Dear Readers, SEO Pros, and Digital Marketers,
Hello, I’m Jenise. I’ve been at the SEJ helm for 15 years, with Loren Baker and Brent Csutoras at my side as majority owners and operating partners.
Yesterday, I woke up to a monumental piece of news: SEO news publisher Search Engine Land was purchased by marketing tool company Semrush.
There’s an elephant in the room, so let’s start there.
What happens when a large search marketing industry player buys a prominent media outlet focused on the search marketing industry?
Will the publisher’s coverage remain objective and agnostic? Will its authoritative guides include the breadth and depth of tools and platforms and services available – some of which are in direct competition with Semrush?
What happens to Search Engine Land’s reams and reams of existing content – articles, white papers, ebooks, videos – that refer to Semrush competitors (umm, not to mention their backlinks)?
What about credible viewpoints from respected authors that run counter to the new corporate party lines in some way? Will those voices still be published, amplified, quoted on SEL? Or watered down, or even silenced?
So many questions.
Community reactions, so far, have been either of a benign, congratulatory nature or else focused on concerns of bias.
Screenshot from LinkedIn, October 2024
Screenshot from LinkedIn, October 2024
Screenshot from X (Twitter), October 2024
Screenshot from LinkedIn, October 2024
Screenshot from X (Twitter), October 2024
Screenshot from X (Twitter), October 2024
SEL and Semrush both have been active in responding on social media, reiterating that:
“Our plan is to continue to remain independent and unbiased. Our goal is to provide quality knowledge as we always have.”
I do believe that these are their intentions for the existing editorial team, for now.
I’m curious to see whether this independence will stand the test of time, after the dust has settled and the news of this acquisition is lining our digital bird cages.
I’m interested in finding out if SEL’s editorial freedom will stand the test of shareholder interests in an NYSE-traded company that made $305 million in revenue last year. I think we will need to wait and see.
Here’s Where Search Engine Journal Stands
As one of the last independent publishers in the SEO industry, SEJ remains bootstrapped and unbossed.
No one pulls SEJ’s strings, controls our backlinks, our coverage, or our messaging.