An SEO newsletter is a regular email that picks and comments on what's new in organic search: Google updates, studies, case studies, tools. The most widely read ones are international: Aleyda Solis's #SEOFOMO claims more than 45,000 subscribers, the Ahrefs' Digest 284,000. Written in the UK, the choice is shorter, and only one of the newsletters we found goes out on a fixed day of the week.
The lists that rank for this search quote subscriber numbers that don't match the ones the newsletters publish themselves, and in one case they recommend as weekly a newsletter that has published a single issue since August 2024. On Google UK, two of the lists on page one date from 2022. So we opened the official page of each of the 16 newsletters below and reported only what it says, checked on 29 September 2026 for the international ones and on 10 October 2026 for the UK ones.
The 16 SEO newsletters compared
Subscribers, frequency and price are the ones each newsletter states on its own sign-up page. Where the page gives no figure, the cell says so.
| Newsletter | Written by | Based | Frequency | Stated subscribers | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs' Digest | Ahrefs | international | weekly, on Thursdays | 284,000 | free |
| Backlinko | Backlinko (a Semrush brand) | international | weekly | 180,531 | free |
| #SEOFOMO | Aleyda Solis | international | weekly, on Sundays | over 45,000 | free |
| Growth Memo | Kevin Indig | international | not stated | over 29,000 | free, with a Premium tier |
| Core Updates | Mark Williams-Cook | UK | weekly | over 13,000 (figure for sponsors) | free |
| SEO Newsletter | Olga Zarr | international | twice a week | over 10,000 | free |
| #SEOForLunch | Nick LeRoy | US | once a week | over 7,500 | not stated |
| Lily Ray | Lily Ray | US | not stated | over 4,000 | free |
| AI News You Can Use | Marie Haynes | international | weekly | not stated | free; Pro community at $42 a month |
| SEO Notebook | Steve Toth | international | weekly | not stated | free |
| Daily Search Forum Recap | Search Engine Roundtable | US | daily | not stated | free |
| SearchCap | Search Engine Land | US | daily | not stated | free |
| SEJ Today | Search Engine Journal | US | every weekday morning | not stated | free |
| WTS Newsletter | Women in Tech SEO | UK | weekly, on Wednesdays | 10,000+ | free |
| SEO for Google News | Barry Adams | UK | "irregular" | over 12,000 | not stated |
| Leadership in SEO | Harry Clarkson-Bennett | UK | "fortnightly (or more likely monthly)" | not stated | free, with a paid option |
Two caveats about the subscriber column. It's a stated figure that can't be checked from outside, and company newsletters start with an advantage: Ahrefs and Backlinko collect sign-ups from their own sites and products, an independent consultant only from their own audience. And for Core Updates the number appears only in the section for sponsors, so it's the audience the newsletter promises to those who pay to be in it.
The day's news: three US publications
If your job means knowing by the evening that Google has started an update, you need the daily newsletters from the three US trade publications. The Daily Search Forum Recap from Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz's site, emails a daily summary of the articles published. Search Engine Land has SearchCap, a free daily roundup, plus three separate weeklies on SEO, PPC and local search. Search Engine Journal sends SEJ Today every weekday morning.
These are news newsletters: they tell you what happened, rarely what to do about it. We described the three sites behind them in our guide to the best SEO blogs. If you already get their articles by RSS you can skip the emails; if you don't use a feed reader, pick one, usually the Search Engine Roundtable recap, which follows every algorithm update closely.
International newsletters written by one person
This is the part a publication doesn't give you: one person who reads everything and tells you what matters. We've grouped them by the kind of reading they offer.
The weekly roundup
#SEOFOMO by Aleyda Solis, an international SEO consultant, arrives every Sunday and claims more than 45,000 subscribers. It lines up news, studies, free tools and job ads. It's the newsletter cited most often in the US lists: it appears in 8 of the 9 US pages we read to prepare this article. If you pick just one, it's usually this.
Core Updates is weekly and written by Mark Williams-Cook, director of digital marketing at the UK agency Candour and founder of the AlsoAsked tool. It grew out of his short tips on LinkedIn, where more than 83,000 people follow him, and it keeps the same format: a few lines per topic. #SEOForLunch by Nick LeRoy, a freelance consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota, promises "one email a week" to more than 7,500 subscribers, written in the first person.
Olga Zarr's SEO Newsletter, launched in 2021 as #SEOSLY, goes out twice a week: news at the start of the week, a deeper piece on Thursday or Friday. It has passed 200 editions and claims more than 10,000 subscribers.
Strategy and AI search
Growth Memo by Kevin Indig, an independent consultant, is aimed at decision-makers: the description talks about research-based analysis of SEO, organic growth and AI search "for senior marketing leaders". It claims more than 29,000 subscribers and has a paid Premium tier alongside the free issues. The latest titles in the archive cover visibility in model answers and "ghost" citations in AI answers: useful material if you work on generative engine optimisation.
Lily Ray, founder of the consultancy Algorythmic, writes on the same subject and has more than 4,000 subscribers on Substack. Marie Haynes has turned her long-running Search News You Can Use into AI News You Can Use: weekly and free, with a paid community, Search Bar Pro, at $42 a month or $480 a year (prices published in US dollars only). The page points out that she has been writing it for 12 years.
If you work on AI Mode and AI Overviews, these three are the closest reads to the subject. Read them bearing in mind that the data they quote almost always refer to the US market.
Tactics and tutorials
The Ahrefs' Digest arrives every Thursday for 284,000 stated readers and brings together industry news, reading for digital marketers and the new posts on its blog. Backlinko's newsletter, now a Semrush brand, is weekly and shows a counter accurate to the single subscriber: 180,531 on the day we checked. These are company newsletters and they promote their own tool, but the studies they contain are often the primary source the others quote.
SEO Notebook by Steve Toth sends one practical tactic a week, in short form, and gives new subscribers a pack of spreadsheets for internal links and CTR comparison. The page doesn't say how many subscribers it has.
SEO newsletters written in the UK
We found four with a sign-up page we could check and at least one issue in 2026. One is Core Updates, described above. Of the other three, only one goes out on a fixed day, and two say openly that they don't follow a schedule.
The WTS Newsletter from Women in Tech SEO, the community that runs the WTSFest conference in London (the next one is at the Barbican on 19 March 2027), is "sent every Wednesday" to "10,000+ marketers" and states a 55% average open rate. Each edition carries news, free articles, talks and research, short tip columns and community updates, "written by WTS community members, read by everyone". It's free to subscribe; sponsors pay from £300 for a job ad to £1,200 for a headline slot across two editions. Of the UK newsletters, it's the one that comes closest to a weekly roundup.
SEO for Google News is written by Barry Adams of Polemic Digital, a consultancy in Belfast, for publishers working on Google Search, Google News and Discover. The page calls it "an irregular newsletter" and states "over 12,000 subscribers". The archive confirms the pace: in 2026 there were issues on 2 March, 9 April and 10 June, then one on international SEO for publishers on 16 September. If you work for a news site, it's the most specialised read in this list.
Leadership in SEO is by Harry Clarkson-Bennett, SEO director at The Telegraph. The about page promises a newsletter "fortnightly (or more likely monthly)", free with a paid option whose price isn't shown. The archive shows a new issue on 10 October 2026, on building a brand with SEO; the one before it, on AI Mode for publishers, is dated 12 June.
Who UK searchers look for
Google Ads data we pulled through DataForSEO show which names people in the UK actually search for. Monthly average in the UK from September 2025 to August 2026:
| Search | Monthly searches in the UK |
|---|---|
| search engine land | 8,100 |
| search engine journal | 880 |
| search engine roundtable | 210 |
| backlinko | 170 |
| lily ray | 170 |
| aleyda solis | 140 |
| women in tech seo | 140 |
| kevin indig | 70 |
| barry adams | 70 |
| seofomo | 50 |
| mark williams-cook | 50 |
| seo newsletter | 40 |
| growth memo | 20 |
Search Engine Land is searched 8,100 times a month, almost 60 times as often as Aleyda Solis, even though #SEOFOMO has far more subscribers than most of the newsletters in this list. Individual authors, British or American, sit between 50 and 170 searches. The data suggest that in the UK people look for publications by name, while personal newsletters spread through LinkedIn and recommendations rather than Google. The one UK SEO name with real search demand is a conference: "brightonseo" gets 2,900 searches a month, with peaks of 8,100 in October 2025 and April 2026, the months of the event. Its mailing list sends event news and offers, not an SEO newsletter.
Why the numbers in US lists don't add up
To prepare this article we read the top results on Google.com (United States) for the same search, including the lists from Backlinko, Search Atlas, Uprankly and tryanalyze.ai. Many give a subscriber number for each newsletter. We compared it with the one written on the official page.
| Newsletter | Official page (September 2026) | The SEO Pub | Search Atlas (updated January 2026) | Uprankly (2026) | tryanalyze.ai (April 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #SEOFOMO | over 45,000 | over 30,000 | 36,000+ | over 39,000 | 39,000+ |
| Growth Memo | over 29,000 | - | 13,000+ | over 12,500 | 20,000+ |
| Backlinko | 180,531 | - | - | over 174,000 | 200,000+ |
| #SEOForLunch | over 7,500 | - | 7,500+ | over 12,000 | - |
| Core Updates | over 13,000 | - | - | over 12,000 | - |
| The SEO MBA | course sales paused since 31 August 2024, one issue since then | - | 12,000+, "every few months" | almost 10,000, weekly | 10,000+, roughly monthly |
The differences go both ways. For SEOFOMO and Growth Memo the lists have fallen behind: Growth Memo now claims more than twice the subscribers that Search Atlas and Uprankly give it. For #SEOForLunch it's the opposite: Uprankly says over 12,000 where the newsletter itself says 7,500.
The case of Tom Critchlow's The SEO MBA is the most telling. On 1 August 2024 the author published an issue titled "The SEO MBA is shutting down (for now)", announcing that new course sign-ups would stop on 31 August. Since then the archive shows a single new issue. Three lists dated 2026 still present it as a newsletter to follow, one of them as weekly.
It isn't bad faith. Lists get updated by copying numbers from the previous version or from other lists, and the figure drifts further from the source with every pass. It's the same mechanism that keeps unsourced SEO statistics in circulation, and we found plenty of examples while writing about common SEO myths. To find out how many people read a newsletter and whether it still goes out, the sign-up page and the archive are enough, and it takes two minutes.
The sources no newsletter replaces
Every SEO newsletter, even the best, comments on something announced elsewhere. When the news is a Google update, the source is Google itself, and you can get it directly.
The Google Search Status Dashboard lists incidents and ranking updates in progress, split into crawling, indexing, ranking and serving, and has an RSS feed. On 29 September 2026 it showed the September 2026 spam update, which started on 24 September. The Google Search Central blog announces new features: in September 2026, for example, the new performance reports for multimodal search in Search Console.
The dashboard feed, connected to an RSS reader or a Slack channel, usually flags an update before the newsletters do. The newsletters come in afterwards, to work out what was hit and who: if your traffic drops in those days, the next step is our guide to Google penalties.
How many to follow without clogging your inbox
The pages from SEO.com and tryanalyze.ai arrive at the same number: three. We agree, but the mix matters more. This is the one we suggest for anyone working on the UK market:
- a weekly roundup, #SEOFOMO or Core Updates;
- one on AI search strategy, Growth Memo or Lily Ray, because that's where the work is changing fastest (we covered it in our data on SEO and AI);
- one written in the UK: the WTS Newsletter, or SEO for Google News if you work for a publisher;
- plus the Search Status Dashboard feed, which isn't a newsletter but is worth more than all of them on the day an update starts.
To keep them from getting lost among work emails, a filter in Gmail or Outlook that moves them into a dedicated folder, opened once a week, is enough. If you'd rather read the sites than the emails, you'll find an RSS routine in our guide to the SEO blogs to follow. And if you're just starting out, an orderly grounding comes before newsletters: our beginner's guide to SEO is built for that.
Reading newsletters is part of an SEO specialist's job, not the job itself. If you need someone to turn the news into changes on your site, that's what we do in our SEO service and, for visibility in AI answers, in our SEO for AI service.
Frequently asked questions about SEO newsletters
It depends on what you're after, but the most cited is Aleyda Solis's #SEOFOMO: it appears in 8 of the 9 US pages we read, goes out every Sunday, is free and claims more than 45,000 subscribers. For AI search strategy there's Kevin Indig's Growth Memo, with more than 29,000 subscribers.
Yes, we checked four: Core Updates by Mark Williams-Cook (over 13,000 subscribers stated for sponsors), the WTS Newsletter from Women in Tech SEO (10,000+, every Wednesday), Barry Adams's SEO for Google News (over 12,000, irregular) and Harry Clarkson-Bennett's Leadership in SEO. Only Core Updates and the WTS Newsletter go out every week.
Almost all of them. Among those in this list, Growth Memo adds a Premium tier to its free issues, Leadership in SEO has a paid option, and Marie Haynes offers AI News You Can Use for free but charges $42 a month or $480 a year for the Search Bar Pro community.
Three are enough: a weekly roundup such as #SEOFOMO or Core Updates, one on AI search strategy and one written in the UK. On top of these, add the RSS feed of the Google Search Status Dashboard so you know straight away when an update starts.
The source is the Google Search Status Dashboard, which lists ranking updates in progress and has an RSS feed. For example, at the end of September 2026 it showed the spam update that started on 24 September. Newsletters come later and help you understand who was hit.
One last thing. Of the three UK newsletters we found beyond Core Updates, one goes out every Wednesday, one calls itself "irregular" and one promises a fortnightly issue but went almost four months between its last two. Abroad, an independent consultant like Olga Zarr has passed 200 editions in five years. In the UK there's still room for a weekly SEO newsletter that's regular and built on UK market data, even if, judging by the 40 monthly searches for "seo newsletter", its readers will find it through LinkedIn and word of mouth rather than through Google.
