Fused Nation - UK SEO Blog

On the back of Danny and Chris leaving SEW to start up SearchEngineLand, Rebecca Lieb is interviewed by Mike MacDonald (WPN) on the future of SEW.

The good word - business as usual at SEW for the time being.  Danny will be staying with SES through 2007 and Chris will be staying with the shows for another 3 years.  There is also some chat about getting SEW more in line with the ClickZ “interactive marketing” focus, as this is the trend that SEO is generally following just now anyway.

They are currently recruiting people to blog for SEW and openly taking suggestions from the SEO community about how to approach the future of SEW.

You can discuss the interview on the SEW forums or email the team with suggestions at newera (at) searchenginewatch.com.

There was a little controversy over at Threadwatch recently, with accusations that SEW have blackballed Danny by removing links to his blogs from the SEW blogroll.  This was quickly played down by Elizabeth though, who said it was simply a mistake and promptly added the links back, along with a link to SEL, which IMO is a move that we rarely see from large organisations - a concise response and timely resolution to a problem.  Kudos to SEW on that one.  Brendan has a nice summary of the story and some background commentary.

Web Professor has some interesting comments about Danny’s choice of branding for his new venture (and John has a few comments as well) and while I agreed that SEL was an interesting choice to make, I do understand Danny’s subsequent reasoning which makes a lot of sense.

Interesting times.

It’s always tough when key members of any community move on to another venture, especially so when they are going to be competing with you (and even more so when they were central to your own success!).  How would you manage a situation like this?

I think SEW are handling it pretty well - it does seem that they lacked a little knowledge about what was going on, but seem to be approaching the situation well.  They are actively looking for people to fill the gap that has been left - perhaps not by replacing it (who would want to fill Danny’s shoes?), but certainly be making sure that SEW still maintains a decent level and quality of content.

SEW has been a great resource for a lot of people - I sent some feedback in when it was asked for, which is something I rarely do (I’d rather rant here!) - I think it would be worthwhile for others to do the same.  Maybe the old SEW is gone, but I think that in situations like this, organisations are very open to suggestion, which could help create a great resource for the future.

Regardless, I’m sure both SEW and SEL will do great in their own right - best of luck to both!

MG