Marshall Simmonds of the New York Times is, to me, the SEO of the hour right now. For an industry often mischaracterized as doing nothing but blog spamming, Marshall’s work as chief search strategist to institutionalize SEO as part of the regular editorial production at the New York Times lead directly to last week’s news that the paper was opening up its archives without charge, since it already gains so much free search engine traffic that leaving the archives open will mean more traffic and thus higher ad revenues.

So those of you who are cursing those SEOs out of ignorance of what they can do to make quality content more visible? The next time you’re reading something for free at the New York Times, remember it was SEO that made that possible.

Why You Better Learn the PR Side of Search Engines is my Ad Age column this week that ends with some praise for Marshall and what he’s achieved. Marshall Simmonds on the Opening of the NYTimes’ Archived Content and SEO for Major Media Sites from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is a long interview with Marshall, covering the work he’s done.

Related Topics: SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: In House | SEO: General

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan