch and why. Some of them may be featured in future Problogger posts.

Disclaimer: While there are affiliate links in this post, none of them are mine.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

30 Bloggers To Watch in 2010

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