10 Sites I Visit Everyday For Business

1) Search Engine Watch - the first site dedicated to search engines, and still the best. Originally started by Danny Sullivan in 1996 (he resigned in 2006), this is a great site to find out the latest search engine stats, search engine news and more.

2) Plurk - a Twitter like site that I'm testing for business use at the moment. It's a lot easier to follow than twitter (although if you use a twitter app or plugin such as Twhirl or twitterfox then twitter isn't that hard) and has a funky graphical interface. The downside is that it seems to be the new toy of choice for school kids bored in their lessons, so be careful who you approve as a friend! The link is to my personal profile.

3) EzineArticles - in my opinion this is the best place out there to submit your articles to. It is well respected by Google, and the moderators work hard to keep the rubbish out. It's easy to submit to, and if your articles happen to be rejected, they'll always tell you why. If you're on Twitter, you can follow Ezine Articles Guy here.

4) Ecademy - love it or loathe it, if your target market is small businesses, then Ecademy could be the perfect place for you. With a 'blogs' page (which is really an internet forum) a Marketplace (which is more for Google than the other members) and various clubs (where it seems that most of the business is done), it's easy to start reading one post and find yourself an hour later sill reading things. I'd recommend limiting your time on here and monitoring it against the value (business or not) you get from it.

5) SEO Book - with a ton of SEO tools, this site is a must visit for anyone interested in Internet Marketing and SEO. There's also an e-book written by the founder, and the blog is a must read.

6) Google Analytics Blog - although my website statistics software of choice now tends to be Get Clicky, a lot of my clients (and indeed me) still have Analytics in place, so I check in briefly every day to see if there's anything new on the blog.

7) Matt Cutt's blog - Google employee Matt Cutts has long been known as the public face of Google for Webmasters and SEO companies alike. He regularly gives out Google news, and occasionally hints at things he's not allowed to (or doesn't want to!) tell. Well worth checking every day to keep up to speed.

8) 299 Steps To Website Heaven - yes, i know it's my own site, but I visit it every day, whether to post, to approve comments, or to dig into the archives to find a tip that could help someone.

9) Google Webmaster Tools - whether to check up on clients recent search statistics or to open a new account for a client, Webmaster Tools is an important part of the optimisation process. It gives out a myriad of info about a site, as well as alerting a website owner to errors such as bad links, missing pages and more.

10) Get Clicky - I'm a great fan of Google Analytics, but it has to be said that it is annoying having to wait until the following day to see stats. Get Clicky gives you stats in real time - so you can post a thread somewhere like Ecademy, and within seconds be tracking visitors from that article, to your site, see which pages they look at and where they click to leave.