Given that I’ve only recently become involved in Internet Marketing, it still is something that I am learning more and more about, and there are a lot of blog posts and books that have helped me along the way. In light of my anti-Digg post, I wanted to take this moment to appreciate the best [blog] posts in the Internet Marketing world of the year — those that have significantly increased my awareness of this exciting field. That said, these are mostly how-to and tips/secrets posts, where some come from a beginner’s level and others are more advanced. I’ve done a lot of digging (this was mostly by hand rather than from existing bookmarks!) and am hoping I have included a huge chunk of them, though I realize that this has been a tremendous undertaking and there are simply too many blog posts out there (thanks, guys!). Since I started reading SEO blogs mid-year (and I can’t possibly read all of them on a regular basis), I know I’m missing more! If anyone has any essential posts to add, please feel free to leave them in the comments. π
Without further ado, here are some of my favorite posts of 2006.
Internet Marketing (posts that include a little bit of everything)
- Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Web Startups (Aviva Directory)
- 3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic (Performancing)
- Do Your Users Trust You? 21 Tips for Improved Website Credibility (Stuntdubl)
- 101 Web Marketing Ideas and Tips (SEOpedia)
- 17 Tips for SEO, PR, Traffic, and Link Building (DigitalPoint Forum)
Search Engine Optimization
- Learning Search Engine Optimization: An excellent beginner’s guide into SEO from Aaron Wall
- Beginner’s Guide to SEO (SEOmoz)
- The SEO Glossary (SEOBook)
- Avoiding the 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes (SitePoint)
- SEO Consultant and Pricing (Shimon Sandler)
- The Stunt Train SEO Marketing Manifesto (Stuntdubl)
- 5 Myths about SEO (TopRankBlog): Discusses the five biggest SEO misconceptions
- The Most Common SEO Mistakes Big Brands Commit (SEOmoz)
- Landing Pages for SEO (SEOmoz)
- 11 Best Practices for URLs (SEOmoz)
- Optimizing PDFs for SEO (Small Business SEM)
- The Myth of a Perfectly Optimized Page (SEOBook)
- 5 Ways to Spend $2000 on SEO (SEOmoz)
- Is Textbook SEO Dead? (Cre8site Forums)
- Top Ten SEO Mistakes, Stumbles, and Blunders of Ecommerce Webmasters (Elixir Systems)
- Search Engine Optimization for RSS Feeds (Elixir Systems)
- 21 Great SEO Tips from Google’s Matt Cutts (SEO Egghead)
- How do I do Search Engine Optimization for a Small Site? (SEObook)
- Choosing an SEO Company (SEOpedia)
- The Universality of Information (SEOBook)
- SEO Keyword Selection: An In-Depth Guide (The Blog Mill)
- Using Profitable Spam & Thin Content Sites for Keyword Research (SEOBook)
- 20 Ways Search Engines May Rerank Search Results (SEO by the Sea)
- The Best SEO Articles of 2006 (SEOBlackHat)
- Bad Advice that Sounds Good (SEOBook)
- Organic SEO is Worth the Work (SEOChat)
Link Building
- SEO Advice: Linkbait and Linkbaiting (Matt Cutts)
- Why Paris Hilton is Famous (or Understanding Value in a Post-Madonna World) (chartreuse)
- Always Get New Links – 7 Tips for Success (Submitawebsite)
- 10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic (SEOmoz)
- When Your Domain is a TR0 (Link Building Blog)
- The 10 Commandments of Link Building (ISEDB)
- Linkbaiting or Link Baiting? (SEOBook)
- What is Deep Link Ratio? (SEOBook)
- The Two Kinds of Linkbait (SEOmoz)
- Forward Links — Because Who You Link to Matters (Jim Boykin)
- Link Development (sugarrae at WMW)
- Four Trusted Links You Can Build Today (Link Building Blog)
- 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 (SEOBook)
- 12 Different Kinds of Links and How to Get Them (Stuntdubl)
- Link Building Guide (Jim Westergren)
- 20 Linkbaiting Techniques (Problogger)
- Tips for Finding the Best Pages to Get Links From and Part Two (Jim Boykin)
- The 5 Minute Link Value Test — 6 Link Quality Indicators (Stuntdubl)
- How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic — The Ultimate Guide (Copyblogger): Contains more links and lists if my list doesn’t suffice. π
- List of Web Directories (SEOpedia)
Site Design/Usability
- 10 Things to Keep in Mind when Changing a Site Design (TopRankBlog)
- 18 Questions your CEO Forgot to Ask when Building Your Website (Stuntdubl)
- Design Questions Every Website Should Address for Success (Cre8pc)
- How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page (SEOmoz)
- E-Commerce Usability Series: Easy Steps You Can Take Now (The Usability Effect)
- How to Convince a Client Their Site Doesn’t Need Music (SEOmoz)
Social Networking/Social Media Optimization
- 5 (16) Rules of Social Media Optimization (Influential Interactive Marketing): Rohit Bhargava’s blog post that set off the storm
- 21 Traffic Triggers for Social Media Marketing (Copyblogger)
- Social Media Optimization (Squidoo): Power players (top sites), golden rules, news, articles, and more
- 7 Ways to Get to the Top of the del.icio.us Popular Page (Problogger)
- How to Market on Flickr (Small Business SEM)
- 5 Reasons why Diggers Matter (SEOmoz)
- Everything in the Digg, Reddit, and Netscape Algorithms (SEOmoz)
- MySpace Optimization (Stuntdubl)
- Beginner’s Guide to Digg (Pronet Advertising)
- The Search Marketer’s Guide to Digg (Stuntdubl)
- How Do I get My Website Into Digg (Wolf-Howl)
Copywriting
- How to write a Killer “How To” Article that Gets Attention (Copyblogger)
- The Long and Short of Copywriting (Copyblogger)
- Car Salesmen, Preachers and the Art of Persuasion (Problogger series)
- The #1 Secret to Writing Great Copy Is… (Copyblogger)
- The Best “About Us” Page I’ve Ever Seen (Small Busines SEM)
- 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas that Work (Copyblogger)
- 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates that Work (Copyblogger)
- 3 Coercive Copywriting Techniques (Copyblogger)
- The Use of Muscle Words on Your Web Site … 148 Power Words Designed to Draw Your Customers In (Search Engine Guide)
Blogging
- 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch (Aviva Directory)
- The First 7 Days of Blogging (Pronet Advertising)
- 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang (Copyblogger)
- How to Cut Through the Clutter of an Overly Blogged Story and Get Noticed (Problogger)
- Challenges Facing Young and Older Blogs (Problogger)
- Blogger Relations 101 (TopRankBlog)
- 10 Web Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas (SEOmoz)
- 10+9 Ways to Find Great Post Ideas for Your Blog (Problogger, continued from SEOmoz)
- 9 Keys to Networking via Blogs for Introverts (Lexblog)
- 18 Lessons in Blogging – Part II (Problogger)
- The Two Most Important Words in Blogging (Copyblogger)
- 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog (TopRankBlog)
- 10 Powerism: The Art of Blog by Sun ZiLla (SEO Black Hat)
- 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (SEOmoz)
- 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (Problogger)
- 5 Ways to Building a Better Blog (Pronet Advertising)
- Making Money with Your Blog from A to Z (Micro Persuasion)
- Adding a Personal Touch to Your Blog (Problogger series)
- How to be Curious (Problogger)
- Developing Focal Points in Blog Posts (Problogger)
- The Five Essential Elements of an Influential Blog (Copyblogger)
- The 5 Deadly Sins of Blogging (Pronet Advertising)
- 10 Ways to Improve Your Blogging Through Practice (Problogger)
- 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers (Copyblogger)
- Open Sourcing My TechCrunch Workflow (Marshall Kirkpatrick)
- 34 Tips for Finding Readers for Your Blogs (Problogger)
- Blog Tools (Problogger)
- A-Z of Professional Blogging (Problogger)
- 10 Must Have Things that Should Be On Your Blog’s Sidebar (BlogSEO)
Search-Engine Specific (Google, Yahoo, and MSN too)
- Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 Revealed: The Ultimate Guide (Link Building Blog)
- How Google Handles Hacked Sites (Matt Cutts)
- What Should You Do if Your Google Ranking Falls and You Lose All Your Traffic? (Problogger)
- Help! I have been banned or penalized in Yahoo (Marketing Pilgrim)
- 101 Easy Ways to Use Google’s Website Optimizer (Conversion Rate Experts)
- Google PageRank Leakage and Misconceptions on PageRank (SEOBook)
- Google vs Yahoo! vs MSN Search: Comparing Search Algorithms (SEOBook)
- What Does Google Know About Your Domain Names? (Jim Boykin)
PPC/Adsense/Paid Inclusion
- A Beginner’s Guide to Google Adwords (Elixir Systems)
- 5 Steps to Pay-Per-Click Advertising that Works (Copyblogger)
- 9 Cost Effective PPC Branding Strategies (Marketing Pilgrim)
- 5 Google Adsense Secrets, Tips, and Tricks (SEOpedia)
- Adsense Arbitrage, Tips, Tricks, & Secrets (Wolf-Howl series)
- Top 11 Reasons SEO is Better than PPC (Stuntdubl)
- Paid Inclusion: Advantages and Disadvantages (Shimon Sandler)
Other Links and Resources
- Search Engine Submission Tips (SearchEngineWatch)
- Duplicate Content Issues and Search Engines (SEO by the Sea)
- How to Remedy Duplicate Content and Magical % Thinking (Stuntdubl)
- Five Ways to Increase Website Traffic through Online Message Boards and Blogs (Elixir Systems)
- Search Engine Ranking Factors (SEOmoz)
- A Long List of Competitive Link Searches (SEOmoz)
- Long List of Link Searches (SEOmoz)
- A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available (SEOmoz)
- Top 10 Business Mistakes Search Marketing Firms Make (Marketing Pilgrim)
- 10 Uses for Google Sitemaps (Elixir Systems)
This has been a great year, and there are probably hundreds of posts I’ve inadvertently left off, but I wanted to make sure this post was completed before the year ended. π
Happy New Year everyone!
WOW! What a resource. Thanks alot!
Happy to New Year as well. Wonderful list I shared with my readers this am.
Thanks Kevin! I love the post! π
Wow, Tamar, this is a sweet list! Now I don’t have to make one, thanks! π
Lee, you can make one too… I looked back on what I wrote and I still know I’m missing a ton. π
Wow – excellent list Tamar! Bookmarked…
Great compilation! Very very useful when there’s so much information spreading out! Thanx!
Superb! Great list of internet marketing resource.
Very useful!
hi problogger
great blog on seo and social networking.
keep it up,its a great resource for bloggers like me.
akshay
AWESOME LIST! Thanks, Erika
Hey Tamar (did I get your name correctly?)
You sure you are just starting out? Really a treasure cove of resources here! Thank you so much for taking the time to share. I’m also into internet marketing/online business but I am REALLY the one who’s just starting out! π
Cheers!
Yes, you got my name right. Other spellings (Tamara, etc.) are variants based on the Tamar spelling. My name came first! π The roots are actually biblical (Genesis 38).
A big part in learning all this is reading, reading, and reading even more! I come into this field with nothing but sysadmin experience (really!). As I learn more and more about this, I get more and more excited; without a doubt, there’s a lot to take from it and a good amount of the resources are online.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Tamar,
Great collection you’ve got hear. I think I could spend all day with this stuff and at the end of that time have enough info to write several internet marketing books…
Your post definitely deserves a bookmark!
Thanks for the comments. I’ll try to think of more posts like these! π
Whew! This is really a lot of stuff. But it is nice that you have a rundown of these things. I am interested on web marketing and SEO too. The resources here probably are good recommendation for me.
Wow, what an unbelievable resource. That must have taken you an absolute AGE. Now, if someone could find a semi-automatic way of doing that, so you won’t have to spend so much time… hmmm… Oh yes, I think they did do that- it’s called Digg π
Ok, I’m also semi-anti-Digg, but I think not all such sites are to be written off. Del.icio.us is definitely on my list of ‘OK’ and I think there’s less ‘cheating’ there that there is on Digg anyway. Still, it’s not entirely without its flaws.
Wonderful list of blogs to read to this informations!
Great resources!
Thanks for posting this one, it would be a great help for everyone. π
Great articles very helpful.
Its already 2007. Do you have another set of these for the year 2007? I wanted to know who made it last year. Hopefully, you can include some worst posts this time. That way, we will know what to do this year and learn from the mistakes of others.
Great post! More folks should post valuable information like this! Mark Ress teaches people how to make money online for free. Visit http://www.ressonomics.com for more information about making money online working from home.
Great compilation! Very very useful when thereβs so much information spreading out! Thanx!
Read more: http://www.techipedia.com/2006/internet-marketing-best-blog-posts-of-2006-the-year-in-review/#ixzz0qLtuSrbT