Earlier today the first phase of Search Engine Journal’s long-awaited total overhaul, a result of Search Engine Journal Inc.’s merger with Search & Social, went live.

I must say that so far I’m very impressed. I was discussing the new look with ArabCrunch and I mentioned that the new Search Engine Journal layout has elements that convey the same sort of atmosphere as the hugely successful SEOmoz. Seconds later someone else online was expressing the same opinion–so I guess it must be true.

This is good because as Loren says, they are planning to expand user-participation and the social aspects of the site. The right look and feel will go a long way to facilitating Loren Baker’s goals for SEJ I feel.

Loren tells his own story about his reasons for the new color scheme and other aspects of the new design.

I particularly like the new SEJ blogroll arrangement. Loren said this about the change:

I also found the blogroll to be restrictive, limiting the roll to only a handful of the hundreds of magnificent search blogs out there, personally I felt as the smaller blogroll was doing an injustice to the “search-o-sphere”.

With the new arrangement five blogs will be displayed at any one time in rotation.

I look forward to seeing what else Loren has in store: he assures us this is just the beginning!