I met her during my freshman year of college, though she was two years my senior. We’d exchange greetings when we passed in the dormitory hallways. Nine years later, we met again when we were assigned to the same tables at a local luncheon. She told me she worked in Internet Marketing, which I was quite excited to hear given that there was no marketing discipline taught at all in our alma mater.

We started talking about the last few years and our dreams for the years ahead. We then got into the nitty gritty of business. With Internet Marketing, there are many ways to go, from affiliate marketing to SEO to social media to email marketing. What was she doing? Her answer surprised me. Essentially, her focus was SEO, and her daily grind consisted of keyword stuffing clients’ websites.

Anyone who knows a good search engine optimization expert knows that keyword stuffing is not an approved tactic. Perhaps this is a fact that her agency overlooked, so as a good friend, I told her that it would be in her best interest to learn about approved tactics through the many free blogs, to engage in acceptable and informative (though not free) SEO training, and to read the best SEO book/training program (aff). Even though there is a cost for entry for some of the best resources, the solutions were highly worthwhile, I explained.

Over the next few months, I received multiple invites to various groups on Facebook and messages imploring me to participate in activities in which I had no interest. All social media etiquette rules were not heeded to. Rather recently, she told me that she had enough and was going to quit.

I was excited at the prospect that there might be some freedom for someone who was forced to clearly break every rule that was in the ethical Internet Marketing handbook. I suggested the same blogs and training courses and told her that she could potentially go out on her own and do her own thing after she learned the basics and knew how to apply them.  But first, I cautioned, “you must learn the material.  Your work environment didn’t allow you to do so.”

My friend ended up going out to do her own thing, offering “Internet Marketing services” to anyone who would bite. The instruction I gave her and resources I provided, though, were ignored. I am not afraid that she’ll find this blog post and know that she’s the subject of the story because I know she won’t. I’m honestly worried for her clients who are being cheated out of money and time.

A few weeks ago, another person connected with me on Facebook who was referred to me by a social media buddy I never actually met. “I am a relatively new internet marketer trying to break into the industry,” he wrote. “What are good companies to target? Should I learn a specific skillset?” Overall, the questions were basic and I worried that the individual was looking to target companies for clients before actually understanding the nuances of the culture of Internet marketing as a whole.

While this person’s intentions were more pure — I later learned that he was looking for agencies to target, rather than clients, and that he was willing to endure pain (learning) for ultimate gain (clients which would lead to money) — I began to worry that there are others out there like this college colleague of mine. There are others who sell internet marketing services who are ultimately clueless about changes in the industry that could ultimately amount to them not seeing any increased rankings or improved traffic. At all.

There Are Different Specialties in Internet Marketing

“What do you do for a living?” he asks.  ”I do Internet Marketing,” I say.

“Oh.”

If you’re involved at all in Internet Marketing, “oh” is not a suggested response. Internet marketing is a vast field.  There are different specialties to Internet Marketing. If you’re going to take “Internet Marketer” at face value, you’re being silly.  In the study of medicine, doctors have different specialties; Internet Marketing is no different.

If you’re a brand new Internet Marketer, choose a discipline and a niche that you can tackle head on and be successful at. You can’t do everything at once. Sure, a basic understanding of different Internet Marketing elements is fine, but it’s not practical to be everything to everyone. Here are just some concentrations you can explore:

• Search Engine Optimization:  Someone involved in search engine optimization is focused on building out websites in such a way to be understood by search engines (and by people).  A search engine optimization expert is usually focused on changing URL structure, optimizing title tags, and making code tweaks to a website to make sure the search engines find the site and the pages contained therein.
• Link Building: Part of a search engine marketing strategy includes the process of building relevant links to your website.  This often includes submissions to directories and contacting webmasters of related websites.
• Affiliate Marketing: Affiliates are individuals who market a particular product or service and who get paid commissions by a merchant when they make the sale.
• Pay Per Click Marketing: PPC is another search engine marketing strategy that utilizes contextual advertising; based on a search query or the content of a web page, ads will appear.  PPC requires understanding of keywords, having appropriate landing pages, and other factors.
• Social Media Marketing: In social media marketing, you are tasked with leveraging the social space through its media to market your products.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing relates to the promotion of products and services through e-mail.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing refers to writing relevant articles on your site (or having good site copy) that can bring awareness to your website property.

Most people that I know will excel in one discipline but have a working understanding of the others. If you know someone who is great at every single Internet Marketing discipline in the book, it’s likely too good to be true. If you’re studying Internet Marketing, learn everything you possibly can, but you’ll typically find an area you’re most comfortable in and end up going with it. For me, that’s social media marketing.

Get the Right Training Materials

Depending on the type of work you’re looking to do, your best bet is to learn everything you can on the subject matter. Some of the sites I recommend for educational materials include:

Free

• Sphinn: Sphinn is an Internet Marketing social news site.  Users submit timely news articles to Sphinn, and the community votes up the best stories to appear on the front page.  Normally, the front page consists of high quality content, though even the upcoming queue has good stuff that doesn’t always get promoted.
• There are hundreds of blogs on each specialty’s subject matter.  How do you find the signal through the noise, you ask? Find those who influence you, and then find out who they are engaging with. And read this post from Mat with some good suggestions.
• My top three forums include Cre8asite Forums, Webmaster World (which is mostly free but also has subscription-only discussions), and High Rankings Forum.

Paid

• SEO Book: SEO Book is the bible of search engine optimization.  Aaron Wall nailed it when he released his extremely informative PDF about a decade ago.  In the last few years, he moved his forever-changing content online in the format of members-only training guides and forums.  He also offers high quality tools, many of which are free.
• SEOmoz PRO: SEOmoz PRO features a rich library of informative guides, a myriad of tools, and a strong active and close-knit community.  If you’ve seen their free site and know what kind of great information is already provided, you can only imagine how much value is multiplied behind the pay wall.
• SEO Dojo: David Harry’s SEO program is the newest kid on the block, but it already has a very active group of members and engaging online discussions, in addition to easy-to-read training materials and video tutorials.
• Training Social: Samir Balwani has worked tirelessly to provide one of the most (the most?) comprehensive social media marketing training there is.  I highly recommend you follow his stuff.

If you like books, you should also check out Winning Results with Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing, The New Community Rules (which was authored by yours truly), The Art of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Find the Right Agency to Work With

Unless you’ve been doing it for years, it’s never a good idea to go into Internet Marketing without an educational foundation. And most people won’t follow sound advice, instead eying dollar signs as soon as formal education ends.

If you’re serious about this kind of thing, beyond online training guides and books, you need to apply those skills.  Any educational experience in the work world, thus, will help bring you to the next level. Consider working at an agency, even in an internship capacity. Being able to work alongside the brightest minds in the industry can be extremely empowering. Having hands-on experience — the much-needed application of your learned skills — is incredible, especially when working alongside brilliant minds and analytical thinkers.

Every newbie should start working for someone before he embarks on the journey alone. Learning among the smartest in the industry is a sure-shot way to get ahead of most playing the same game.

Not All Agencies are Created Equal

As evidenced by the the story I provided in this article, not all agencies are competent. Keyword stuffing, for example, might have worked 5 years ago, but it’s not a successful tactic anymore.  If you’re about to start working for an agency, study it out before you actually work for it, because if you don’t, you might end up finding out that you’ve wasted years of your life learning the wrong strategies.

One of the easiest steps you can take is to look at their website.  The first thing I normally look at for “SEO” firms is to see if their canonical redirect is in place.  It’s one of the smallest things that can be done, but so many “SEO” firms, including the one I mentioned earlier in this article, actually don’t do it at all.  Also, check the website’s footer: are there keywords stuffed there?  If so, it might be a good idea to turn your back away from the opportunity.

Another thing you should do is to talk to people in the industry that you know to see if they can tell you anything about the company’s officers or about the company itself. If the right people have never heard of the company, that could mean that the company itself consists of self-proclaimed marketing experts who likely get websites banned from search engines rather than ranked higher.  It could also mean that the company is keeping a low profile,  so use the website check to see if the company is up to shady tactics not worth your investment — even if the job offer is there. (You never want to work for a company who has a bad reputation, especially if you plan to remain in this industry. Word travels.  If you’re already there, get out while you’re still ahead.)

It’s probably a good idea to step away from the agency if you find out that the tactics employed in the company don’t match what is taught in the training materials I recommended earlier.   These materials are written and maintained by real experts who know their material cold.  You can do better.

Going Off On Your Own

Only after you have spent at least 18 months to two years at a reputable company should you actually go at taking clients alone. Keep in mind that it’s not as easy as it seems. Doing the solo gig requires you to be the sales department, the financial and accounting department, the secretary, and the person you were hired to do: the marketer. You’re not only doing everything, but your salary is variable as you take and lose clients on a month-to-month basis.

If you’re choosing this path because you’re unhappy with your current company, look for another.  If you’re doing it because your freshman college friend is able to do so successfully, focus on the food on your own plate, Miss. If you’re ready to take on more responsibility, by all means, go ahead and do it.

Just don’t be the girl who leaves a company that wasn’t challenging you anyway — and then starts your own thing without the right educational foundation or skill-set. Be the student who mastered the subject through learning and application, and who eventually graduated to be the teacher. And keep in mind that the best teachers never stop learning either.

Internet Marketing Snake Oil

The Internet is rife with “experts,” but not all self-proclaimed gurus can actually deliver. A lot can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk.  They might sound great on the phone,  but they might not be able to actually increase traffic to your website through search engine optimization.  They might not have any clue how to effectively manage your Pay Per Click campaign to actually increase leads.

Unfortunately, not all “clients” will be so savvy enough to know the difference between someone who knows his stuff and someone who doesn’t.  As such, when the marketing dollars they invested actually result in nothing, they call the entire practice a scam.  There will always be a few rotten apples who ruin it for the rest of hard working decent folk who are truly looking out for the entire industry.

Buyer beware.  If you or anyone you know is looking to engage in this practice, do yourself a favor and do due diligence before going with your expert.  Interview prospects.  Comparison shop.  Don’t just look for the cheapest option; it might be the worst.  (“You get what you pay for.”) Then again, the most expensive option might not be better.  High costs don’t always translate to better quality.

Don’t Be that Guy

Every single profession has “snake oil” salesmen. There are doctors who don’t really know how to practice medicine and teachers who don’t know how to teach. If you’re an Internet Marketer who genuinely wants to sell your services, consider being well-educated and well-rounded. Consider focusing on a specialty where you can excel — and know your stuff cold. It’s hard enough that there are con-men and scammers who bring the industry to shame, but if you care about the future of the profession, don’t.

There’s probably not a single one of you reading this who is that guy. However, you might have encountered individuals who want to be just like you but might be looking for a silver bullet. Give them the full truth. Let them know that this profession is real work, just like any other type of profession. If they want to protect the integrity of this profession’s future, they should consider being well-read.

For me, Internet Marketing is not just a profession but it’s a passion. I read books and blog posts on the subject not only to further my career but because I love what I’m doing and I want to feel empowered personally and professionally. If you’re like me, you’re in the right place. You understand that this kind of work comes easy, and that you were meant to do it. But someone might approaches you for direction despite the fact that they don’t have gusto to do the work and to learn the ropes. They might just try to cash in simply because they see that some other people can do so successfully, even though those are the people who consider this more than just work: it’s a lifestyle, and they had to climb a ladder to be where they are right now.

Those of you involved in Internet Marketing for a long time might have faced this dilemma. Be up front. This is a discipline and it’s not a walk in the park. Knowing the tools doesn’t make you an expert. Ignoring the tactics makes you even less qualified. Ignoring the paid (and free) learning materials makes you a failure.

Everyone needs to work for success. As your role is now of a mentor, be the guiding light.

[ Advice for a New Internet Marketer (or How to Spot Internet Marketing Snake Oil) is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

It’s my birthday! And like last year, I have a gift for you.

Every year, I read hundreds (thousands?) of articles on the topic of Internet Marketing, from SEO to social media to web usability and then some. And every year, I hand pick the best articles that I’ve read and compile them in a resource that I hope will last a long time. Here’s my list for 2008. Here’s 2007. Here’s 2006. I painstakingly go through these resources with the hopes that these posts will serve as references for you in years to come. Yes, that’s right. Despite the changing landscape, the articles I list here are typically those that I feel are “timeless” in that they could be referenced in the future and still have utility. These posts are not in response to newsworthy events, nor are they displayed in any particular order. They are strategic guides that hopefully will enhance your internet marketing experiences in the future.

Every year, I can only read so many articles. I try to keep this as exhaustive as possible, but even so, I don’t know every great resource. Like last year, I enlisted in help from my followers on Twitter, many of whom gave me some great posts to add to this list. If you’re looking to be included on 2010′s list, you now know what to do.

Like last year, if your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, there’s a badge for you to proudly celebrate this achievement on your site. Thanks again to David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design for creating them. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to grab the code you need for your post or site.

Without further ado, I now present to you the best internet marketing posts of 2009.

Social Media: Getting Started

• Why You Have to Engage in Social Media, Even if You Don’t Want to (A Smart Bear): Jason Cohen (@asmartbear) makes a compelling argument into why social media must be considered, even if you have no interest in it. The article has examples of how social media worked too.
• The Poetry of Social Networking to Court Customers and Invest in Relationships (Brian Solis): Brian Solis shares his foreword to Sean Percival’s book, MySpace Marketing.  In it, he offers some thought-provoking insights into what must be understood before going into social media marketing.  And… Brian Solis is the most eloquent writer I have ever seen in the blogosphere.  This post is really poetry, as are all his other writings and blog posts.
• 40 Key Elements to Getting Started in Social Media (Louis Gray): Mike Fruchter writes an awesome blog post on Louis Gray’s blog about how to get involved in social media, from branding to blogging to Twitter to community. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.
• Marketing on the Social Web: A Few Key Ingredients (Michael Fruchter): I love the graphic. But more than that, Mike’s post explains that social media is really about using social channels appropriately to communicate and converse — and as an extension of that, you might just end up being able to sell something. It’s really not that hard!
• How Big Brands Can Start Testing Social Media (Conversation Agent): It’s really not that hard to get into social media marketing. It just requires a small shift in mindset.
• Why Social Media is Scary (Steve Radick): Why is social media scary? There are challenges to be overcome by junior employees, developers, managers, and even senior leadership. Steve Radick tackles them all in this post.
• The ABCs of Online Networking (Your Job Stop): I love Joanna Lord’s article — every single letter of the alphabet has an application in online networking. Don’t overlook these — at least consider them!
• What Social Media is and What Social Media is Not (Louis Gray): So many people don’t get what social media is. Mike saves the day by straightening them out.
• Is it Too Late to Catch Up? (Seth Godin): Seth Godin suggests ideas that will make social media slowly work for you as an organization.
• Creating Your Social Media Plan (Outspoken Media): This good primer talks about securing your brand, setting metrics, knowing who you are, setting a presence, engaging, and assessing success.
• 6 Steps for Creating a Social Media Roadmap and Plan (Green Marketing 2.0): Lorna Li writes very introductory post on what social media is and what you can do with it with some great insights.
• A Corporate Guide for Social Media (Forbes): Forbes actually gets it when it comes to social media strategy in the workplace. Have a read and see for yourself.
• 20 Ways to Drive Leads Through Social Media (Kyle Lacy): Here are some of the things you can do to start seeing some movement in this thing they call “social media marketing.”
• 10 Tips for Social Media Marketers (PR Squared): Todd Defren tells you how to jump into social media marketing. What can you do today?
• How to Create Measurable Objectives (Altitude Branding): We’ve talked about goals and strategies as it relates to social media marketing, but let’s break them down even further.

Social Media: Implementation and Execution

• 7 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Campaigns Fail, and How to Fix them (Stuntdubl): Todd Malicoat never blogs, but when he does, he writes great posts like this suggesting that if your social media marketing campaign is failing, you may have had the wrong strategies in place. Good thing he proposes how to fix them also!
• Two Approaches: Shotgun vs. Laser (Web Strategist): There are two (of many) approaches you can take in your social media strategy. Which approach best suits you?
• How to Make Social Media Work for Non-Consumer Brands (Mashable): This is a good B2B social media article which is chock full of examples.
• Ways to Be Human at a Distance (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan always talks about how businesses can be human again. So what are they to do? He breaks this article into some of the basics of presence, how to converse, how to add multimedia to those conversations, and the topics of conversation.
• How to Manage Successful Social Media Promotions (Mashable): How can you get feedback from social channels to offer exclusive deals to your followers on social media communities? Read this Mashable guide.
• How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet in Any Topic (ReadWriteWeb): Marshall Kirkpatrick writes an amazing guide on how you can find thought leaders in any industry.
• The 12 Step Social Media Program for Traditional Marketers (HubSpot): Here are a few things agencies looking to replace different pieces of their business with social media can do.
• 10 Creative Contests Powered by Social Media (Mashable): You can use social media to do many things: build community, make business decisions, and more. Let a contest help make these ideas a reality.

Social Media: Small Business

• Why Small is the New Big in Social Media Marketing (Jonathan Fields): Jonathan Fields explains why small businesses have a real advantage over large ones when it comes to biting the social media bullet. This is a great read.
• 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses (Mashable): Here are five techniques proposed by Samir Balwani that go beyond the mere social media presence, including contests.
• How to Promote a Small Business Website (Small Business Trends): This article isn’t totally social media focused, but it’s part of it.  If you want to market a small business website, social is just part of your overall marketing mix.

Hiring for Social Media

• How to Evaluate Social Media Street Cred (Logic+Emotion): Do you know if that person is able to handle a social media marketing initiative? How omnipresent is he? How well-versed is she? David Armano suggests to study out the candidate first; they shouldn’t just be focused on Twitter, for example.
• 25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong Social Media Consultant or Agency (The Buzz Bin): Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston explain that social media consultants need to know a lot more than about the basic tools out there.
• Why You Shouldn’t Trust Social Media to SEO Consultants (Social Media Explorer): The fact that a few in the SEO community have a narrow approach with regard to social media engagement troubles me.
• 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media “Expert” (Conversation Marketing): Well, how did you fare in this quiz?
• I’d Like to See a Social Media Consultant or Agency That… (Direct Marketing Observations): I really liked Marc Meyer’s post here. It was actually how he and I built up a relationship.
• 25 Tips to Choosing a Social Media Consultant (Kyle Lacy): How do you find a social media consultant? They might want to pass this test with flying colors.
• Hiring for Social Media: What I’d Look For (Altitude Branding): Amber Naslund has a great series on good and bad approaches for social media job description and tops it off with what she’d look for if she were to hire for the position.

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

• Measurement Strategies for 5 Social Media Goals (PR Communications): John Cass talks about the various goals you might get through social media and the various ways to measure these goals.
• Are We Too Worried with Finding the ROI of Social Media? (The Viral Garden): What are big brand saying about the ROI of social media? Check Mack Collier’s post to find out.
• 100 Ways to Measure Social Media (Inside the Marketers Studio/David Berkowitz): Who said you can’t measure social media?
• Social Media Metrics: What We Need to Track Sales (Samir Balwani): Samir Balwani writes a great post on some of the ways you get ROI from social media.
• Measuring Social Media ROI: Does Size Matter? (Mark Hayward): Mark Hayward shows the ROI of social media. With a plan, you can measure effectiveness of SM.
• Social Media: Who Can Show Us the Real Value? (Econsultancy):  I like the measurements this article provides. The Online Consumer Engagement Value report idea is a good one.

Social Media: General

• Web Promoters: What Qualities Make Up the Effective Ones? (The Future Buzz): Adam Singer writes an excellent piece on the qualities that make up the most popular “power users” of the social web — that is, those individuals whose content people want to consume always.
• 11 Ways to Lose Friends and Followers Online (Social Media Rockstar): This reminds me of my social media etiquette post; there are just so many things you can do that will not win you any friends on social networks. Brett Borders explores the behavioral triggers that don’t win you any new friends at all.
• The A-Z of Social Media for Brands (Econsultancy): They say it’s “social media for brands.” I say it’s “social media for everyone.”
• Is Social Media Overrated? (Samir Balwani): This post serves as a reminder that social media is just one part of the marketing mix, and you still need to strategize and allocate resources intelligently. What is social media about? At the end of the day, it’s about real connections to consumers. (No, it’s not about the tools!)
• 10 Ways to Be a Great Social Media User (Search Engine Journal): Vince Blackham writes a great post on Search Engine Journal about how to be a great social media user, with tips such as contributing, diversifying your efforts, being real, being meaningful, and more.
• Experts Talk About Social Media Training (Samir Balwani): Samir has a great interview on the background on social media marketing with 5 experts. (Note: I was interviewed. Normally I don’t self-promote in this roundup, but the quotes are good, and Jason Falls, who was featured, is one of my role models.)
• Social Media Tips for Optimizing Time Spent by Marketers (Online Marketing Blog): Social media takes time, but yes, you can optimize it with tips from Adam Singer.
• Answers to Social Media Questions You Should Know (Online Marketing Blog): Here are some great questions and answers from Lee Odden on the typical questions you face in social media marketing.
• The Social Media Conversion Scale (Logic+Emotion): David Armano provides a graphical chart showing the various stages of social media acceptance. Where are you on the list?
• The Hardest Things to Teach Your Clients About Social Media Marketing (10e20): A collaborative list of what things you should or shouldn’t expect of social media marketing.
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media (Search Engine Journal): I love how Jennifer Horowitz equates social media with the 7 sins. She has some great comparisons.
• 23 Social Media Marketing Tips from Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil (Online Marketing Blog): Lee Odden takes advice from the best minds in social media who have worked in the corporate world. This is a fantastic interview!
• The Real Lesson in the Yelp User Review Lawsuit (Nine by Blue): The bottom line is that people need to realize that they can’t control the message. The best solution is to proactively address the situation and make it work for you.
• 5 People Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded (Mashable): Real success stories and the experiences learned is the subject of this article.
• Which Social Media Channels Should You Be Using? (The Jordan Rules): This is a great chart and article on the best social media channels for both B2B and B2C companies.
• Share This or Else! What Makes People Share Content? (Samir Balwani): What prompts people to share content — and how does one capitalize on this? Samir discusses human psychology and explains how this correlates to content that is shareable.

Twitter

• Twitter, the Most Important Website Since Google (97th Floor): Yes, Twitter is that important. Chris Bennett features some great parallels in his article.
• Twitter, Customer Service, and Good Brand Management (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni writes a great primer to why Twitter is important for customer service, but then goes a step further and tells you what tools you can use to monitor your brand (and some that cost money and let you respond).
• A Twitter Basics Primer (The Buzz Bin): When you use Twitter for marketing or whatnot, you should consider why you intend to use it and what you plan on getting out of it. This is a basic article but goes into great depth.
• Who Should Tweet? (Samir Balwani): Samir talks about the pros and cons of Tweeting by company representatives, from the CEO to a brand. He suggests a “character” to be the face of the brand on Twitter, sort of like a mascot.
• 8 Twitter Networking Tips: From Online to In-the-Flesh (Twitip): Whether it’s getting instant responses or meeting people in real life via tweetup, some Twitter tips are not to be forgotten.
• The Ultimate Guide to Everything Twitter (Webdesigner Depot): This is a crazy in-depth guide on Twitter, but it’s already outdated since there have been a lot more news and apps that have come out since. Still, though, you can tell that there has been in immense amount of work put into it, and it definitely deserves recognition.
• You’re On Twitter, Now What? (Conversation Agent): How do you want to use Twitter? There are many goals you can achieve with the site.
• 4 Real Offline Uses of Twitter (Dream Systems Media): Twitter marketing is happening online, of course, but it’s happening offline too. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a Twitter decal on a car. It was rather cool. Here are four other ways people are promoting their Twitter accounts.
• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Online Business (here.org.uk): This is a nice beginner business guide of the various things you can do in order to be seen as a credible and useful Twitter user.
• 101 Tweets on How to Use Twitter (SEO 2.0): Tad offers 101 ways to use Twitter in retweetable format. Tips include being active and tweeting daily, limiting using Twitter for broadcasting, focusing on company-wide social media policies, and more.
• Connecting with Customers on Twitter: 9 Tips for Success (10e20): Jake writes a great piece on what you should be doing on Twitter in order to be successful.
• Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Tweet (BL Ochman’s Blog): Not everyone will be able to use Twitter. Here are 10 reasons why you as a company entity should avoid it.
• How to Integrate Social Media into Product Marketing (Social Computing Magazine): This is a nice detailed guide on how you can market products via social media. (P.S. Sending products to bloggers helps too!)
• The Tao of Tweeting (Mashable): Good art via Twitter is not that hard to achieve. Soren Gordhamer shows you how.
• Breakdown: 4 Ways Brands are Earning — and Buying — Followers on Twitter (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang explores the Twitter space to see how followers are being earned (or not) on Twitter.
• The 10 Twitter Commandments (Econsultancy): Patricio Robles says that doing these sins is like shooting yourself in the foot.
• How to Use Twitter to Find Local Blog Content (Hyperlocalblogger): Twitter can bring you local traffic, so use it wisely to build friends and a following in your neighborhood.
• 137 Small Business Twitter Tips (Small Business Trends): One hundred and thirty seven people were asked to offer their best Twitter tips, and this has been aggregated and put in a document (PDF, but not linked to this page) for all to see.
• From Corporate to Personal: The Four Types of Social Media Profiles (Web Strategist): What kinds of brand profiles do you find on Twitter?
• 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business (WebWorkerDaily): Be it credibility, growing your network, or marketing (and then some), this article is a good way to inspire yourself to grow your business Twitter presence.
• 8 Lessons Learned as a Brand on Twitter (tins/Rick Klau): Rick Klau works for Google. He talks about what he has learned by maintaining a brand presence on Twitter: specifically, Google’s Blogger account.
• Make Tweet Love: Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships (Brian Solis): This is an excellent compendium of tips to get the most out of Twitter, both by Brian Solis and then his own Twitter friends.

Facebook

• How to Create Rich HTML Tabs on Your Facebook Page (10e20): I know Jesse just contributed an awesome article on this blog but Victor’s guide here is also pretty good.
• Why You Need to Create a Facebook Fan Page (Quick Sprout): Neil Patel decided to build a Facebook fan page that was interactive, using it as a case study for why it would benefit you as a business to maintain one and what would be necessary to make it engaging.
• 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Owner Should Know (Inside Facebook): We all know Facebook tips and tricks, but did we know we can marry the schools of thought of Facebook optimization and SEO? Let’s dive into Justin Smith’s tips.
• How to Build Facebook Community (Socialbrite): If you’re looking to meet some goals with Facebook engagement, you have to actually be able to engage your audience and participate. This article presents fourteen tips for achieving this goal, most of which are common sense but which may inspire you to get more active.
• How to Win Facebook Friends and Influence People (All Facebook): Nick O’Neill’s post on how to become a Facebook power user (read: genuine) is great.
• The Beginner’s Guide to Advertising on Facebook (Jonathan Volk): If you’re looking to advertise on Facebook, be it for your product for via affiliate marketing (in Jonathan’s case), take tips from this guy. He makes 6 digits a MONTH.
• How to Violate Facebook Etiquette and Piss Off Your Friends (All Facebook): Sure, there’s no right or wrong way to use social networks, but there are still socially acceptable limits.
• Are Your Facebook Fans Truly Engaged? (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni shares the findings of a Frozen Frogs study with regards to engaging Facebook followers.  It’s good to know that there are ways to bring Facebook community closer together.

LinkedIn

• 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job (How to Change the World): Thought you couldn’t get a job on LinkedIn? Think again!
• 10 Tips to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile (SEOptimise): This is a beginner level LinkedIn howto, but it’s amazing to see how many people actually do not follow the basic rules of engagement for LinkedIn!
• Top 10 Reasons Why Your LinkedIn Question is Getting Mostly Pitches (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni writes a great piece about why your LinkedIn community involvement may not be so great for you when you start getting an abundance of pitches. What can you do differently?
• 7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn (Mashable): Taking advantage of the professional network isn’t hard. Here are 7 ways to get the most out of it.
• How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile is Effective (Web Worker Daily): Meryl Evans has a good writeup on how to optimize the features of LinkedIn to make a pretty spiffy looking profile.

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

• How to Get Media Attention and Traffic Out of BusinessExchange (Small Business Trends): Not many people know about BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange, but Anita does, and she explains how you can get visibility out of it.
• 10 Tips to Get the Most Out of Posterous (Make Tech Easier): Posterous is the new lifestreaming app. Shevonne tells you how to actually use it and take advantage of its features.
• 10 Useful Tips to Using FriendFeed (Make Tech Easier): FriendFeed is still going strong, and its community is pretty powerful. Shevonne Polastre tells you how to make the most of it. Big emphasis on point #9. That’s the way to maximize the potential of FriendFeed.
• How I Use FriendFeed (Webomatica): If you wanted to know a little more about the potential of FriendFeed, check out Jason Kaneshiro’s post.
• FriendFeed Groups – The Fast Track to Content and Community (Knowthenetwork.com): How can you use FriendFeed groups to your advantage? Easy.
• Tools to Analyze Delicious Tags, Bookmarks, and URLs (Search Engine Journal): I normally do not put toolbox posts in my yearly roundup because I look for posts with actionable ideas to be put to use. However, how many of you actually knew that Delicious has tools to help you get the most out of it?
• 3 Easy Tips for Improving the Potency of Your StumbleUpon Account (Search Engine Journal): This post by Ryan Caldwell explains how you can improve your StumbleUpon account, but I’d argue that the information could be applied to other social bookmarking sites or social networks as well.
• Getting Links AND Content from Flickr (Search Engine Land): Using Flickr to build content isn’t so hard once you get inspiration from this article which features a case study and suggested scenarios that you can use Flickr with to help.
• 4 Tools to Track Flickr (Search Engine Journal): If you are tasked with monitoring Flickr for the purposes of listening to the conversation or finding out statistics on the photos you’ve uploaded, you should check out these tools to make your job a whole lot easier.
• 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare (Mashable): Foursquare is new for many, so learn it and soak it in while it’s still hot.

Blogging

• 13 Tips for Marketing Your Business with Your Blog (Problogger): Most businesses have one goal with their blog: marketing. Darren Rowse gives you 13 ways to do just that.
• 25 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Blogging (Web Distortion): Paul Anthony (@webireland) writes an incredible high-level blogging guide, which, if followed, will definitely bring you ahead of the competition. Guaranteed.
• Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog? (Michael Hyatt): This is a good article on the common pitfalls facing bloggers, from not posting enough to posting too much and everything in between.
• Blog Post Ideas that Always Generate Buzz (The Future Buzz): In case you needed to be inspired even more to write good blog posts, Adam Singer covers even more angles for the aspiring blogger.
• A Crash Course in Comments (Chris Brogan): So many people don’t value the connections that can be had if you write meaningful comments on blogs.
• How to Find the Best Free Images/Photos/Graphics for Your Blog Posts (Smackdown!): Some really great public domain image search tools are reviewed in this article. Plus, of course, there’s Creative Commons licensed images too. And I’ll add another favorite: everystockphoto.com.
• 10 Things to Do Before Launching Your Blog (Small Business Trends): Maybe everyone reading this already has blogs.  Maybe you don’t.  If you’re about to start, read this guide.  If you’re starting a new one later on, read this guide.
• How to Write a Review (Blogging Tips): This is a different kind of blogging post, one that pertains to writing reviews of products. If you want to write a complete review of something, be sure to follow the guidelines highlighted in this post.
• 100 Ways to Find Ideas for Your Blog Posts (LifeSnips): If you’ve lost blogging inspiration, Steve Aitchison will bring you out of the blogging slumps. You can’t really run out of blogging ideas after reading this article unless the motivation isn’t within you.
• How to Make (and Keep) Your Blog Content in Demand (The Future Buzz): Adam Singer explains how you can keep your blog in demand, making it referenced and looked at regularly.
• 101 Ways to Promote a New Blog (Daily Blog Tips): Some of these ideas are rather unconventional, but I like ‘em.
• 19 Reasons Why You Should Blog and Not Just Tweet (The Future Buzz): Everyone Tweets nowadays, but there are reasons why you should blog instead. Some of Adam Singer’s points include demonstrating passion, getting full analytics, limits of 140 characters, and being in full control of the content and the website.
• How to Make Blogging Work for Your Business (Wordtracker): This is a great guide by Chris Garrett into what blogs can do for you and how you can build your blog to be successful for your business.
• Suggested Guide for Writing Effective Blog Posts (PMA Media Group): Blogging isn’t always just about opening a “new post” link and typing your thoughts. For some, it’s just not that simple. You might want to start with ways to inspire yourself and include some SEO keyword ranking tips as well.
• 10 Steps to Creating an Authority Blog (David Walker): Bloggers, take note: the presentation and the content of your blog is everything. There’s more than that, though, and David Walker walks you though it.
• 5 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Search Traffic (Search Engine People): In Glen Allsopp’s guest post for Search Engine People, he says that you can increase your blog’s search engine traffic by applying some tactics to old (already published) blog posts.
• 5 Ways to Turn Blog Comments into Conversations (SEO Scoop): Blog comments should be ongoing conversations, but how do you do that? Barry Welford explores ways to make blog comments more engaging.
• The Complete Guide to Video Blogging (Mashable): Ever wanted to be a video blogger? This in-depth Mashable article by Leah Betancourt talks about the roots of video blogging and how to get started.
• How to Use Curation to Make Your Blog Better (Influential Marketing): I love how Rohit Bhargava compares PostSecret to success in blogging. He offers great tips here.
• Starting a Blog? These 50 Lessons Will Help You Succeed (The Future Buzz): Using data gathered from the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2009, Adam Singer gives solid actionable tips on how you can start a blog and why it’s important that you do.
• 22 Reasons for You to Blog (Gloson): The youngest person who will ever make it to my top posts is totally Gloson. He’s 11 and gives you 22 reasons why you should blog.
• 8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog (Problogger): If you really have a strong blog, you have potential to also grow a strong community. But how? Darren Rowse provides the insights.
• How to Create a High Quality Blog (Dan Blank): Pretty pictures and solid advice make this blog post a winner for anyone — companies and people — looking to craft a high quality blog.
• A Short List of Content Elements for Your Consideration (Broadcasting Brain): Before you publish your blog, ask yourself the following questions. Due diligence, my friends.
• How to Make Your Corporate Blog More Social (Social Media Explorer): Dan Zarrella shares small ideas but smart ones that can make your corporate blog a lot more approachable.

Reputation Management

• Top 10 Ways to Save Your Online Reputation in 2009 (Small Business Trends): Business need to step up a notch and be a lot more personable to avoid a reputation management fiasco. Most companies need to start by simply acknowledging each and every incoming request from a customer as alluded to in #2.
• Using Social Media For Reputation Management (DirJournal): Some of the tips here aren’t discussed in other articles, such as focusing on video and optimizing for local search.
• How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard (aimClear): This is an incredibly huge post by Marty Weintraub on how to set up a reputation management monitoring dashboard, from doing the keyword research to finding additional keywords to monitor to actually building it. It has lots of screenshots and good actionable information that you can get started with today.
• A Common Search Reputation Management Timeline (Search Cowboys): To summarize this post, if you don’t act to prevent reputation management issues, you’re doomed in the search world.
• Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management (Vertical Measures): My book talks about how maintaining social media profiles can help you with your reputation management issues. This post echoes that sentiment and provides specific social networks that you should establish your presence on.
• How Companies Should Respond to Negative Reviews (Outspoken Media): You shouldn’t always let criticism sit.  Sometimes you can respond.  What would you respond to, though?  How should you do it?
• The Dos and Don’ts of Online Reputation Management (Search Engine Journal): This article is a simple easy list to follow for reputation management issues. Yes, you can push down negative search engine results, but you need a plan. You can get some direction on that plan by reading this article.
• 5 Ways Negative Reviews are Good for Business (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee explains why negative reviews aren’t too bad after all. Just make sure you don’t get mentioned on Consumerist or Boing Boing. (Of course, if you get there, it’s probably because your customers exhausted all avenues, which you should’ve been abreast of earlier!)
• Online Reputation Management in the Future (WebProNews): Chris Crum interviews several experts about the possible diminishing impact of reputation management services — that is, when everyone has a reputation management issue, is it going to be less of a concern?
• The Online Reputation Management Guide (Outspoken Media): Outspoken Media has produced an incredible online reputation guide. Rhea Drysdale talks about the nuances of assessing, building, tracking, and monitoring your reputation online.

Content Development/Marketing

• Writing Content for the Buyer’s Decision Journey (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni talks about the buying funnel and gives good examples of companies that do it well.
• 10 Secrets for Creating Viral Content (The Buzz Bin): It’s all about others — NOT yourself.
• The Doctor McCoy Guide to Healing Sick Content (Copyblogger): What do Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy of Star Trek and good writers have in common? Mark Dykeman offers a few parallels that just might get you thinking of your article-writing (or blogging) strategy.
• Beyond Headlines: How to Get Your Audience to Read Every Word (Copyblogger): Dave Navarro’s article on Copyblogger explains how to entice an audience and force them to read every word. The idea is to communicate similar tastes, triggering a sense of need, and promising valuable information.
• 30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate (SEOptimise): This article has some great ways to convert visitors into members, buyers, or regular users of your site. Are you listening?
• 12 Types of Content Strategies SEOs Should Know and Use (Search Engine People): If you want to build traffic and links to your site, you might want to get some ideas from Jeff Quipp. Hint: this type of post is in the article, but that’s not really why I do it. At the end of the day, it’s great to provide a valuable resource for me and for you!
• 9 Strategies for Finding Incredible Content (Search Engine Journal): This post on Search Engine Journal actually proposes some pretty unknown sites that you can leverage for article content inspiration.
• Practical Guide to Finding Link Bait Inspiration (SEO Smarty): Ann Smarty presents a pretty good guide for content inspiration, but not just any type of content: her guide gives you ideas on finding great link bait topics.
• The Psychology of a Linkbait (Search Engine Journal): Loren Baker paraphrases this article by saying, “You can increase your chances of linking success by remembering one simple rule : the best links come from real human beings. Here are ways to appeal to those real human emotions in linkbaiting.”
• Why Most Get Content Marketing Wrong (The Future Buzz): It’s a matter of formatting your content properly. If you miss the ball, you will fail.
• Top 10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails (Conversation Agent): Might as well try to get it right, right? Let Valeria help.
• The 10 Commandments of Content Marketing (Social Media Explorer): I like Kat French. She explains why your content marketing strategy might just not work in a nice list format with good descriptions.
• 49 Creative Ways You Can Profit from Content Marketing (Copyblogger): To be ahead of the game, you should be creative about it. Here are 49 things you can think about right now.

Web Development

• The “Just Create Compelling and Useful Content” Lie (Sebastian’s Pamphlets): Sebastian highlights the elements of a successful website. Hint: it’s not just great content alone.
• Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website (Seth Godin): Seth asks thought-provoking questions that are to be considered in your next website redesign.

Video

• Online Video for Business: The Three Types of Business Video (ReelSEO): We’ve heard about viral videos, but that’s only one type of business video. There are two other types of videos, according to Daniel Sevitt. He goes into each type by explaining what they are and providing metrics for success.
• How to Succeed on YouTube (Search Engine Marketing Group): If you’ve been looking for some good ideas for how to achieve viral success on YouTube, read what Sheena Melwani says from experience.
• 5 Important Web Video Lessons for Small Business Owners (Mashable/OPEN Forum): How are you going to make your video stick? Josh Catone highlights 5 videos and explains the lessons learned.
• How Video Promotion Launched a Rap Career: A Complete Guide (Shoemoney): This article might be specific to a rapper’s evolving career, but there are general video promotion ideas in here as well.
• 34 Ways to Use YouTube for Business (WebWorkerDaily): These tips are broken down into expertise, advertising, and customer service.

SEO: Strategy

• The SEM Toolbox: 79 Tools and Tips Every Search Marketer Should Have (SEO Contrarian): Ari Ozick provides a list of the best tools ever needed to do your job as a search engine marketer. Categories include backup tools, backlink discovery tools, link management tools, competitive research tools, keyword tools, domain tools, and a whole lot more.
• SEO Hierarchy of Needs (Bruce Clay Blog): What step are you on when it comes to your SEO needs? What must you do next? This article by Virginia Nussey features a graphic that mimics Maslow’s hierarchy with an SEO spin.
• Search Engine Ranking Factors (SEOmoz): Every year, SEOmoz comes out with a list of search engine ranking factors, which is incredibly valuable if you do anything remotely related to SEO or search engine marketing. Of course, it’s not perfect since the algorithm is kept under wraps, but this information has been guesstimated by trial and error.
• Big List of Search Engine Ranking Factors (Huomah): David Harry revisits the discussion of the factors that he believes affects search engine rankings. And since he just came out with the recent training course SEO Dojo, which has been an incredible success, it’s a good idea to read this and listen.
• What Aspects of SEO Should You Be Spending Most of Your Time On? (SEO Book): Peter Da Vanzo gives a good beginner’s guide for how to get into SEO for your new website.
• Google is the Other Woman: The Relationship Algorithm (Foot in Mouth): This article uses an interesting parallel to judge how Google judges your site for algorithmic preference, but I actually would contend that all search engines typically follow the same rules of thumb. I love the analogies!
• Future-Proof Your SEO (Huomah): Here’s an article which will actually likely be outdated in a few years, but I thought it was still good enough for the purposes of understanding the search landscape today with regards to what works and what doesn’t in search engine optimization.
• The 100+ Ranking Variables Google Uses, and Why You Shouldn’t Care (SEO Book): In January, Aaron Wall predicted that search marketing success will come from engaging people. This is absolutely starting to take hold, especially as people actually talk about their favorite websites and search engines respond in kind. Twitter integration in search results, anyone?
• Big Project, Small Budget: Where to Begin Your SEO Campaign (Search Engine Guide): If you are trying to SEO your site, you may want to start thinking about the areas you should put more emphasis on–perhaps because your budget constraints may limit you to only one of these areas.
• 12 Easy Mistakes that Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field (SEOmoz): Even though this is a basic article on SEO, sometimes even seasoned professionals lose sight of this stuff. You can count on the “reciprocal linking” (read: link exchanges) to be a big mishap in “established SEO firms” from the amount of emails I get with that request daily across all my blogs. UGH
• SEO for Large eCommerce Sites (AudetteMedia): Adam Audette is the SEO for Zappos. That means he knows a fair bit about optimizing billion-dollar business websites. He explores the techniques he uses for his big client in this article.
• Creating a Sweet High Value Keyword List in 5 Minutes (SEO Book): Aaron Wall shows you how to create a high-value keyword research list in 5 minutes, then features a video on how to actually see what you just did.
• 5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet (Search Engine Marketing Group): Here’s my question. Have you even heard of these yet?
• How to Optimize for Conversion in Organic Search Results (Search Engine Land): SEO should be ROI-centric. If that’s not on your agenda, read this article and start thinking along the lines of driving real conversions.
• 7 Rules for Writing URLs (Small Business SEM): If you do anything related to search engine marketing, understanding the URL structure and how to actually optimize it is important. Matt McGee offers tips on how to do this.
• How Using Google AdWords Can Be the Best SEO Tool in Your Arsenal (RedFly Marketing): Dave Davis presents some pretty invaluable information on the potential for Google AdWords to be an incredible asset for search engine optimization. Yes, you read that right.
• How to Up Your SEO Income by a Factor of 10 (SEO Book): Ari Ozick’s guest post for SEO Book is a darn good one – you won’t know until you test. It’s really that simple.
• SEO Best Practices: New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data (SEOmoz): It’s time to start reevaluating your SEO tactics. SEOmoz has looked at what works and reported on their findings.
• 5 SEO Essentials: Charting Effective Search Engine Optimization (Online Marketing Blog): Dana Larson’s approach toward effective SEO is great. Most people forget about that in such a social media centric world.
• 6 Key Tactics for Organic Success (Search Engine Guide): Jen Laycock provides six great tactics for organic success: keywords, content, code, optimization, links, and patience. Yes, patience is a big one!

SEO: Information

• Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations, Realities (Small Business SEM): This isn’t a “SEO how to” article. We always see enough of those. What this is is a good article by Matt McGee on what you should expect when you actually buy SEO consulting.
• 5 Tips for Avoiding Deceptive SEO Companies (Small Business Trends): Since we’re talking about SEO, we might as well tell you what to look for so that you do NOT do business with some of these companies. Look for reputable companies if you ever need to focus on search engine optimization. Your rankings depend on it.
• Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight! (High Rankings): Jill Whalen rants about the “SEO shops” that give SEO the snake oil bad name. There actually are good SEOs out there.
• 8 Short Steps to Forecast and Estimate SEO ROI (SEO ROI): Want ROI for your SEO efforts? Gab Goldenberg offers 8 steps on how exactly that can be achieved.
• You Don’t Need SEO to Rank in Google (Sugarrae): Rae explains that SEO by itself simply isn’t the key to high rankings. Good content and marketing is really the key; SEO is just a secondary requirement.

Link Building

• Get Your Link Building Requests Answered (Dream Systems Media): Matt Siltala writes an incredibly valuable article that answers how to get people to link to you once they’ve already established rapport with your competitors. He also brings in four experts who weigh in on the question.
• Why Link Building May Not Work (Best SEO Blog): Sometimes your link building practices won’t work. Michael Martinez explains why beginning about 1/3 of the way down in this article.
• How to Get Backlinks (Internet Marketing Techniques and Theories): Leo calls this post “very long.” I think I agree with him.
• Secrets of How to Escape the Link Building Trap Now (SEO Theory): If you don’t want to build links, you might pursue these other opportunities to build links that don’t violate any guidelines. There’s also a service review in here for a link building program run by a pretty well known guy in the SEO space.
• Buy Text Link Ads with these 101 Sneaky Tips (Search Engine Journal): Gab Goldenberg tries to stay under the radar when buying text links with 101 ideas that hopefully won’t get you caught.
• Indispensable Link Building Applications (Wiep.net): Wiep Knol has a toolbox filled to the brim of great link building applications. If you do any link building at all, make sure to familiarize yourself with these applications.
• Link Building Techniques, Interactive Agency Approach (Zeta Interactive): I get about 4-5 link building requests across multiple web properties a day. When reading this article, I realize that for 99.9% of these requests, none of these techniques (personalized requests, transparency, knowing the target website, etc.) are employed at all. Is that really so difficult? I guess it is when you outsource link building to interns.
• A Big Bunch of Link Building Ideas (Search Engine Land): Debra Mastaler is a link building genius and when she talks, I always listen. In this article, she explores the consequences of actually linking out to other websites and what you can do to build other types of links.
• Link Building from A to Z (SEOmoz): Wiep Knol is one of the foremost link building experts and has covered an entire alphabet of ways to get new links.
• 10 Goals for Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links” (Search Engine Land): Garrett French writes a great in-depth guide on how you can build links, suggesting countless tactics and link prospect sources.
• Link Building Evaluation Journal (Search Engine Journal): Building links to a website? How could you enhance your link portfolio? Dave Snyder suggests different ideas for different metrics of the link, be them the age of a domain, the anchor text, or the relevant authority of the link page.
• 10 Link Building and Tracking Tools for SEO (Online Marketing Blog): Got links? Start testing them. This Top Rank Marketing blog post explores ten possible tools from which to do this.
• 11 Effective, Efficient Ways to Use Limited Time to Build Links (Search Engine Land): If you’re tasked with building links but yet do not know how to manage your time, you might want to read this and follow Debra Mastaler’s suggestions.
• Link Mixology: The 12 Kinds of Links Your Site Needs (Michelle MacPhearson): Michelle MacPhearson writes a good point on what kinds of links you should be getting if you intend to market your website.
• 21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries (Search Engine Land): Not all link building tips and tricks have to be Link Building 101. Here are 21 great advanced tactics that can help you get a little more out of link building.

PPC

• PPC Advertising Pitfalls: Don’t Just Do What Simon Says (Search Cowboys): Lisa Myers talks about the common pitfalls when engaging in a Google AdWords PPC campaign and explains that most people fall into these because Google AdWords is so easy to set up that many business owners waste money every day.
• The Golden Rules of Keyword Research (SEOptimise): Choosing keywords for PPC should not be too difficult, as long as your keywords are relevant, specific, local, smart, sneaky, and flexible. Explanations within.
• Top 5 Mistakes Made by PPC Newcomers (Latitude Group): Maybe you’ve decided to go into PPC marketing. If you do, don’t make these mistakes in Google AdWords.
• When Pay Per Click is NOT Right for You (Search Engine Journal): PPC? What’s that all about? Brian Carter explains why PPC is an asset and why it might be detrimental for you. If you have no idea what this is and might consider trying it, read this article first.
• How to Write PPC Ad Copy (Search Engine People): If you’ve ever done Google AdWords or any other PPC, you know that the best copy is important to drive clickthroughs. Just HOW to optimize those messages is the subject of this article.
• 6 Habits of Highly Effective PPC Managers (NVI Solutions): If you do any Pay Per Click, you should possess these six traits at the minimum, which include the desire to test and tweak, leveraging your web analytics, and staying informed of policy updates.
• Writing Your Best PPC Ads (Search Cowboys): If you’ve ever done Pay Per Click marketing, you might want to follow some of the tips Kate Morris offers on this post.
• SEM Training Strategy: Overcoming Common Mistakes (SEO Book): Aaron Wall explains how to maximize your PPC and SEO campaigns.
• How to Prevent Competitors from Seeing Your AdWords Ads (Jennifer Slegg): If you are really the competitive type and don’t want your competitors to see your Google AdWords ads, take Jen’s advice and lock ‘em out!
• 9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy (Search Engine Journal): Saad Kamal knows his Google AdWords. Do you?
• 7 Incredibly Valuable but Underused Free Tools for PPC Marketers (Search Engine Land): Brad Geddes talks about some of the most useful tools to help boost your Pay Per Click campaigns.

Affiliate Marketing

• Cut the Fat: Some Quick Tips to Instantly Gain Profit (Jonathan Volk): Jonathan Volk’s gives affiliate marketing tips based on his own trial and error.
• Are You Ready for an Affiliate Program? (NVI Solutions): I usually talk about affiliate marketing on the hows of setting it up. But what if you’re a merchant who is considering it? Then read this and see if you’re ready.
• The Most Powerful Way to Presell Any Product or Service (Dosh Dosh): Dosh Dosh discusses the way to lure potential buyers into buying your product like all affiliate marketers should really be doing.
• PPC Affiliate Marketing 101 (Jonathan Volk): In case you were new to the affiliate game, here’s what you can do to get started with affiliate marketing using Pay Per Click.
• Interview with Rae Hoffman AKA Sugarrae (SEO Book): Rae Hoffman talks to Aaron Wall about her success as an affiliate marketer. This interview is pretty damn good.

Analytics

• 6 Tools Every Google Analytics User Should Have (Unofficial Google Analytics Blog): I’ve never heard of any of these Google Analytics tools before!
• Google Analytics Mega Post: 23 Google Analytics Tips and Tweaks (Search Engine People): Google Analytics out of the box is a powerful package. You can tweak output even further, though. To get started, read this article.
• The Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide (VKI Studios): This is the most in-depth Google Analytics user guide that I’ve ever seen.
• Using Analytics to Measure SEO Success (Search Engine Land): Jill Whalen explains that rankings aren’t good success metrics. Instead, focus on your analytics. Here’s how.
• Google Analytics for Local Search (seOverflow):  This is how you can use Google Analytics for some great local optimization.  This article is choc full of great detail, and while it’s local-focused, there’s good actionable insight for anyone using Google Analytics in some way.

Usability

• Is Your Website Easy to Buy From? Tips You Can Test to Improve Your Site’s Checkout Process (Conversion Room): Want to make sales on your website? You better hope it’s usable. Here are some areas you can test to find out if your site is good for the average buyer.
• Are You Guilty of Crimes Against Usability? Let the Jury Decide (Search Engine Guide): In this usability blog post, Stoney deGeyter equates your customers with the jury. Business owners should study those juries to find out what judgments they are passing on your site.
• Why Usability and SEO Go Hand in Hand (Search Engine Land): Search engines like usable websites, just like people do. It’s in your best interest to appreciate the value of this.

Landing Pages

• 9 Effective Tips for a Better Landing Page (Search Engine Journal): Saad Kamal offers good tips for great landing pages.
• 30+ Principles to a Better Landing Page Design (Landing Page Optimization): You’ve read about the types of landing pages, but how do you actually design one? You can follow the tactics tried by people who already have found success.
• Landing Page Types (Lyris HQ): This article presents a concise list of landing page types, from PPC landing pages to transactional landing pages.
• 7 Tips to Increasing Landing Page Conversions (Search Engine Journal): Lauren Vaccarello explains how to craft the content on your landing page to actually see conversions. One great tip: avoid marketing speak and use simple English instead.

Local/Mobile Search

• Mobile Search Guide (cellphones.org): Now more and more people are using their cell phones and searching on their favorite search engine. My phone is old as heck but even I do it. But if you’re a website creator, have you optimized for mobile search? If not, perhaps you should, since your visitors might end up going elsewhere.
• Local Search Ranking Factors (David Mihm): Just like there are SEO ranking factors, there are also local search ranking factors.  David Mihm gives you an exhaustive list of them for your perusal.
• A Closer Look at the Local Search Data Providers (getListed.org): Any local business presence will want to make sure its information is accurate online.  Take a look at the providers listed to figure out where your information needs to be updated.
• Blocking and Tackling: 10 Fundamentals of Local SEO (Search Engine Land): David Mihm, our resident local expert, provides a basic list of what you should do as a local business to get ranked in search engines.

Personal Branding

• How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand (Skelliewag): Skellie talks about why a brand is important and how you can do it.
• How to Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube (Mashable): Dan Schawbel is a personal branding expert and shows you how to build a strong YouTube brand. Really, this is a pretty good general YouTube how-to article, but he ties it into the personal branding element, which works for me.
• SEO Tips for Building Your Personal Brand (Search Engine Land): I don’t really consider these “SEO” tips, as they’re more social media centric. But they’re great for building your brand, that’s for sure.
• 7 Ways to Land Great Consulting Work While in Between Jobs (Personal Branding Blog): How to build your brand when finding a job, according to Monica O’Brien!
• What a Personal Brand is NOT (Tom Peters): It is NOT a perk, among other things. You have the privilege of a personal brand. What are you going to make of it?
• 50 Ways to Make Limoncello When You’ve Been Laid Off (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni highlights an incredibly inspirational video and gives you some great ideas to build your brand when you’ve been laid off — and I’ll add when you’re not. You should always be building your personal brand.

Building a Brand/Brand Evangelism

• Checklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program (Web Strategist): Jeremiah covers some of the other aspects of a brand ambassador program, detailing the nuances and the like.
• 19 Presence Management Chores You Could Do Every Day (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan shows how you can be involved in the conversations around you — tangibly.
• What Do You Love? (Cranial Soup): This article is about marketing coming from the perspective of the consumer. Consumers have a duty to market their favorite products or risk losing them from store shelves. Marketers should do this for their favorite products for free. I would. (Call it brand evangelism if you will.)
• How to Create Advocates for Your Business (Logic+Emotion): Brand evangelism. Customer Advocacy. It’s all the same. Now how do you actually get there?

Public Relations

• The State of PR, Marketing, and Communications: You are the Future (Brian Solis): This is the longest “blog post” in the history of the world but it is one of the most brilliant things I have read in all of 2009.
• PR Gone Bad: How to Anger Bloggers and Hose Your Client (Jonathan Fields): This story by Jonathan was so good that I even wrote a story about it which was published to Brian Solis’s blog as well.
• Shift Your PR from Push to Pull (The Future Buzz): Why should you move to a pull PR strategy? Adam Singer gives you the lowdown.
• 3 Steps for Effectively Using Social Media for PR (Online Marketing Blog): Social is everywhere, and you can use it in your public relations efforts. In fact, you really should.
• 25 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a PR Firm (Idea Grove): These questions test competency, prioritization, cost-efficiency, and compatibility.
• How to Use Social Media in Your PR Pitch (Mashable): Interaction is key, according to Susan Payton.
• The Art of the Pitch (Jonathan Volk): Want to pitch a busy blogger? Follow these steps. This is a short read with good insights.
• How to Woo a Blogger (and get coverage) (Outspoken Media): This is an excellent guidebook into what you should to in order to get a blogger to talk about you.  If the proposed content fits the blogger’s audience and you follow these rules, you very well may see more mentions of your clients’ products/services in blog posts.
• How to Write Effective Press Releases in the Age of Twitter (OPEN Forum): It’s not really just the “age of Twitter” – it’s the “age of social.” That said, where’s your multimedia? Is it in your pitch?
• A Poor Man’s Guide to Finding Influencers (The Buzz Bin): If you’re not going to buy a Cision subscription to find the bloggers and people interested in talking about you, try this guide to get you to locating who to reach out to.

Community Management/Engagement

• 5 Myths of Community Management (Altitude Branding): This is a great post on what a community manager REALLY does. Newsflash: it’s not only about walking the halls of social media sites.
• Community Manager Responsibilities and Goals (Connie Bensen): Connie writes a great post about community management (revised from July 2008).
• Social Media Community Manager Job Description (aimClear): Here’s an “official description” for a social media community manager.
• Community Engagement (The Buzz Bin): Geoff Livingston talks about engagement as discussed in his book, Now is Gone, and how it has evolved in the last 1.5 years.
• How to Kick Start a Community: An Ongoing List (Web Strategist): Jeremiah suggests some great ways to build a real online community in your little neck of the woods.
• 10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement (Mashable): A big point that Leah Betancourt makes here is the emphasis on user generated content (UGC). Other important points are identifying and nurturing power users and welcoming newbies.

General Online Marketing

• Definitive Guide to Word of Mouth Marketing (Samir Balwani): Samir Balwani writes an awesome guide on word of mouth marketing, broken down and categorized into sections (why it’s important, elements of WOMM, web influence, what elements facilitate sharing, campaign tracking, and more!)
• How to Send a Personal Email (Seth Godin): Seth Godin writes about email etiquette. My favorite? #14 (especially due to all the LinkedIn spammers who have been targeting me as of late).
• 6 Powerful Principles of Persuasion for Influential Internet Marketing (Winning the Web): In a post emphasizing the parallels of the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini, Gyutae Park applies these principles to Internet Marketing and explains why you need to apply them in any online marketing campaign.
• 6 Buzzworthy Laws All Internet Marketers Should Understand (The Future Buzz): Do you know what the long tail means? Probably. How about Metcalfe’s Law or The Streisand Effect?
• 11 Ways to Influence People Online and Make Them Take Action (Dosh Dosh): If you’re marketing to individuals online, you should target your messaging to the three brains of the human body. Don’t understand what I just said? Read the article.
• 6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website (Dosh Dosh): Dosh Dosh wrote another great article on how to monetize your most popular web pages. This is great for anyone, from the affiliate marketer to the SEO to the small online shop.
• “Don’t Put Your Eggs in One Basket” is Bad Advice for Internet Marketers (Winning the Web): While I argue that you must not spread yourself too thin, I actually am going to take Gyutae’s advice on this one.
• 3 Reasons Why it Pays to Go Niche (Literally) (Winning the Web): Gyutae Park explains that some markets are saturated. You’ll be more successful if you focus on niche markets instead. (Good luck starting a brand new social media blog tomorrow!)
• 11 Internet Marketing Skills that Should be Second Nature (Conversation Marketing): Are you well versed in internet marketing? Being knowledgeable in social media doesn’t cut it. You should also know these 11 tips as suggested by Ian Lurie.
• Social Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint (Web Strategist): This article touches upon the different elements of online advertising (and then some) and highlights market maturity and brand impact.
• Internet Marketing Isn’t a Buffet: Why You Need Quality Traffic Over Quantity (Winning the Web): Quality is more important than quantity, and Gyutae explains why this is the case.
• 10 Things You Can Do in the Next 60 Days to Market Your Business and Close More Sales (Small Business Trends): This article was talking about how to end 2009, but since you’re probably reading it for the first time now, how about using these to begin 2010?

Everything Else Under the Sun

• Being Socially Aware: Because a Smile and Fast Talk Don’t Work on the Internet (ob81): For a successful marketing effort, the bottom line, according to Howard O’Berry, is that you need to be socially aware of your surroundings and know who to pitch to. He even refers to a case study that impacted him to drive this point home.
• 12 Steps to Upgrade Your Business (Small Business Trends): Here are some great ideas to upgrade your business, from being more approachable to learning a new web technology to NETWORKING! woo!
• Rage Against the Sales Letter (Jonathan Fields): The long sales letter is a tactic that you may not really appreciate, but some marketers swear by it. Read why Jonathan Fields considers long copy a must-have.
• Business Ethics & Mistakes You Should Avoid! (Tony Adam): Tony Adam explores some business ethics moves that you should avoid. Some include reporting your competitors, burning bridges, and more.
• Your Customers’ Hierarchy of Need (Ignite Social Media): Ignite Social Media writes a great post on how customers relate to brands using Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
• How to Identify and Deal with Different Types of Clients (Smashing Magazine): If you’ve ever had a nitpicker or family friend as a client, what are you to do when issues arise? Smashing Magazine has your answer.
• 9 Reasons Your Online Business Will Fail (Shoemoney): Discipline and focus are two of the nine reasons.

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Closing Notes

The year 2009 was incredibly huge for me. I gave birth to my first child, a little boy, who is my pride and joy. I published a social media marketing book. I’ve made great relationships, big and small, and I’ve worked on some fantastic projects that I could have only dreamed of just a few years ago.

In the past decade, I’ve graduated college, married the love of my life, switched careers to find my passion, and now I live through it every day. Every morning, I wake up excited to see what the day will bring. I’m aiming higher for the next 10 years — let’s see if I can top this. I’m truly excited to see what next year will bring.

May you all have a happy, successful, and wonderful 2010.

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

There are a fair number of excellent search engine optimization experts (SEOs) in the wild, but there are countless social media marketing experts, many of whom are self-proclaimed gurus in their field. However, the number of SEOs I’ve come across are much fewer and farther between than social media marketers. In fact, I hear the same SEO names every day; I learn of a new “social media expert” twice a day.  Despite this, social media marketing is much more difficult than search engine optimization. Here’s why.

The Quest for Knowledge

What exactly does it take to become a search engine optimization expert or a social media marketing expert? In both of these aspects of search engine marketing, you begin by learning.  As the ideal marketer, you gets your hands on every single search engine optimization and social media marketing book or blog you can possibly find, and then you absorb the information presented within like a sponge. You begin following the experts (you know, the real ones) online. After awhile, you’ll be book smart. You’ll know what to do and what not to do. Hopefully, if you’ve followed the right books, blogs, and people, you’ll be armed with pretty decent case studies and pretty decent material to embark on your own journey.

The SEO Angle

If you’re a brand new student in the school of thought of SEO, after you’ve learned about improving your web presence via search engines, there are countless opportunities to prove to yourself that you know what you’re doing. For you, this means practice and true application of acquired skill. It’s not that costly to buy a few domain names (brand new or aged), invest in web hosting, and start applying that knowledge you’ve learned to websites. You can build a website from scratch or set up something quickly via a WordPress installation. You can purchase neglected websites through auctions. At the end of the day, you have websites — your subjects — upon which to test. When it relates to SEO, you can start right away. And you should. After all, you can’t learn SEO just by reading about it.

Wait, Maybe SEO Isn’t So Easy Then

SEO is an art and a science and one that is extremely difficult to understand and perfect. In fact, “perfection” in SEO is an impossibility since SEO is an ongoing process. Why, then, is SEO really easier? The issue is that the assets for performing SEO are right in front of you. To become a successful SEO, it will be necessary for you to get off your butt and begin testing and retesting, tweaking and optimizing, working hard to improve performance and rankings over time. But the sites are there. The access is there. That’s the easy part. They just need you to apply your knowledge to them.

The Challenge for the Social Media Consultant

In social media marketing, you can easily become book smart.  The problem begins when it actually relates to your street smarts.

See, it’ll take an incredible amount of time to engage in the education, but when it relates to social media marketing versus SEO, there’s something missing in the equation: experience. No, building your personal brand in social media does not count.

Social media marketing is a tremendous challenge, especially now that the market has become saturated with experts who clearly think that bringing their Digg front page success means that they’ve just launched a successful consulting business and can immediately sell their services to the highest (lowest?) bidder.  In social media marketing, the assets are missing.  The subjects are not there for you to test. You need clients. You need to be presented with a problem, one that you can actually analyze. You need to determine what kind of strategy you’ll implement. You then need to start executing. That’s not something you can easily do by just buying a few domain names and building up a real website presence.  But that’s easy to do where SEO is concerned.

Just because your wonderful piece of linkbait that drove 30,000 visitors to via Digg succeeded once (or maybe twice) doesn’t mean that you’re ready to go at having those clients alone. You’re not yet a social media marketing expert, not unless you’re consistently applying your skills to different and unique campaigns and initiatives. Much like SEO. Except that in SEO, you’re lucky because you can get started immediately. In social media marketing, you need to start hunting for people who are willing to take the risk to have you promote content or to push a marketing agenda online in front of the right people. Or they need to find you.  But when they do, they need to know that you have a proven track record of doing this on a regular basis and case studies to back that up.

Not All Experiences Are Treated Equal, Either

I do my own fair share of consulting by myself, but those who know me well know that I have been vocal about the fact that it’s great to work alone, but it’s even better to work with an agency where you can brainstorm with others and get access to some high level experiences not otherwise accessible as a sole consultant.  Real experience with a wide array of clients opens doors of opportunities and gives you the ammunition you need to say you really do understand what social media marketing is all about. That’s why I am working as a consultant on some amazing projects at a social media agency too. There’s only enough I can do as a one woman show.

Learning is the easy part. Applying the knowledge is the hard part. When it relates to SEO, the ability to apply that knowledge is easy since you can either create or buy a website that lets you begin applying the skills you need to become an expert. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to build up a presence by obtaining clients of some sort. And you’ll soon learn that it’s not that easy to find them.

[ Why SEO is Easier than Social Media Marketing is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

This is a guest post by Jesse Stay, founder and CEO of SocialToo.com and all around great Facebook Fan Page coder. He’s volunteered to give away a copy of his recent book, FBML Essentials, to two readers. Scroll down to the end of the post for details on how to win.

Marketers love Facebook. With 350 million+ users, a self-promoting and natural way to have people promote your product, and a very active audience full of close friends and family, what’s not to like? If you had any doubt, just go on over to their stats page and see for yourself why it is something you want as part of your marketing strategy.

The best place you can place your brand on Facebook is through a Facebook Page (that’s with a capital “P”, not to be confused with your personal Profile). As of the time of this writing, over 10 million users become fans of Fan Pages every day. This number should be no surprise — when people “fan” your Page, their friends see it, and your brand spreads organically. What most don’t know is that you can customize this experience for your users. With just a little work, and either some knowledge of simple HTML or the ability to hire a developer to do the work for you, you can have a custom Page up for your business in no time. Here are some tips you can apply to your Facebook marketing strategy that will put your Facebook Page leaps and bounds ahead of the competition:

Maximize Your Avatar Visibility

Profile pictures on Facebook can have a maximum size of 200×600 pixels. This applies to Pages as well. Facebook Pages do not allow background images like Twitter, Myspace, and other services. What you can do, however, is take advantage of that full 200×600 real estate and get your brand in front of the eyes of your fans. This will make sure, regardless of what part of your Page they are on your brand is front and center.

Install the Static FBML App and Add a Custom Tab

Do a search for “static FBML” on Facebook (or just click here), and click “Add to my Page” in the upper-left. A dialog pop-over will appear with a list of Pages you administer. Select the Page you want to customize by clicking the “Add to Page” button next to the Page, and when you click the button it will disappear from the list. Now click “Close”.

Now what you want to do is create your tab. To create the tab, just go to your Page and click the link, “Edit Page” in the upper-left below your main Page image. Now when you scroll down you will see a subsection called “FBML”. Click on the “Application Settings” link for that subsection, and another popover dialog will appear. Click “add” next to the Tab field and click Okay. You’ve now just added a blank Tab called “FBML” to your Page. Now you need to customize it.

Add Content to Your Custom Tab

If you go view your Page now, you’ll notice when you click the “>>” tab there is now an “FBML” option in the drop-down. If you click on it, that tab appears in the list of tabs at the top, and you can drag it around (to the extent that Facebook allows you). You’ll notice the tab is completely blank. Let’s add some content to it.

To add content, click on “Edit Page” again on the left below your Page image. Go to the “FBML” subsection again, but this time click the “Edit” link. Now you’ll be taken to a very simple form with a “Box Title” field and an “FBML” field. This is your Canvas.

Let’s start by changing the title of the tab. As I mentioned earlier, the tab, by default gets called “FBML” when you add it. You probably don’t want to keep that name, so I recommend changing it to something productive, like “Welcome”, or “Introduction”. You can name it whatever you like, depending on your purpose!

Now you’ll want to enter some content. The “FBML” field will take almost any basic HTML. You don’t need to include any <html>, <head>, or <body> tags, as the HTML you enter will only take the place of that whitespace you just saw. All the header stuff is taken care of for you. Play with it and see what you can do.

Customize Your Tab With FBML

Beyond simple HTML you can also enter very simple FBML tags to simplify some of the process. FBML stands for “Facebook Markup Language”, and is meant to be a shortcut for use in Facebook applications. Facebook has also enabled the use of a subset of FBML in the Static FBML application. FBML can be a great way to reduce the amount of HTML you need to enter, while at the same time keeping Facebook’s own look and feel. The format is very simple, and if you are familiar with HTML or XML you’ll pick it up very quickly.

To learn FBML you’re going to want to check out Facebook’s documentation and reference on FBML tags. There is a large reference of these tags on their developer wiki. I recommend you look around and see what’s available, then try them out and see how they work. You can also purchase my book, FBML Essentials, which will give you a little more details on FBML (as well as the Facebook developer platform in general).

Keep in mind that the Static FBML application only supports a subset of what the full FBML reference indicates is available. Unfortunately there is no documentation stating what is, and isn’t supported. Tags that have been confirmed working and are my favorites are:

<fb:name> – displays a specific user’s name in the standard Facebook format
<fb:profile-pic> – displays a specific user’s profile picture in the standard Facebook format
<fb:swf> (great for Youtube videos or other video display) – allows you to include Flash applications in your tab
<fb:live-stream> – posts a Facebook live stream widget on your Tab (you must create a new application to do this)
<fb:comments> – adds a Facebook comments box to your Tab

If you read the Facebook wiki documentation keep in mind that “loggedinuser” does not work for the uid on the Static FBML App, but “profileowner” does. Beyond that, if you specify the specific user id in that field it should show properly. Here’s an example of a simple tab I set up:

<h1>Welcome!</h1>
<p>
<fb:profile-pic uid=”profileowner” size=”square”/>
Hi! My name is <fb:name uid=”profileowner”/>.
</p>
<fb:fan name=”stay”></fb:fan>
<fb:live-stream width=”700″ height=”400″
event_app_id =”293151070252″></fb:live-stream>

That produces something that looks like this:

Set Your Page to Default to Your New Tab

Now that you’ve created your custom tab using the Static FBML App you may want to set your Page to default to the new tab. This can give you a nice welcome message for your fans. To do so, just click “Edit Page” as I mentioned above. Under “Wall Settings”, click “edit”, and under “default landing tab for everyone else” select your new tab in the drop down. You’re done! Keep in mind that this default tab is only visible as a default landing page for those that are not yet fans of your Page yet.

SEO for Facebook Pages

Your Page is visible to search engines! Now that you’ve created your custom landing page, keep in mind that search engines see the page layout in the same way that someone who is not a fan of your page would see.

If you haven’t yet created a Facebook Page, you should also keep in mind that the Page title can be one of the best places to create a search-engine friendly title for your brand. Be sure this is something that describes yourself and your brand, and that you think others will be searching for. It should also, at the same time, be something familiar to other Facebook users, as this is what they will see in their News feeds as their friends become fans or you post updates. Keep in mind your Page name can not be changed once you create it, so get it right the first time! It can be a pain to have to re-create a new Page and re-establish months of work building your Page if you get it wrong early on.

Conclusion

As you can see, a Facebook Page is a powerful tool that you can use to enhance and strengthen your brand naturally using the tools Facebook provides. Be sure to leverage this tool, customize it, and make it work to get your brand in front of as many people and their friends as possible. Facebook is growing massively at the moment — is your brand a part of that momentum?

Giveaway

Jesse has agreed to give away two copies of his book (in eBook or paper format — your choice), FBML Essentials, for the best use of FBML for any fan page. Criteria are that the Facebook Page has to use the Static FBML app and will be judged by best use of FBML as a complement to HTML. If you have a Facebook Page to volunteer, just hop on over to the comments and share your favorite page. You have until December 10th to enter. Good luck!

Jesse Stay is a consultant who specializes in the integration of social APIs such as Twitter and Facebook. You may know him as founder and CEO of the social stream clean up and automation tool, SocialToo.com, but Jesse has also written two books on the subject of Facebook. His first book, “I’m on Facebook–Now What???” focuses on the beginner Facebook user and teaches you how to use Facebook as a productive tool rather than a toy. His second book, “FBML Essentials” takes you from the ground up on the Facebook developer platform, serving as a reference to Facebook’s Markup Language.

Update: Dave Dugdale of RentVine.com has graciously provided a video tutorial on how to create a “Fanbook page” (it has a nice ring to it, right?). Thanks Dave!

[ How To Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Today is my birthday, and I decided to give you all a gift that few of you have been highly anticipating for a few months now. My most popular post on this site — probably by far — was last year’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2007 compilation. I spent about 3 days (and nights) on it (without sleep) and I was quite happy with the turnout. This year, I began starting to write this compilation in the first week of December. The collection begins with posts that start in January of 2008 and have been collected and shared in the last 12 months. Like last year, I’ve grouped them into different categories and written short descriptions on each post. There’s no order to the posts; I’ve used my bookmarks and a variety of social sites and peer recommendations to create this list. I hope this year’s list surpasses last year’s. Let me know how I did in the comments.

Here’s how this works: In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless — they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence — they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.

These posts range from beginner to advanced with a greater emphasis on the more intermediate posts. I’d argue that if you’re starting your Internet Marketing business with not much know-how, you should check out the 2007 posts; in fact, most may still find them relevant regardless of the skill level.

New for 2008: If your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, we have badges for you! Feel free to link to this post with the top right hand image, which was contributed by David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design. Every post is a winner!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• The SEO Success Pyramid: Matt McGee talks about the process of making great websites. He illustrates this in a graphical pyramid. You can even download it but you have to go to his post to get it.
• Online SEO Tools: The Ultimate Collection: At Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty has compiled a list of the most valuable tools to perform SEO analysis.
• WordPress SEO: Definitive Guide to High Rankings for Your Blog is written by WordPress optimization expert and coder Joost de Valk and gives you some great tips on how to use WordPress in a search engine friendly fashion.
• How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business: Aaron Wall discusses the cost of that #1 link backing up the data with some hard research.
• SEO Mastermind Aaron Wall Brings Bad News: In an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, Aaron Wall talks about all things SEO.
• The Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet: Danny Dover of SEOmoz shares the “mother of all technical SEO cheat sheets.” Nuff said.
• The SEO Guide to Information Architecture: How do you design a website for efficient crawling by search engines? If you don’t have a clue, Adam Audette is here to help.
• What is the Definition of SEO?: Jeremy Schoemaker asked a number of online marketing experts about their definitions of search engine optimization.
• How to be an SEO Service Provider: So you want to provide search engine optimization services? Here’s what you should do so that you can get the best return for your efforts.
• Don’t Sour Your Link Juice by Forgetting Basic SEO: Loren Baker explains that you could have lots of links — and that’s still not enough if you don’t follow basic search engine optimization techniques.
• 4 Reasons Many Big Brands Downplay SEO: Why aren’t all Fortune 500 companies engaging in SEO? Laura Callow tells you why.
• How to Get New Web Sites to Rank Quickly: Aaron Wall discusses some strategies to get high rankings with a brand new site — and we know those are sites that often need to take time to build trust.
• Keyword Density SEO Myths: Hobo SEO asked a bunch of established SEO experts about their opinions on keyword density.
• How You Can Get Your Google Rankings Back: Ever get a search engine ranking penalty? Aviva Directory did and they tell you what you need to do about it and how to address it.
• Content is NOT Always King and SEO is not always bad: Wil Reynolds explains that search engines can’t choose the best content and those pages with great content may not rank so high.
• Ranking as the Original Source for Content You Syndicate: According to Vanessa Fox, you can get the ranking control over that article that some lame blog just ripped off. As for me, I threaten DMCA takedown notices. It usually works.
• The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO: SEOmoz’s Danny talks again about how newbies can get their SEO learn on.
• SEO Guide for Designers: This is especially useful if you code in Flash or like your graphics.
• The Most Powerful SEO Tactic: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: Eric Enge simplifies (no pun intended) the essentials of SEO.
• Tools of the SEO Trade: There are a lot of tools out there that make search engine optimization simpler.
• Google Double or Indented Listings: Andy Beard shows you how to get an indented listing on Google.

Social Media: Generic Strategy:

• 50 Ways to Use Social Media: Jeremiah Owyang shows how you can apply social media to some standard social computing objectives.
• What is the ROI for Social Media?: Jason Falls explores the commonly-discussed (but not easily answered) question about social media.
• Scared of Social Media? You May Already be Pro!: Jill Whalen has been active on forums and online communities for 10 years now. But “social media marketing expert?” She didn’t think she was one.
• Top 10 Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media: This is a practical guide for search engine optimizers and their shortcomings with new media.
• The Limitations of Social Media: Social media may seem to be awesome, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.
• The ABCs of Social Media: For every letter of the alphabet, you have a way to relate a word to social media.
• Social Media Marketing: How to Win Friends and Influence People: Sound like a famous book you’ve read? It is. But you can apply these tactics to social media relationships too.
• A Sample Social Media Toolkit: Chris Brogan talks about some of the ways you can tap into the social media field.
• 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice: Great tips all in one single post.? What could be better?
• Social Media Will Change Your Business: This is an update to an old article from BusinessWeek on how blogs have changed your business. Not anymore — it’s about social media (which typically encompasses blogs too).
• How Does a Company Dip its Toes in the Conversation?: If you’re new to social media, how do you engage as a company? Let Valeria Maltoni tell you — she’s that good.
• 7 Videos About Social Media You Need to Watch: Samir Balwani has gathered the best videos on social media so that you can further expand your knowledge.
• What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know: If you are Chris Brogan, you might have specific demands of your social media expert.
• Will the Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?: On the other hand, if you are Brian Solis, you need to know what to do as an expert and where to listen to the ongoing conversations.
• Intel Social Media Guidelines: Last month, it was discovered that Intel had pushed its social media guidelines out in the open. You can learn a thing or two from it.
• Starting a Social Media Strategy: Perhaps you’d call this a beginner’s piece — perhaps not — Chris Brogan touches upon considerations for implementing social media strategy.
• Big Brand Social Media Interview: Lee Odden interviews Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS, and Graco to get a feel of how they are engaging in the social media playground.
• Best Social Media Advice from this Site: Uh, I’m sorry, I just gave you a lot more reading material from Chris Brogan. Please read it after you’re done with this post. That’s all I ask.
• Towards a More Social Organization: Chris Heuer says that we’re becoming more social, so start realizing the importance of this trend and evolve accordingly.
• How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business: Aaron Uhrmacher explains the factors you must consider to see if your social media campaign has had an impact.
• Social Media ROI: Janet Fouts explains other ways to calculate your ROI on social media.
• A List of Social Media Marketing Examples: Peter Kim has an exhaustive list of companies engaging in social media. Is your company on the list?
• Social Media and Business Marketing Links: Related to Peter Kim’s list above, we see other business uses of social media.
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus: You can still screw up in social media, but you don’t have to. Some people have lived and learned; read the Mashable post to avoid the same mistakes.
• Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: The key to success is engagement, but Michael Mace says that there are some concepts you need to understand first.
• A Social Media Guide: Steve Spalding writes nearly 8000 words on what he’s learned on social media over the past few years. It’s also available in PDF format.
• How to Measure Success in Your Social Media Marketing: So is ROI for social media really hard to calculate? Here are even more ways to measure ROI on your campaigns.
• Social Media Marketing Guide: Barry Welford at Cre8tive Flow talks about political success in social media marketing and explains how to be good at it for business success.
• How to Change the World Using Social Media: Can you really change the world? “Yes — when you turns to we,” Brian Clark says.
• Involve, Create, Discuss, Promote, Measure: Valeria Maltoni gives you 5 key ideas that you must understand fully for social media success.
• How to Champion Social Media at Work: Own social media at your workplace with some solid tactics presented by Jason Falls.

Social Media: Strategy for Social Sites:

• Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics: If you plan on being active in the social media space (where voting is a big part of promotion), you have to make sure you’re doing the right things.
• Top 10 Reasons Why Great Content Fails on Social Media: In case you’re still emphasizing submissions on social sites, here’s why your content … uh, appears to suck.
• 7 Social Media Websites and their Impact on SEO explores Mixx, Sphinn, Twitter, Digg, delicious, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and shows the positive and negative impact of using each.
• How NOT to Manipulate Social News: A Sphinn Experience: For those not familiar with social news, gaming is clearly something you can spot if you know what to look for.
• How to Commit Social Media Suicide: Some people don’t get social media.
• The 2008 Social Media Network Analysis Report: Brian Chappell reveals geographic, demographic, and traffic data for a whole lot of social media sites.
• 10 of the Best Alternative Social Media Sites because not everything social media is Digg, Mixx, and Reddit.
• 6 Social Media “No-Brainers” You Shouldn’t Forget: Social media tips and tricks that aren’t always on the mind.
• How to Promote Yourself on Social Sites Without Actually “Promoting Yourself”: David Wallace presents a practical way of becoming a social media rockstar.
• The ‘El Farol’ Problem in Social News: Muhammad Saleem explains that the community is happy when social news submissions occur in moderation. Not excess. I suppose most things do very well in moderation.
• SEO Explained for Small Business Owners: If you work in a small business and the articles above scared you, then read this one instead.
• The 10 Commandments of the Social Web: Building a social network? At the minimum, you need to follow some rules, according to Nick O’Neill.
• Social Media Marketing ROI: Metrics and Analysis: If you promote content on social networks, you should have some metrics in place to see how effective your campaign was. Here’s a guide to start with.
• Are You a Super Influencer?: Given social sites, there are new influencers in town. Make way.
• How to Get Started in Social Media: There are so many sites out there, so Shana Albert explains how she got involved and the sites you can use for both business and personal purposes.
• How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Beth Kanter interviews a nonprofit employee to see how he has found success with social media for awareness.
• Free Online Resources for Finding Missing Persons Through Social Media: This is a bit different but still very important as I’ve read about some amazing stories about how people use social sites to reunite old families.? The bottom line is that social sites are great for marketing a lost person and hoping that they can be found again.

Twitter:

• Twitter Wrote his Column For Me: Clearly, this post itself demonstrates the power of Twitter and the collective.
• 7 Tips for New Twitter Users: Shel Israel talks about how you (as a new Twitter user) should use the service for maximum gain.
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners: People are raving about Twitter, but are they using it to its fullest?
• How to Get Customer Service via Twitter: Which companies are listening, and should you join the conversation? If you’re new to the area, you can check out how to start following what pople are saying.
• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business: This recent post on Copyblogger quotes how many businesses has found success with the microblogging service.
• How to Use Twitter to Build Brand Integrity: These are some solid tips for Twitter users to follow in order to add value to the conversation.
• Why Twitter Matters: BusinessWeek cites examples of why the microblogging website is a must-use for everyone.
• 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business: Chris Brogan covers a lot of ground with this piece.
• The Evolution of Brands on Twitter: Jeremiah Owyang explains how you can evolve your brand using Twitter.
• Getting Intimate (with Customers) on Twitter: Some companies really get it. And they profit. Are you one of them?
• Twitter Goes Mainstream: More and more people are using it. Are you?
• How to Build Community on Twitter: If you want more followers, take some solid advice from Sarah Evans.
• How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki adds to the list of how you can get more followers on Twitter.
• Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter: Michael Gray’s guest post on Twitip is golden.? He suggests personalization, professionalism, and humor, among other tips and tricks.
• Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals: Brian Solis is constantly updating this post which includes great tools to make your Twitter experience a much more pleasurable one.
• How to Become a Twitter Rockstar: Now that you’re armed with tools and have the Twitter basics down pat, how do you use Twitter to your advantage?? David Brown explains it all.

Sphinn:

• Beginner’s Guide to Sphinn: Surely there are some of you out there who have never used Sphinn before, but if you are remotely interested in this post, you can imagine that half of the posts I put here were also submitted to Sphinn.? That said, join up and read this Problogger post for some rules of engagement.
• Top 10 Signs You’re Spamming Sphinn gives you more insights into how to use social news sites properly.
• Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already: Danny Sullivan rants about how there are “search marketers” trying to manipulate Sphinn (and other social news sites). He explores examples and shows how hard it is to be a moderator of a site like this. Hey, I hear you.
• An Analysis of Sphinn: 175 Homepage Homeruns Dissected: This post shows you what people are loving on Sphinn.? It also somewhat correlates to the categories on this post since some topics just happen to be a lot more popular than others.

LinkedIn:

• Why LinkedIn is the One Social Network I Couldn’t Work Without: Jennifer Laycock explains why she hearts LinkedIn.
• Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You: Having a LinkedIn profile is one thing. Having a solid LinkedIn profile is a different story.
• Business Uses for LinkedIn: LinkedIn is very powerful, but how do you use it? Valeria Maltoni explains that it’s about community, connections, and more.
• How to Get the Most out of LinkedIn: Mashable’s guest writer Brian Wallace explains how LinkedIn can be used as a valuable tool.
• Elements of a Good LinkedIn Recommendation: If you’re recommending someone on LinkedIn, strive for quality, not quantity.
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn: Just in case the articles above didn’t suffice, this one has many more in-depth articles on making LinkedIn work for you.
• How to Use LinkedIn Jake Swearingen of BNET says that you need to create a good profile, build your network, get the most from your connections, and then manage your network.
• Successful Networking Tips for LinkedIn and Facebook: Loren Baker shows that LinkedIn and Facebook aren’t so different and building your network is key.

Digg:

• How to Level the Playing Field with Digg: While I personally don’t like Digg anymore and find that it’s useless for marketers, Skellie think it’s still valuable. (I’d argue “rarely” nowadays.)
• How I Became a Digg Power User with a 75% Popular Ratio: I got banned in October from Digg with a 67% popular ratio and 278 front page stories and offered very similar tips in 2007, but some people still want to use Digg for this kind of thing.? Personally, I think Digg will ban you when you get popular.? The guy who wrote this blog post speaks from the same kind of experience.

Wikipedia:

• Using Wikipedia to Reveal Web Traffic Data: Jonathan Hochman writes a piece on how, when using Wikipedia, you can find out about how much traffic a top search ranking will send.
• How to Overthrow a Wikipedia Result: This is a good tactic but you should use it in moderation!? Don’t get caught!
• Wikipedia 101 for Marketing: The awesome Todd Defren explains how you can use Wikipedia to market your business.? But as many of you who have attended SEO conferences know, don’t do it from your company IP address or face the banhammer.
• 3 Awesome Wikipedia Tools and How they Could be Useful: I’ve never really known of any real good Wikipedia tools except for WikiScanner until this post (and this post doesn’t even talk about that IP scanner program).? ? So there you have it — 4 tools for your Wikipedia enjoyment.
• What to do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad: The problem with editing your own company page when you work for the company is that there are moderation issues and biases.? So what can you do once someone adds bad content to that page?? Jessica Bowman tells you how to make the nasties “fade into the background.”

StumbleUpon:

• The Idiot’s Guide to StumbleUpon: Tim Nash, an active StumbleUpon expert, has offered some strategies on using the social discovery tool.
• How to Write Posts that Set StumbleUpon on Fire: Skellie utilizes real-life experience with the social discovery site to show you how you can get a whoosh of good traffic.
• 28 Tips to Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar: I personally love StumbleUpon — a lot. And you should too when you apply these tactics.

Fark:

• Definitive Guide to Fark and Getting Mass Traffic: One of the lesser tapped social media sites among search marketers is Fark. But not for Glen Allsopp, who reviews it here.

Facebook:

• Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Facebook: Guy Kawasaki is right — you probably don’t know some of these things (like #7)!
• Facebook Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing: This article on docstoc has good tips if you’re looking to market on Facebook.
• 5 Reasons Why Whole Foods Gets Facebook: Businesses can make a difference on Facebook. Whole Foods did.
• Facebook Ads 101: How to Set Up and Track Facebook Ads: While people like free Facebook advertising, there are wonderfully targeted ads that may even be more effective.? Now you can understand how to leverage them.
• 5 Tips for Promoting Your Business Page on Facebook: If you created a business page on Facebook and actually want people to know about it, you might want to make sure it’s one that people actually are interested in joining.
• Facebook for Those Over 40: How do you explain Facebook to a group of folks who find this technology a little daunting?? We’re so involved in social media today that we may lose sight of the beginner explanation.
• 3 New Ways to Target Your Audience with Facebook Pages: Did you know that you are able to restrict access to Facebook pages by demographic information?? I didn’t.? But doing this can ensure that you get the right kinds of users.
• The 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook: There’s nothing truly eye-opening about this discovery, but you can learn a thing or two about the power of marketing that has made some of these individuals so popular.
• Facebook Pages and Local Search Engine Optimization: Andrew Shotland offers a little-known tip on how you can possibly find prospects via Facebook through search.
• Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is Better for Business? In a 7-page article, ComputerWorld assesses the pros and cons of both.

delicious:

• 6 Ways to Make Life Easier with delicious: How many of you actually use delicious as a search engine? Maybe you should.
• How to Analyze Your Site with Delicious: Ann Smarty dissects the various parts of delicious.com and shows you how you can learn more about your website.

Flickr:

• How to Market on Flickr: While Flickr itself isn’t seen as a community that you would market to, you can find out how to become a respected community member AND market your services as well.
• An Insider’s Guide to Marketing on Flickr: Rohit Bhargava gives some very detailed tips on how you can use Flickr to successfully market products.

FriendFeed:

• FriendFeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising: Steve Rubel offers his initial impressions of FriendFeed.
• 25 Different Uses for FriendFeed: FriendFeed power users Michael Fruchter and Louis Gray team up (well, Mike posted the guest post on Louis’s blog) to share some tips on how you can get the most out of this service.? As an FYI, I LOVE FriendFeed (and as another FYI, I said the same about Twitter in 2007 and everyone joined up in 2008.? Just sayin’).? By the way, Louis has a ton of great posts on FriendFeed on his blog and this isn’t the only one.

Blogging:

• The Most Important Difference Between Websites and Blogs: Tad switched his website over to a blog. He reflects on why this was a smart move.
• 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less gives you some lesser-known (or implemented) strategies to bring you (possibly) more blog visitors.
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief: Dosh Dosh explains that your approach toward blogging needs to be more than just of a freelance nature.
• What Suggestions Would You Offer a Beginning Blogger?: You need to “learn to” do a few things as a blogger. Bill Slawski explains what they are.
• Practical Guide to Starting a Corporate Blog: Jason Falls discusses the steps you need to take before you actually launch that much-needed corporate blog.
• How to Start a Professional Blog: 10 Tips for New Bloggers: Andrew Chen gives some detailed insights on how your new blog can take off.
• 10 Commandments of Business Blogging: If you want to be taken seriously as a business blogger, there are some rules you need to follow.
• Does Blogging Really Work? Here’s the Proof: Mack Collier uses the examples of Dell Hell and Stormhoek to show that blogging is a powerful marketing tool for both the positive and the negative.
• 27 Secrets to Linking Like a Master Networker: This post shows how you can network via blogging.
• 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog: Here are small things you can implement to make your blog a little more appealing to your audience and search engines.
• How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them!: Marshall Kirkpatrick, you didn’t ask me!
• How to Blog Design Style Guide goes into detail about blog design, from the header to the content area to the comments.
• 3 Phases of Flagship Blog Growth or How to Fall in Love with Blogging: Tad explains that perseverance is important to keep your blog going strong.
• How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers, and Comments: Skellie explains the ways you can use your blog for awareness and then some.
• The Ultimate Guide to a Wildly Sticky Successful and Outstanding Blog: Liz Strauss takes a bunch of great blogging guides and puts them all together for this tool for serious bloggers.
• 27 Resources fr Evaluating Blogging ROI: Is blogging working for you? You can check against the experts to find out.
• A Sample Blogging Workflow: From the goals of blogging to the tools you should use, Chris nails it.
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky: Yes, this is from Darren Rowse at Problogger. Yes, it’s about blogs. It’s also about websites. Read it whether or not you have a blog as it has some great tips on keeping your visitors hooked.
• Ariana Huffington Shares 4 Secrets of Creating a Successful Blog: Learn from someone who knows. HuffPo is a very popular blog.
• Case Study: The Launch of a New Blog: A serious blogger from Traffikd shows how his third blog fared after it launched.
• Why Start a Blog and 25 Tips to Make it Work: A very in-depth article on why you should create a blog and engage in blogging.
• The Sweeney Todd Guide to Blogging Sonia Simone equates characteristics of Sweeney Todd to blogging, marketing, and communication.? An example: Sweeney Todd improvised to get multiple streams of income; bloggers can strategize to get different sources for readers.
• Is Your Blog Going for the Gold? This article discusses the pros and cons of blogging for businesses.? One of the main cons, of course, is the fact that you may be starting a blog with no brand recognition whatsoever.? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though.

Viral Marketing:

• The Top 10 Viral Marketing Campaigns of All Time: Patrick Altoft reviews the most popular YouTube videos and explains why they rock.
• Hard (but Important) Lessons About Viral Marketing: Having realistic expectations is important so that you don’t fail at your viral marketing campaign.
• The Viral Marketing Glossary: Dan Zarrella gives definitions for a bunch of terms related to viral marketing.
• What is Viral Marketing?: Seth Godin’s post from the last day of 2008 is the reason why I held publication of this post till 2009.? He explains viral marketing and then shows a case study of how it works.

Link Building:

• Link Building: A Complete Walkthrough: Many of you may be reading this and have no idea about link building at all. That’s where Saad Kamal’s in-depth introductory guide comes in.
• The Fundamentals of Link Building: Adam Audette also gives you some in-depth but beginner information into the art of link building.
• 11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out: Rae Hoffman has gathered some great authorities in the area of link building and asked them several questions about sources, strategy, and more.
• Link Building Secrets Revealed by Top Linking Experts: In this article, twelve link experts talk about lesser known strategies. The report is also available in PDF format.
• The 30 Easiest Was to Get Links and Exposure suggests some strategies to get more links to your website.
• Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics for 2009 tells you even more ways to get links to your site.
• 30 Ways to Get Links Naturally and Stop Link Building: On the other hand, if link building is too time consuming, you may want to think of other strategies.
• A Linkbuilding Method So Effective I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blackhat: The basic premise is that you should find pages/sites that used to offer a service and no longer do. The fill that void.
• Where Do You Start Your Link Marketing Campaign?: Wiep Knol discusses some strategies on where you can think of gaining some new links.
• 6 Sure-Fire Tactics to Re-Ignite Your Linkbait: You wrote something awesome. It sucked on your targeted social media site. Now what?
• How Getting a Link is Like Picking Up a Woman: Link building is not much different than flirting. Really.
• There’s No Such Thing as a Worthless Link: …because they all end up pointing to your site, right? But Deb Mastaler shows that there’s more.
• Get In Touch With Your Inner Link Self: Finding out where your customers go and targeting those areas is a golden way to get links.
• The Definitive List of Link Building Techniques in 2008: Jeff Quipp gathered every single link building tip he could find.
• Link Exchanges: It’s Not the Size of the PR, but How You Use it: Not everyone likes link exchanges (raises hand), but then again, I’m a blogger who gets 384824 link exchange emails a week.? However, there are legitimate non-blog websites that get a lot.? The question: how do you research sites for link exchanges?? David Leonhardt offers solid strategies on how to choose sites for link building and link exchanges.
• The Ultimate Guide to Internal Linking and Part 2: In two posts, Pete Wailes uses some PageRank formula to guide you through an internal linking strategy and then brings quantum theory into it.? Yes, really.

Reputation Management:

• Dealing with “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges: Brett Borders goes through the various problems relating to reputation management and lets you know if they’re solvable — or not.
• Five Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis: Two different events, two different responses. You need to handle your reputation issue appropriately.
• 12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online: When you are a public facing company, reputation management issues can come at you at all different sides. Make sure you have your bases covered.
• How to Remove Negative Posts and Links: From asking to suing, you have a way to [usually] remove those bad search results.
• How to Bury Negative Online Mentions of You: Search Engine Watch covers some intermediate-level strategies on how to deal with a reputation management crisis.
• The M&Ms of Online Reputation Management: We’re not talking candy here.? Actually, we’re talking M&M&M&M: monitor, manage, measure, and mediate.
• Digital Reputation Management with SEO, Social Media, and PR: Taking a proactive approach toward ORM (online reputation management) is important.? This post touches upon the surface and unfortunately Lee Odden discussed the rest in person at a conference.
• Reputation Management: Because You’re Worth It: In a lighthearted post, a female working for a search engine marketing agency explains how reputation management is like a beauty emergency.
• Treat Me Mean, I Need the Reputation Tom Critchlow shows you what negative reputation looks like.
• Online Reputation Management: What Goes Around May Be Total Crap: Kim Krause Berg talks about the ethics of reputation management and then some.
• Pre-emptive Reputation Management Comes of Age: Don’t fret about reputation managment.? Tackle it before it becomes a problem with preemptive reputation management.? ? The ideas Jeff Quipp presents in his article are really clever.
• Reputation Crisis Management: 8 SEO Triage Tips: Marty Weintraub says that reputation management isn’t much different than SEO.
• Reputation Management Tips from Around the Web: Many search marketing experts weigh in on one very important reputation management tip.
• Online Reputation Management for the Small Business Owner Providing high quality service will avoid the reputation management issues you could encounter.? If you get a negative review but provide great service thereafter, the newer positive reviews will mitigate the negative review.
• Ten Tactics that Could Save Your Online Reputation: Perhaps you’re not in an online reputation crisis yet.? Maybe you’ll never have to be if you read these tactics.
• Your Seven-Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan: If you already have a problem on your hands, now you need to create a strategy.? In seven steps, you can successfully avoid the crisis.? ? Here’s how.
• Reputation Management and Defending Your Brand: This is a good beginner article for smaller businesses and gives some solid tips on how your local business can be more visible in a positive way.
• Online Reputation Management is Hot — But is it Ethical? Some companies discuss their failures due to a reputation management issue.? Others talk about how they are helping address the issue.
• Online Reputation Management for Individuals: We’ve talked about business reputation management, but you can still lose your job using social media channels and lose out on good opportunities.? Don’t forget that your personal brand is still something you may want to protect.

Analytics:

• 8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips, and Tricks offers tips on how to get more out of Google Analytics rather than what comes out of the box. Note: Some programming may be required!
• The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips: In case the previous link wasn’t enough for you, get tracking of your outgoing links, links to banner ads, downloads, and more.
• How to Use Bounce Rate as a Metric to Improve Your Website Performance: A lot of people ignore bounce rate. Maybe you shouldn’t.
• 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do to Mess Up Their Analytics: Google Analytics isn’t that accurate after all. Find out if you’re being impacted.
• How to Analyze and Improve the Bounce Rate for Your Website: Dosh Dosh gives insights into the hated bounce rate and then suggests strategies on how to reduce that percentage.
• Context is King Baby! Go Get Your Own: Avinash Kaushik argues that the single most important missing ingredient in understanding your analytics is the context you can place around the analytics data you’re provided with.
• Using Stats and Goal Tracking for Your Blog: Want analytics for your blog?? Michael Gray gives some tips on how you can get some.? And yes, you should.

Personal Branding:

• Resumes are for Sh!t: The 4 Things You Really Need: Want to build your personal brand? Dave McClure says you need LinkedIn, a blog, keywords, and social media.
• How to Get Noticed: Jeremiah Owyang offers tactics for becoming noticed in this space.
• Seth Godin: Profile of a Marketing Guru: How’d Seth Godin score his own action figure? Read this.
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s Keynote at Web 2.0 Expo NY: Sure, while this is a video (!) and I still emphasize articles in my yearly post, I actually attended this 15 minute keynote, and it’s a real morale booster. Watch it. It’s worth it.
• Why You Need to Care More About Your Personal Brand: Mitch Joel explains why personal branding is important.
• We Are in a Recession, so Build Your Brand on the Internet Now: It’s a perfect time to build your Internet presence.? This Internet Marketing firm did it for their clients by establishing its presence on multiple channels.? Find out which ones they used (and feel free to just use this as a starting point — there are more channels to leverage!).
• Personal Branding: What a Difference a Year Makes: Dan Perry was nobody in 2007.? (No offense, Dan!)? But in 2008, he became somebody according to Google.? What were his takeaways?

Local Search:

• Local Search Ranking Factors collects advice from 20 experts in the area of local search marekting on a variety of ranking factors.
• Local SEOs Share Geolocation Tips from Around the World: The Distilled guys who are in the UK ask several SEOs around the world about how to optimize for search engines.
• The Mother of All SMX Local/Mobile Recaps: David Mihm attended a conference and shared the top takeaways. The post provides very valuable information even though it’s a conference summary!
• Local vs. Traditional SEO: Why Citation is the New Link This is a very detailed post explaining some new discoveries about local SEO.? Links aren’t that important in local SEO, and David explains why.
• Website Optimization for Telephone Leads: Surely there are companies out there that get a lot of leads via phone.? If your phone number is prominently displayed on your website, you will likely get a lot of good leads. (I’d add that it’d be a smart idea to get a number specific for web-only inquiries to ensure that the lead came from there.)
• Free Local Marketing Options that Bring Real Traffic: Mat Siltala takes a look at easy local search tweaks you can use that will bring some valuable traffic.? The sites he mentions are high-trafficked ones, and if you cover your bases, you can benefit from a gift that keeps on giving.
• How to Create Effecitve Local Business Landing Pages Are you missing any of these essential elements from your landing pages?

Content Development:

• The Secret to Compelling Content: Anna Bourland describes how you should organize your website and create a hook that drives your visitors to perform a desired action.
• How to Have a Constant Flow of Content Ideas: Sometimes, getting that idea in your mind is the hardest obstacle. Here’s some help.
• Writing Killer Headlines: Top 20 Viagra SPAM Email Subject Lines: I feel like my email subscribers just got this email blocked due to this actual post, but it’s a REALLY good read, so I had to include it.
• Link Bait Ideas: Lyndon Antcliff gives some strategy into creating the ultimate piece of content.
• 12 Tips on Creating Content for Social Media: Let’s face it, people are talking social media nowadays. It’s time to create content that works.
• The 5-Step POWER Copywriting Method: Want to be persuasive and rock? Follow some guidelines.
• 5 Great Marketing Lists and What You Can Learn from Each One: Make a list. Profit. Rohit Bhargava explains the benefits of 5 popular lists.
• How to Maximize Current Events for Social Media: The 10e20 blog shows what you can do with current events to create compelling content.
• How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes: Let me put it this way: this article did NOT take 20 minutes to write.
• Writing Content that Works for a Living: The key takeaways of this article are to make it simple and do it right.

Web Development:

• 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website: Explore questions of accessibility, navigation, design, content, security, and more with this checklist.
• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period: Stoney deGeyter breaks down the intricacies of web design into easy-to-digest categories with this exhaustive but awesome checklist.
• I Can Make Your Site Run 10 Times Faster: Site not running fast enough? Search engine spiders and visitors may not appreciate it. Mike Peters tells you what you can do to get that needed boost.
• 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Website is a great checklist on usability, writing, and design, and refers to 101 more articles just in case this list of posts wasn’t enough.
• A Design is Finished When: Twenty-three designers offer their insights on when your website design is complete and you can take it the next level.
• Let’s Talk Landing Pages: Rebecca Kelley at SEOmoz shares some really great tips on how to make the most out of your landing pages.
• Website Checklist: Getting to the Close: Peter da Vanzo outlines the steps for beginner web designers to get visitors to perform a desired action.

Affiliate Marketing:

• Five Effective Copywriting Tactics for Affiliate Marketing: Want to sell your affiliate offers? At the minimum, make sure you follow these tactics.
• Jonathan Volk Interview: If you don’t know Jonathan Volk, meet this kid through this interview, because he’s in his early 20s and is making 6 figures a month.
• Three Killer Content Strategies for Building Affiliate Marketing Assets: Brian Clark gives even more affiliate marketing tips.
• Only Wanting the “Thrill of the Chase”: Why do most affiliate marketers fail?? Because they have an initial rush of motivation but then get annoyed at the hard work required, according to affiliate marketing mastermind Rae Hoffman.
• Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers Affiliate marketing is not a risk-free endeavor, so be sure you are aware of all the risks before you take the plunge.
• The Diary of a PPC Newbie and Why You Should Expand: As you’ll see, this article isn’t really about Pay-Per-Click.? ? It’s how you can use PPC and affiliate marketing to make some money.? Don’t you want to do that by now?
• 81 Useful Affiliate Marketing Resources: If you’re ready to start with affiliate marketing, here are some tools that can make your life easier.
• Making Money Online with Local Affiliate Programs: This great post by Jeremy Schoemaker was suggested by @ronhekier and gives some great advice on how you can make ends meet especially if you just got laid off during the recession.

Domains and Domaining:

• How to Pick a Kickass Domain Name: Lisa Barone gives solid tips on choosing the domain name that’s perfect for your company.
• On Domain Names, Size and Quality DO Matter: Daniel Scocco looks at the top 250 domains on Alexa and shows how the most popular sites actually all have very powerful domain names.
• How to Find Available Domain Names: With the Google AdWords tool and a bulk whois checker, you may be able to get some great SEO-friendly domain names.
• 2018: A Domaining Odyssey: Experts weigh in on the future of domaining in this article.
• How to (Really) Make Money with Domain Names: Finding a good domain name is half the battle.? Once you’re done with that, there are some good strategies you can use to make money with them.? One key is defensible traffic.

AdWords/PPC:

• Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that are Costing You Money: You may be spending lots on Google AdWords, but are you spending smartly? Christine Churchill gives you some points to review.
• Marketing Lessons Learned from Pay-Per-Click Analytics shows what you can learn about general marketing from reviewing your PPC analytics.
• Landing Page Optimization: 5 Elements that can Impact Conversion Rates: While this could fit in this blog post’s “web development” category, it is a better match for giving you the biggest bang for your buck if you engage in pay-per-click marketing.
• How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns: Harrison Gevirtz, a teenage genius and CEO of a company, teaches us tactics that made him successful in a guest post on Shoemoney.com.
• PPC Spend Should be More than SEO: John W. Ellis explains the correlation between Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimization but still contends that your PPC budget should exceed your SEO budget.
• 7 Ways to Save Money During a PPC Campaign: Saad Kamal offers practical tips on how to reduce your Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing ad spend.

Internet Marketing:

• The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t: Ian Lurie presents what you may want to put into a checklist — things you should be doing on your website and that you may have ignored.
• How I Turned My Mediocre Website into a Million Dollar Business: Erica Douglass speaks from experience. The bottom line: customers deserve great value.
• Colorize Your Brand: How Color Builds Your Brand: Ann Smarty presents “color in business” theory and shows its application to Internet technology.
• Firefox 3 Shows How a Good Landing Page Can Convert Seven Million Visitors a Day: Test, retest, and enjoy the benefits.
• The Digital Rules of Engagement: If you’re going to engage, make sure you know what you’re doing. This AdWeek article ties in well with social media, but it has some other important concepts that caused me to put it in the Internet Marketing category instead.
• The Internet Marketing Handbook: SEOmoz has compiled a huge list of almost 100 tools and resources. Sweet!
• 14 Must-Have Resources to Launch a Small Business: How many people have you spoken to who say they want to start a business but don’t know how?? Maybe you should point them to this checklist.? (It’ll help if they know exactly what kind of business they’re looking to start, though!)
• The “Poochie” Effect: While I love social media, one-way advertising is still practiced by many companies. In this post, you’ll consider the questions that you need to have answered before you engage on an advertising campaign.

General Marketing:

• Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets: Some of the most brilliant experts provide their one best marketing secret.
• 38 Things I Wish I Knew When I started in Marketing offers some advice that I kind of still don’t apply myself.
• Tell Us Your Most Outrageously Creative Money-Saving or Business Growth Tip: Anita Campbell delivers again by gathering expert quotes and offering some brilliant insights into what they’ve done to take their businesses to the next level.
• What Do You Know?: Seth Godin’s list that is 3 years old (and counting) never grows old. Yes, this is a reprint from 2008 with some newer tips.
• The Essentials of Guerrilla Marketing: Jay Conrad Levinson shares concepts that will make your business rock.
• 8 Strategies for Successful Realtions with Clients: Since social media is within the scope of Internet Marketing and is a lot about customer service, client relations should follow. If you have good relationships from the outset, you may avoid those reputation management crises and more.
• How to Deliver the Perfect Client Pitch: Client acquisition is all the rage, but are you actually getting new clients?? If not, perhaps you need to adjust your pitch.
• Why Clients Won’t Buy: The Hierarchy of Choice: You could be an awesome salesperson but your customers still won’t necessarily buy from you. Find out why.

Best of Techipedia 2008
I typically don’t put posts from my blog in the “Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008″ list, but this year, since I’ve grown a considerable number of subscribers, I’ve decided to give new users the opportunity to read the two best posts without feeling that they need to dig through the archives.? Of course, if you don’t mind reading the other posts I’ve written, by all means, go ahead.? There’s some good stuff there that I’m not highlighting here (including two on FriendFeed, which is a great content discovery and community building tool which simply doesn’t get much love).

• The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette (or Netiquette) Handbook: My most popular post of December 2008 was about social media etiquette and goes through a variety of social sites to suggest what should and shouldn’t be done.? The comment discussion is great as well.
• What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?: Experts on social media marketing weigh in on the essential characteristics of the ideal social media marketing guru.

Thanks again to the Portland Web Design company for their awesome badges (and to Jill for the idea).? Also, thanks for all your contributions to this series.? Stay tuned for next year’s!

Badges: If you would like to use any alternative badges on your site, please choose one of the below and copy the corresponding text on your website:

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Happy 2009!

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

While I prepare to relocate (I’m moving next week!), I was fortunate to have the help of James Duthie, a serial guest blogger from Online Marketing Banter, a blog on social media, marketing, and more.? You can subscribe to more of his ramblings here.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post over at SEO Scoop comparing the quality of search engine traffic against social media traffic. The aim of my little experiment was to test the assumption that search traffic was of a higher quality than social media traffic. And as most would have guessed, the mighty engines prevailed as the superior source of traffic. Many people found the research interesting, but a number of people commented that the social networks probably shouldn’t be grouped together. Some are built for the masses whereas others have tightly defined niche audiences. So the question arose – was social media traffic misrepresented by grouping traffic from all networks together? Is traffic from highly targeted niche networks better than traffic from generic networks? (Hat tip to Gab for posing that question to me.) Let’s find out.

To help me in this quest for the truth I enlisted the help of a couple of my fellow online marketing and SEO buddies. Gab Goldenberg and Steven Bradley came to the party and donated their site stats for analysis, thereby providing three data points for observable trends (along with my own site). Three cheers for them!

Let the Social Media Traffic Quality Analysis Begin

In order to answer the question of whether niche social media drives higher quality traffic, two social networks were chosen for analysis — one generic and one niche. Let’s get ready to rumble…

1. Generic network: StumbleUpon: In the blue corner we have Stumbleupon – one of the largest social bookmarking sites on the web. While some argue that StumbleUpon traffic is targeted, the broad nature of content categories and misclassification of content means this is rarely the case. As such, it has been selected as the generic social network of choice.
2. Niche network: Sphinn: In the red corner we have Sphinn – a social news network dedicated purely to online marketing news and discussion. All three sites at the centerr of this analysis sit within the online marketing and search industry. Subsequently, Sphinn is perhaps the most relevant niche social network on the web.

In order to provide an assessment of the quality of traffic driven by each network, four site metrics were analyzed:

1. Average page views
2. Time on site
3. Bounce rate
4. Percentage of returning visitors

Let’s see what the figures reveal.

Round 1: Average Page Views

Average page views is the first indicator of traffic quality, demonstrating the propensity of a user to explore a site beyond the initial click. Logic says that the more pages a user views, the higher their level of engagement with the site. Unfortunately for StumbleUpon, users rarely seem to explore beyond the initial page, with the average page views hovering just above 1:

• Online Marketing Banter — 1.36 page views
• SEO ROI — 1.2 page views
• Van SEO Design — 1.15 page views

While a parity in page views exists between social networks for Online Marketing Banter, both SEO ROI and Van SEO Design experience higher engagement levels from Sphinn members. It’s likely that the technical nature of content on SEO ROI and Van SEO Design rarely hits the target audience in StumbleUpon. Indeed the most appropriate categories of “Marketing” and “Science/Tech” are extremely broad and unlikely to deliver traffic with an interest in SEO. Conversely, with a slightly more generic subject matter (and the occasional gag post), Online Marketing Banter seems to be a little more popular with Stumblers.

Nevertheless, Sphinn takes out round 1 based on the enhanced engagement levels seen in 2 of the 3 blogs.

Round 2 – Time on Site

The average time spent on a site is a secondary measure of reader engagement. Naturally, the more time a user spends on a site, the higher the level of perceived engagement. And the data provides a very strong indication that users from niche networks spends far more time consuming content. In fact, the additional time spent on each site ranged from 25 seconds up to 72 seconds!

The browsing intent of the audience is likely to be a significant factor in the disparity in engagement levels. Most Stumblers are casual browsers by nature who use the network to discover new and interesting content. Professional content probably isn’t a priority. On the other hand, Sphinn is a professional network dedicated to industry news. Users are actively seeking information that will enhance their professional knowledge. So it comes as no surprise to learn that they are more committed to information digestion.

Subsequently, Sphinn knocks StumbleUpon to the canvas and takes out round 2.

Round 3 – Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the third and final measure of reader engagement. Bounce rate measures the proportion of users who leave a site without visiting a second page, a common trait amongst social media users. At first glance it appears that StumbleUpon holds the upper hand, with a lower bounce reported on both Online Marketing Banter and Van SEO Design.

However, bounce rate data for StumbleUpon is misleading. The StumbleUpon toolbar often pre-fetches a page before displaying it to a Stumbler in order to help it load faster. When this process occurs two page views are counted instead of one, thereby lowering the bounce rate. This trend is discussed further by Jamie Harrop and Rebecca Murphey. Unfortunately, this anomaly renders StumbleUpon’s bounce rate data invalid. After all, how could Van SEO Design maintain a bounce rate of just 58.2% in StumbleUpon when the average number of page views from that source is just 1.15…?

Unfortunately, round 3 has been tainted with StumbleUpon attempting to bite off Sphinn’s ear. No clear winner can be declared.

Round 4 – Percentage of New Visitors

The percentage of new visitors provides a basic metric for user loyalty. While not a perfect measure, it gives an indication of the proportion of visitors who return to the site after first discovering it. And the evidence is fairly damning for StumbleUpon, with less than 5% of visitors ever returning to a site they discovered:

• Online Marketing Banter — 97.6% new visitors
• SEO ROI — 96.5% new visitors
• Van SEO Design — 97.2% new visitors

While Sphinn itself doesn’t generate outstanding loyalty from members, its users are significantly more likely to return to a site they found. However, it should be noted that the smaller pool of sites submitted to Sphinn means there is an increased likelihood that users will re-encounter a previous site.

Despite this, Sphinn clearly wins the fourth and final round.

The Verdict

The judges are unanimous and the decision is in: niche social networks do indeed have the ability to drive higher quality traffic than generic networks. Members of niche networks view more pages, spend more time on a site and come back more often. And if this post isn’t proof enough for you, check out Steven’s post relating to the quality of forum traffic, which often have even tighter knit communities than Sphinn. Steven reports that the average user from one niche forum stays for more than 7 and 1/2 minutes! Which is nothing compared to a second forum where visitors spend over 16 minutes on the site.

If your social media traffic is unengaged, perhaps you need to reconsider the networks you’re participating in.

Special Thanks

A special thanks must go out to Gab Goldenberg of SEO ROI and business card design software, along with Steven Bradley of Van SEO Design. Their valuable input allowed real insights to be made into the topic. Thank you to both of you.

[ The Great Social Media Traffic Debate: Niche or General Networks? is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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SMX West occurred last week, kicking off a bunch of conferences and meetups for yours truly (I’m headed to SXSW Interactive on Thursday followed by SES NY right after I get back, and then there’s the Saturday night Blogger Social event only a week later). As all conferences I’ve attended, it was a great one, and by far the best part was the smallness of the conference overall which really helped the networking efforts. As for the sessions I liveblogged, there were eleven in total (see the Search Engine Roundtable’s SMX West coverage for details). Here are some of the bigger takeaways for me:

• We all know that the search landscape is changing. Louis Monier’s Wednesday keynote summarized the future in the world of search, as we’re looking at the following elements:
  • Human powered search: you get high quality content but since it’s human driven, the coverage isn’t as vast as we’d like.
  • Personalization: presenting results based on past activity. Monier suggests that it could be flawed, however, as in describing a “diamond:” what if a baseball enthusiast chooses to buy his wife a nice piece of jewelry?
  • Vertical search: focusing on a specialized area and building search upon this small slice. The biggest challenge is maintaining thousands of bookmarks to vertical search engines.
  • Natural language processing: search engines should begin to understand documents stored online. The big language barrier still exists, for example, when you refer to Java (“not coffee, not the island, but the programming language!”)
  • Semantic search: webmasters may not spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to describe what things mean since there’s no motivation for them to do so.
  • Artificial intelligence: he’s a bit skeptical of the immediate jump from the Flintstones to the Jetsons

I think these are all potential branches for search to take, though the first item about human powered search (or, more appropriately called “human powered research”) was interesting to me. I, like Loren Baker, feel that Mahalo is one of those sites that had its skeptics in the beginning but is growing to become a valuable research tool. I wouldn’t quite put it in the same category as “search,” but you can certainly find answers when you need them (and relatively quickly, in fact).

• Social search is here to stay. Embrace it and take advantage of it. The evolution of social sites will be interesting to watch as speaker Chris Sherman suggests the following precepts that will govern the social search landscape in the future:
  • A combination of algorithmic and people mediated search (he mentions Ask.com’s Edison algorithm that utilizes a tag library based on user clicks)
  • Trust networks: only consuming content from individuals who you trust
  • Increased personalization
  • In the near future (and now), social search works best for non-text content (photos, music, videos, widgets, etc.) due to the search engines’ inability to parse through this kind of data as efficiently as text.
• My favorite session by far (sorry, Rebecca) was the Generation Google session. In this session, 3 teen-aged entrepreneurs and one “normal teen” discussed their web behavior and that of their friends. One of the speakers was a kid I’ve admired from afar for over a year, Andrew Sutherland. Additional panel speakers were affiliate marketer Harrison Gevirtz of CPA Share, Chloe Spencer of the Neopets Cheat site, and Rand Fishkin’s little brother, Evan. First of all, I’m in general agreement with Rebecca and Michael that it would have been interesting to learn a little more about the kids’ histories: how did they get to where they were? What was their inspiration? How did they motivate themselves to continue (while still focusing on school and other “full time” activities)? The session, however, was more about understanding the behaviors of these savvy kids plus the actions of their peers. In reality, it was quite eye-opening (and funny). Some of my favorite quotes (as liveblogged) were quite memorable and include (with emphasis being mine):

Q: Where ads are published, what would you trust more? One in a magazine or one that is online?
Evan: I’ll admit, I shoot the monkey on the advertisements.
Harrison [the 15-year-old affiliate marketer]: Thank you.

Danny: All your friends are using Google and some people are getting concerned that Google is getting too big. Is Google loved or hated between your friends?
Andrew: I think Google is like using a public bathroom. [Everyone laughs.] Maybe that’s a bad example. Let’s say that it’s a public water fountain. Nobody cares what’s happening there, I guess. Nobody thinks that there’s a corporate thing behind it. It’s just a tool, like Firefox, in your arsenal of the computer.

Danny: Do you search for yourself?
Totally unanimously yes.
Danny: Are your friends searching for themselves?
Harrison: No, not really. I don’t think they have a web presence.
Danny: Is it impressive to them?
Harrison: Not my friends, but my mom tells people to search for me.
Evan: You can’t search for me. Rand comes up.
Everyone cracks up and Danny expresses his sadness for Evan. Rebecca Kelley from the audience says “Does Google ask ‘Did you mean Rand Fishkin?’”
Danny: Does it ever suggest your father [Stephan Spencer] when you search for your name?
Chloe: I don’t think so.
Danny searches for Evan Fishkin and says it doesn’t say Rand, but “your mom comes up as #6.”

All in all, the dialogue was funny, and from a newbie speaker point of view who would have been terrified at her first speaking gig, the questions made the kids feel quite comfortable. Besides my initial request for more information about these kids, I wouldn’t have requested for this session to have been handled any other way.

If you want to read the entire Generation Google transcript (written to the best of my ability), go for it. Some of those answers may surprise you.

The Shout Outs

Aha, you thought I’d forget about the shout outs with all that conference summary. (Now why would I do that?) This time I will start by thanking the whole Third Door Media crew, especially Sean, Karen DeWeese, Michelle Robbins, Chris Elwell, and uh, do Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan count? You guys arranged a superb conference and the food accommodations for a Kosher gal like me were excellent. Thank you for taking care of that.

I met a few new faces this time around, including Twitter buds Adam Audette and Guliz Sicotte. It was also nice to meet Gab Goldenberg, the super quiet Brian LaFrance, Duncan Morris and Will Chrichtlow (thank you for fixing your Facebook privacy prefs, Will), Stephen Peron (who seriously looks like Kyle from the 4400), John Carcutt, Darrell Long, Jay Young, Miguel Salcido, Hamlet Batista, Keri Morgret (thanks for helping us liveblog), Jeremiah Andrick and Nathan Buggia, Jordan Kasteler, Megan Slick, Scott Fish, and the famous Gabe Rivera from Techmeme. I will forever remember when you kicked my ass in Guitar Hero 3 (and this was his first time ever playing, whereas I own it).

And of course, I love this industry because conferences unite all of us from different parts of the world. Shout-outs to old friends and familiar faces (in no particular order): Neil Patel, Brent Csutoras, David and Irma Wallace, Jeff Quipp, Michael “Ponstar” Buonomo, Michael Dorausch, Andy Beal, Chris Boggs, Chris Winfield, my BFF the Lisa Barone (and her partners in crime, Robert Esparza and his sister Susan, Michael, and of course, Bruce Clay himself), the Mozzers (Jane–I put you first again!, Rebecca, Rand, Gillian, Jeff, Scott, Nick, and Sarah), Eric Lander, Tim Mayer, Todd Malicoat, Tony Adam, Matt Cutts, Susan Moskwa, Matt McGee, Gary Price and Patrick Crisp, Ken Jurina, Vanessa Fox (clothed), David Mihm, Rob Kerry, Rae Hoffman, Michael Gray, Jeremy Schoemaker, Jennifer Slegg, Greg and Barbara Boser, Dax Herrera, Cesar Serna, Ross Dunn, Jon Kelly, Keith Cramer, Daron Babin, Dave Roth, Kristen Wareham, Todd Friesen, Loren Baker, Sujan Patel, Marc Levin, Melissa Rische, Dave McClure, Abhilash Patel, Mike McDonald and Tiffany Doughty, Li Evans, Jim Hedger, Joe Whyte, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, and Marek whose name I cannot possibly spell.

And of course, thanks to Barry for the flight and hotel. You rock.

The Pictures

Here are some pictures of the event:

Want more photos? Check out my Flickr photostream. Also, since I’m such a fan of schwag, Danny Sullivan had me report on the best schwag for SMX West at Search Engine Land. Sweet.

Up Next…

As mentioned earlier, I’m off to SXSW and will hopefully be trying something new: taking the sessions to my blog. My unofficial and tentative SXSW schedule is here (I won’t be able to make everything as some sessions overlap and it’s still over the Sabbath — so I won’t be blogging then) but these are topics I’m quite passionate about and I believe that the blogged sessions will be valuable to you as well. Let me know if you have any specific requests and I’ll try my best to comply. And if you’ll be there, leave a comment and let me know so that we can schedule a meetup! With 6,400 conference attendees, this is one conference I think I won’t see a lot of people at, but we can certainly try!

[ SMX West ’08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Thought you had enough of the greatest Internet Marketing posts of 2007? Well, unfortunately, your reading list has just lengthened. Matt McGee over at Small Business SEM has compiled his own list of the “best posts of 2007″ in a site with a brilliantly and cleverly chosen title, the SEMMYS (Search Marketing Emmys). In addition to a bit over overlap from my previous post, Matt covers other categories pertinent to search marketing, including local search, search technology (e.g. robots.txt, IP questions for hosting, etc.), small business, analytics (he dedicates a whole section to this one!), rants, and funny posts about the search marketing industry in general.

I’m pleased to announce that I will be judging the category on Blogs and Blogging along with Michael Gray. Since I love blogs about blogging (really, I do!), this is the perfect match. (Thanks, Matt!)

I’m also pleasantly surprised to see that seven blog posts of mine on three blogs have somehow been nominated in six different categories. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content (Viral Marketing, posted here on Techipedia)
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide (Social Media, posted on the 10e20 Blog)
• Analytics on the Cheap: 6 Free Stats Package for the Startup or Small Business Owner (Analytics, posted on the 10e20 blog)
• Using Paid Search? Here’s How You Can Maximize the Impact of Your Ads (PPC, 10e20 blog)
• Online Publicity and Link Building: An Eric Ward Webcast (Link Building, 10e20 blog)
• Ethical Link Building Incentives (Link Building, posted on Search Engine Roundtable)
• Impact of Changing Registrar Data on Search Rankings (SEO, Search Engine Roundtable)

So while you’re reading these posts, I’d love to hear your feedback on your favorites, and I’d also like to thank Matt for arranging these awesome awards and for web developer David Mihm (the man behind the sleek SEMMYS web design) for creating such an appealing site. Seriously, it rocks.

It will be an exciting next few weeks while we — and then you — choose the best posts of the year.

[ More Great Internet Marketing Posts for 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Last year, I ended 2006 with a great (and still pertinent) list of blog posts and articles that I felt were really the best in their class in the area of Internet Marketing. This year, I present you my favorite timeless posts of 2007, complete with descriptions about each blog post (which more than quadrupled the workload for me this time around, especially because I tripled the amount of links, but I had fun!) (Disclaimer: I’m certain that even with this list in excess of 250 links, I forgot a bunch of posts, so if you have any additional recommendations, please feel free to comment and I’ll add them!)

By the way, I still haven’t fully embraced video yet, so this will only include written articles. Maybe next year, folks!

Social Media Sites: General

• The Big Boys of Social Bookmarking: The Top 20 Sites (10e20): Chris Winfield ranks the top 20 social bookmarking sites by their Alexa rankings and gives a short description of what each does — in case you haven’t ventured beyond Digg.
• 24 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites that Actually Work (Caroline Middlebrook): Get some powerful links on some of these lesser-known social sites.
• Social Networking: Ages 20-60 and Up (Muhammad Saleem): Did you know that the older folk also embrace social networking? What are the most popular sites in these age groups?
• Online Networkng and the Professions that Use It (Muhammad Saleem): There are a lot of niche social sites around, but did you know what they are?
• Top 29 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic): Andy Hagans consistently updates this list with some great resources that aren’t necessarily being tapped into by many folks, but maybe it’s time for things to change.
• 83 Social News Sites – Categorized by Niche (Square Oak): Brendan Picha lists another handful of social media sites in case you’ve lost your taste for the mainstream sites.

Facebook

• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook (Inside Facebook): Justin Smith shows how Facebook includes a variety of channels that spread the word in a very in-depth blog post.
• 9 Reasons You Should be Using and Watching Facebook (Sugarrae): There’s a lot of marketing potential in Facebook, and Rae shows you why.
• 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally (Web Worker Daily): Networking on Facebook is precisely what you make of it. If you have the mindset to make Facebook a professional tool, you certainly can turn it into one.
• The Updated Unofficial Smartass Facebook Guide (Sugarrae): People still don’t know how to use Facebook. Rae explains all.
• 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free (After the Launch): How do you promote your business on Facebook? Easy.
• Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? (SEO Space): Jody Nimetz highlights the pros of opting for Facebook ads.
• Facebook Flyers Pro Taking Off (Optimize and Prophesize): Jonathan Mendez illustrates the ease of targeted Facebook ads.

Digg

• How to Become a Digg Top User Without Doing Anything Shady (10e20): If you still want to hit the Digg’s top users, Chris explains what’s involved in the time investment on Digg.
• It’s the (Other) Algorithm, Stupid: Understanding DiggRank (Search Engine Land): Muhammad Saleem examines what is known about the Digg algorithm and dispels common myths.
• To Shout or Not to Shout: The Digg Dilemma (Brent Csutoras): Brent asked many top Digg users what their thoughts were on using Digg’s new shout feature.

Reddit

• Reddit: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About It (10e20): Guest writer Maki talks about how to submit links to Reddit, to hit the front page, and to become a power user.
• 6 Things that Work Right Now on Reddit (10e20): We saw the introduction to Reddit, but what else can we learn? Well, 13-year-old Reddit genius Adam Fuhrer provides his thoughts. (This kid is awesome.)
• Reddit Tips from the Top Dog on Reddit (Social News Watch): How do you become a top user on Reddit? It’s not much different than other social networks, and a top user will talk you through some lessons he’s learned while he climbed the Reddit ladder.
• Five Ways to Leverage Traffic from Reddit (Single Grain): Sujan Patel explains that you can build you Reddit profile with some simple steps.

StumbleUpon

• How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Shouldn’t Really Bother) (Dosh Dosh): Maki gives a straight honest assessment of the social bookmarking site. It’s not only about the algorithm but on understanding how SU can be used for content discovery and sharing.
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide (10e20): I walked through some of the basics of StumbleUpon, and this guide still definitely points you in the right direction, but don’t be surprised if you see an updated guide posted sometime in the near future!
• Internet Marketer’s Guide to StumbleUpon (ViperChill): A beginner’s guide into using StumbleUpon for your marketing efforts.
• StumbleUpon – A Blogger’s Best Friend (Newest on the Net): A beginner article from Fred Peters about how to use StumbleUpon to gain traffic to your sites.
• For Photographers: How to Optimize StumbleUpon for Photo-Blogging Traffic (Muhammad Saleem): It’s all about the StumbleUpon PhotoBlog it! menu item.
• StumbleUpon Mathematics for Stumblers (The Venture Skills Blog): Tim Nash tries to explain the StumbleUpon algorithm.
• 7 Ways to Use StumbleUpon as a Discovery Tool (Dipping into the Blogpond): One of the most important elements of StumbleUpon discovery is one that nobody talks about (and one I intended to write about awhile ago). Here’s a starter guide on using Stumble discovery to get some great ideas.
• StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships (Dosh Dosh): The concept of sharing on StumbleUpon is obvious and it’s built-in for a reason. However, there’s a lot more to Stumbling when you share. There’s an aspect of relationship-building.
• StumbleUpon Phenomenon: An In-Depth Look at a Social Networking Giant (Search Engine Journal): Sujan Patel writes a short but sweet post (though not as “in-depth” as I expected) on StumbleUpon and some tools you can use to improve the user experience.
• Writing for StumbleUpon: High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps (Copyblogger): Or in our terms, it’s “above the fold.” And that’s really what’s important. Muhammad Saleem explains how titles, visual cues, a strong opening, and substance helps boost your visits through StumbleUpon.
• Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign for Your Blog (Problogger): I’m noticing that a lot more people are running advertising campaigns for their blogs since this article came out. Perhaps Darren’s advice resonated with his readers?
• 65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles (Newest on the Net): At first, I didn’t intend to link to link posts in my yearly recap, but if you really wanted more information on SU, Fred has accumulated some 65 posts on StumbeUpon and linked it to his blog. I can tell you that finding these articles isn’t easy!

LinkedIn

• Effective Marketing on LinkedIn: Helen talks about how to build your network and make your brand successful on LinkedIn.
• 8 Things You Can Do to Get Work Through LinkedIn (Freelance Switch): Collis Ta’eed talks about how recommendations and networking will get you more clients. (Plug: They also recently came out with an awesome eBook on how to become a rockstar freelancer – aff)

Twitter

• Newbies Guide to Twitter (Chris Brogan): Haven’t used Twitter yet? Maybe you should get started, but if you’re inundated with all the hype about Twitter, sit down, relax, and read this beginner’s guide.
• The Big Juicy Twitter Guide (Caroline Middlebrook): Want more Twitter goodness? Caroline has a 7-part series on how Twitter has worked as a successful networking and productivity tool.

Mixx

• Top 10 Blog Posts about Mixx in 2007 (Bill Hartzer): Bill talks about the best posts that highlight the up-and-coming social news network, Mixx.
• What a Mixx Up: Interview with Mixx Founder Chris McGill (Collective Thoughts): Brian Wallace interviews Chris McGill to learn about the goals of the promising social news network.
• How Mixx Changed My Perception of Social Media (The Trukstop): Greg Davies discusses why Mixx is a better social site than any others he’s used — and he provides compelling reasons to try Mixx.

del.icio.us

• Become a del.icio.us Power User (Web Worker Daily): Not many people talk about using del.icio.us for its social media potential, but it’s a good tool for social bookmarking and should be utilized.

Sphinn

• Top 10 Blog Posts about Sphinn in 2007 (Bill Hartzer): Like with Mixx, Bill takes the best articles about Sphinn and shares them with his readers.
• Sphinn: In Depth Traffic Analysis and Advice (Blogging Fingers): Matt Jones takes a look at Sphinn in its early beta stages and gives a lot of interesting feedback.
• Introducing the Sphinn Effect (Small Busines SEM): Matt is in love with Sphinn, and he explains why.
• Sphinn: The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using (SEOmoz): Rand lists 10 compelling reasons to join Sphinn.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing

• Social Media Marketing in a Nutshell (Dosh Dosh): Maki introduces SMM and explains why it’s important.
• The Social Networking Guide for Newbies (Fast Company): Social networking is much like networking in the real world. The difference is that it’s virtual.
• 27 Website Promotion Sources that Have Nothing to do With Google or SEO (eMoms at Home): In other words, Wendy Piersall explains that your online marketing strategy is all about internet marketing and a whole lot of social media.
• How to Influence Powerful Social Media Users for Traffic and Attention (Dosh Dosh): How do you influence the influencers? Mainly, through networking.
• A Visual Tour Through the Basics of Social Media Marketing (SEOmoz): Still not involved much in SMM? Rand Fishkin uses pretty pictures to explain the importance of social media marketing and how you can apply it to get better traffic, more conversions, brand awareness, and more.
• 8 Simple Rules for Social Media Marketing in Business to Business Markets (Stuntdubl): Todd talks about how you can make social media marketing work well in the B2B world, but you can certainly extend his post to just about any sort of SMM.
• 11 Guidelines to Social Media Success (Search Engine Watch): Eric Enge presents his 11 takeaways from SMX Social Media.
• Why Social Media Belongs in Your Internet Marketing Campaign (Bruce Clay): The Lisa goes through three successful examples of good social media applications and illustrates why they grabbed her attention. By the way, if you want your attention to be grabbed every time, make sure you read The Lisa’s Friday Recap posts.
• The Social Media Manual (Search Engine Land): Guest writer Muhammad Saleem teaches his social media know-how and provides lessons from mistakes in the social media world.
• 7 Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing (Search Engine People): Jeff Quipp explains why an SMM strategy is important for any business.
• Are You a Social Media Idiot? (Bruce Clay): Lisa says that it’s all about building brand equity, so participation (and Twitter spam) is key.
• Ignore the Social Media Scoreboard (Instigator Blog): Ben Yoskovitz says that you need to leverage friendships to build brand, reputation, trust, and to discover new opportunities.
• A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (Part 1) and A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (Part 2) (SEOmoz): Daniel Tynski’s guest posts on SEOmoz are must-reads if you’re considering some sort of viral marketing campaign, even if it doesn’t include Digg.
• The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Learn and Master It (Dosh Dosh): Maki details why social media marketing is an important strategy and explains how it can be used.
• What Urban Legends Can Teach Us About Social Media Marketing (Dan Zarrella): Dan talks about the application of urban legends and how it is useful to incorporate these thoughts into a social media strategy.
• Marketing is Not Social Media/Social Media is Not Marketing (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan makes a clear statement when he says that marketing is a discipline and social media are tools.
• Stop Steampunk SEO, Start Being Friendly to Your Peers (Collective Thoughts): The future is here and it’s social, Tad Chef explains.
• The Sexy Girls of Tech and Politics: The Unbeatable Trio (NxE): Find what the community likes and pander to them for the best kind of traffic exposure on social sites.
• What are Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization? (ViperChill): Eighteen-year-old Glen Alsopp, who just scored an incredible gig as a director of social media at a firm in South Africa, talks about the rules for on-site and off-site optimization in your social media efforts.
• 7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You (Collective Thoughts): Brian Wallace offers tips on avoiding social media overload.
• 10 Commandments of Social Media Marketing (Site Visibility): Kelvin Newman makes social media rules relate to olden times — literally. For example, Rule #1 is “Thou Shalt Be Honest.”
• A Beginner’s Guide to Social News Websites (Dosh Dosh): Maki presents an actionable post about how to interact with and choose social news websites.
• The Secret to Social Media Success (Chris Garrett): According to Chris, it’s a popularity contest, so make those friends and network above all else.
• The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile (Instigator Blog): With so many social networks out there, how do you pay attention to all of them? Ben lays it out in a guide that should only take 10 minutes a day.
• Social Search and Why We Should Care (10e20): I think that Chris Sherman is a genius. In this webcast that I transcribed, Chris talks about the evolution of social search and its challenges.
• Social Media Marketing Tactics (SEOmoz): Jane Copand, the Web 2.0 guru, shows how to leverage Web 2.0 sites to market your brand and control your message.
• Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication): This is a scholarly article into social networking in case you wanted a firmer grasp about how it’s being studied in the academic sphere.
• How to Encourage Clients to Engage in Social Media (Bruce Clay): The reason why many people aren’t engaged in social media is because they have fears and reservations. Lisa attempts to quell those concerns.
• Viral Marketing is NOT the Same as Word of Mouth (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer Laycock differentiates between WOMM and Viral Marketing.
• Why Networking Socially Beats Social Networking Every Time (Social Media Explorer): Jason Falls explains that it’s not just about social networking; instead, networking with the influencers makes all the difference.
• Social Media: Under the Microscope (SiteLogic): Matt Bailey compares the traffic spikes to conversions.
• The Future of Communications: A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing (PR 2.0): Brian Solis makes a pretty compelling argument about how we’re engaged in a dialog and how social media has brought new influencers to town.
• The Value of Social Media Traffic (Frontpage Bids): Once you get that social media traffic, how do you take advantage of it?

General Internet Marketing

• What Internet Marketers Can Learn from a Teenage Boy Asking a Girl to Prom (Shoemoney): Guest blogger Brennan Hayde equates that prom date struggle to your internet marketing strategy.
• 10 Secrets of Successful Online Community (Influential Marketing): Point #2 on Rohit Bharghava’s list is a theme that is pervasive on this blog: “listen to your users.”
• Ten Web Strategy Blog Posts I Wish You’d Read (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang links to his frequently-discussed blog posts on marketing and web strategy, especially as it relates to corporations.
• Internet Marketing Mindmap (SEOBook): Launched in September, this mindmap covers what Aaron calls “Internet Marketing Made Easy.”
• All I Really Need to Know About (Search) Marketing I Learned in Kindergarten (Search Engine Land): We learn about the basics of marketing from an early age, but how exactly are they applied to (search) marketing? Jon Miller tells you.
• 17 Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Your Website (DailyBits): What’s your marketing strategy? If there are any freebies involved, don’t forget me.
• (Your Stories Never Go Popular Because) Your Personal Marketing Plan Sucks (Wolf Howl): Michael Gray explains the elements that define a personal marketing plan problem and how to resolve them.
• Measuring Search Success 2007 (10e20): Another excellent webcast with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media: it’s all about conversions, baby.
• The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the (2007) Search Strategist (Web Strategist): Jeremiah alludes to many tools and tactics for corporate web strategy.
• 23 Surefire Small-Business Marketing Tips for 2008 (PlanetC1.com): Michael Dorausch talks about internal and external marketing efforts that you should apply next year.
• 10 New Years Resolutions for an Internet Marketer (Search Commander): Scott Hendison is already preparing for 2008 with some resolutions that will hopefully make marketers more productive in the upcoming year.

Viral Strategies

• The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited (Stuntdubl): Todd looks at the variety of link baiting hooks (news, controversy, attacks, resources, humor, ego, and incentive) and explains their pros and cons.
• Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Link Baiting and Social Media Marketing (Tropical SEO): Andy lays it all out here. Make sure your article has the right hook, has a kick-ass headline, is presented properly for a social media crowd, and ensure that you target the right people to give your story a push.
• The Golden Rules of Linkbaiting (Smashing Magazine): The wonderful guys at Smashing Magazine take quotes from a variety of link baiting articles and make a compelling argument as to why link baiting works.
• Under the Microscope: Six Strategies for Building Viral Content (Skelliewag): Skellie talks about what makes viral articles alluring.
• 12 Examples of Viral Content and What We Can Learn from Them (Skelliewag): Skellie goes further to examine some successful linkbait pieces and why they were indeed notewrothy.
• 10 Brilliant Examples of LinkBait (WebGeek): Scott Allen shows how tools are great linkbait.
• Brainstorming Linkbait: A Four-Step Approach (SEOmoz): Want to create a linkbait piece? Scott Willoughby says that you can be successful if you brainstorm every idea. Don’t be afraid to write anything and everything down. Seriously.
• Linkbait Articles (Cornwall SEO): Lyndon takes his favorite linkbait articles and puts them in a single post for our reading pleasure.
• How to Make Viral Linkbaits Work: Four Characteristics for Success (Dosh Dosh): What makes viral linkbait? Maki takes us through four elements and then goes through a case study.
• The 7 Secrets of Viral Content (Daily Blog Tips): So, you have a great viral idea. Now what? Here’s how you should present it.
• Anatomy of a Viral Sensation (Pronet Advertising): This post by David Chen explores how content can be a viral success.
• Calling it Linkbait Doesn’t Make You Less of a Jerk (Bruce Clay): If you’re aiming to profit off of tragedy or unfortunate situations, it’s really bad for your reputation, says my BFF Lisa Barone. Don’t capitalize on someone else’s suffering.
• SES Interviews: Matt Inman on Linkbaiting (Search Marketing Standard): Joe Whyte interviews Matt Inman on his amazing linkbait strategies. Did I ever mention that I heart Matt?

Link Resources

• Ultimate Guide to Building the Perfect Link (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee talks about who you should look for links from and why.
• Perspectives on Buying Links (Stuntdubl): Todd explains that you should justify the purchase of your links from an SEO, engineer, or visitor standpoint.
• Internal Link Architecture Made Easy (SEOBook): Aaron provides tips on how you can optimize your internal link structure.
• How do You Measure a Link? (SEOmoz): Rand talks about the elements that determine a link’s value.
• Link Value Factors (Wiep.net): Wiep Knol asked a bunch of experts in the Internet Marketing sphere what they thought were the most important elements of links. This is one of the best articles of the year.
• Five Link Development Experts: A Group Interview (Sugarrae): Rae interviews Rand Fishkin, Todd Malicoat, Roger Montti, Eric Ward, (and herself), and provides a really cool interview about link development.
• Michael Gray Interview: Advanced Link Strategies (Link Juicy): Michael talks about more advanced link building (and baiting) tactics.
• Hansel and Gretel Link Building (Skelliewag): Skellie applies the old children’s tale to link building. Clever!
• Link Buying Guide: Directories, Ads, and Reviews (Search Engine Journal): Need to buy links? Loren Baker vouches for directories and brokerage services to get the job done.
• Linking Gotchas Even the Pros Make (Andy Beard): Andy debunks a ton of articles and explains his reasoning. Pretty daring and altogether a wonderful read.
• 11 Guidelines for Getting Authoritative Links (Search Engine Watch): Eric Enge explains that it takes time and patience to get what you’re looking for.
• Links Links Links (Top Rank Blog): They aren’t as conventional, but Lee Odden explains that some of the most traditional ways to build links still work.
• How to Achieve Higher Rankings and Stay out of Google Hell via Optimized Internal Linking (Jim Boykin): Jim explains that by optimizing your internal linking strategy, you can avoid the supplemental index.
• Factors of a Quality Web Directory (Shimon Sandler): What makes the right web directory? Check the factors that need to be considered.
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Link Builders (Search Engine Land): If you plan on doing link building yourself, you need to possess these seven traits, says Debra Mastaler
• Interview of Debra Mastaler, the Link Guru (SEOBook): Apparently, Deb is so busy building links that it was nearly impossible for her to answer this interview questionnaire, but she finally pulled through!
• 17 Creative Link Building Ideas (Search Engine Journal): If you felt that you were still running dry with all the posts I’ve linked here, here are 17 more ideas that can get you some more links.
• Link Building as Relationship Building – A Great Example (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer explains that building relationships resonate well when building links and how communication is important.
• Creating Authority and Link Development (Martinibuster): Roger Montti says that differentiating your site is the key to creating authority and building links.
• Online Publicity and Link Building in 2007 (10e20): This is a webcast I transcribed earlier this year that featured esteemed link builder Eric Ward.
• What Exactly Qualifies as a Quality Link? (Jennifer Slegg): Start asking yourself these questions and mark off which ones apply to the links you’re seeking.

Blogging: General

• Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips (Daily Blog Tips): Starting a blog? This article covers five blogging topics: WordPress setup, design, validation, plugins, and analytics.
• How to Choose the Right Blog Niche: A Simple Three-Step Method (Dosh Dosh): The brilliant Maki helps you get started in blogging if you haven’t started yet. It’s not too late!
• 5 Items Your Blog Sidebar Must Have (Blogging Tips): Chris Garrett explains that you need to add prominent features to your blog’s sidebar to visibility.
• How to Improve Blogs in 4 Easy Steps (Social Media Explorer): Jason Falls talks about how content is king, and taken with other advice on this page, he’s certainly right.
• Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a First Blog Site (Lonely Marketer): Patrick Schaber provides an informative basic list for beginners who are about to embark on the blogging journey.
• Wait! Write Before You Launch (Blogging Experiment): It’s unwise to launch your blog with only a few posts. Build content first and then start marketing your blog.
• To Niche or Not to Niche: Top Bloggers Tell All (Jonathan Fields): Jonathan asked several bloggers, myself included, if it’s a better idea to focus your blog on one topic area or to be a little more general. What do you think is the answer to this question?
• The Definitive Guide to Blogging – 1st Edition (Sponsored Reviews): Jarrod Hunt lists over 130 resources for building, monetizing, and customizing your blog.
• 101 Tips I Learned from Blogging (Etienne Teo): Blogging is rewarding and a learning experience for all. Etienne shares her 101 lessons with her readers.
• Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers from Original Blogger Jorn Barger (Wired): The guy who coined the term “weblog” dispenses blog advice for newbies in this Wired article.
• Answer My 30 Questions and Then I’ll Take You Seriously (Alister Cameron): Alister Cameron provides questionnaire that lets you audit your blog and see if you’re really in need of consulting services.
• Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations for Measuring Your Success (Occam’s Razor): Web analytics wizard Avinash Kaushik shares ways to see how you’re successful in your blogging efforts. This prompted Joost de Valk to write an awesome WordPress Blog Metrics plugin.
• 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (At Least Once) (Performancing): Just in case the list on this blog doesn’t suffice, here are 10 more blogging articles. You can also subscribe to the hundreds of blogs about blogging too (or you can come back here in 2008).
• Blog for an Audience… Even if You Have None (Blog Herald): One of my favorite bloggers, Jason aka Webomatica, talks about how you should perceive your blog as having a huge audience — even if you don’t — so that every action matters.
• 10 More Blogging Tips from a Novice Blogger (Occam’s Razor): I don’t consider Avinash Kaushik a novice blogger, and you don’t have to follow these rules to a tee, but it is solid advice.
• Your Fellow Blogger is Not a Competitor (Dosh Dosh): You’re not competing against any bloggers. If anything, you can use the information that blogger teaches you and absorb more information to better your skillset. In the end, however, your fellow blogger is a person you can network with.
• Tips for Using Images in Blogs (Blogoscoped): Images are eye candy, but use them well and you will reap the benefits.
• I Live in the Blogosphere (SEO 2.0): Mark Dykeman’s guest post makes a bold statement: “The blogosphere is my communication medium and my blogs are transmitters.”
• WordPress Desktop Blogging: 5 Tools Reviewed (CenterNetworks): So, after reading all these articles, you’re going to use WordPress? Good choice. Now check out the options you have for desktop publishing on WordPress, or do what I do and just stick to the web interface.

Blogging: Inspiration

• 66 Successful Bloggers and What They Can Teach You (TheBizOfKnowledge): Bill Belew links to 66 different blogs and explains that each blogger brings a unique voice to the table.
• Your Secret Blogging Weapon is You (Cornwall SEO): Everyone can start a blog, but which blogs are the more outstanding of the bunch? The ones where your personality shines.
• Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping (Problogger): If you’ve stumbled on writer’s block, take out a pen and paper and start mind mapping – that is, get a theme and start building up other related ideas by association.
• The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging (Copyblogger): Brian Clark is my favorite copywriter and proves it by listing 5 laws of persuasive blogging. What elements make blogs successful?
• 4 Reasons to Write on the Weekend and 4 Posts to Do it With (Muhammad Saleem): Don’t call it writer’s block now.
• 101 Great Posting Ideas that Will Make Your Blog Sizzle (I Help You Blog): Philip Liu put a ton of effort into this post and then he disappeared from the blogosphere. I miss you, man!
• 101 Blog Posting Ideas (SEO 2.0): Just in case Philip’s ist wasn’t enough, Tad has another 101 ideas.
• 23 Great Ideas for Blog Posts (Pat B. Doyle): In case the previous 202 ideas weren’t enough, Pat gives you another 23.
• 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today (Skelliewag): Out of ideas? Here are some viral blog posts to start writing right now.
• 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write (Chris Brogan): This post should keep you devoid of writer’s block until at least 2009…
• 101 Essential Blogging Skills (Skelliewag): You need not possess all 101, but they certainly help.
• Top 20 Tips for Beginner Bloggers (How to Build a Website): Not everyone follows all these tips, so you can get a lot of inspiration from these.

Blogging: Promotion

• Hare Krishnas Reveal the Secret to Massive Link Love and Mega Sales (Jonathan Fields): Give and you shall receive. Jon makes a brilliant analogy to how when Hare Krishnas give you a flower, they subconsciously are programming your mind to give them a donation. Likewise, in blogging, give something before requesting anything. The more you give, the more rewards you reap.
• How I Increased My Traffic by 11259.7% in 3 Months in 10 Easy Steps (SEO 2.0): You want traffic? You have to work for it. Fortunately, Tad lays out the guidelines that he followed to give his site more visibility, so all you need to do is implement the strategies.
• Do You Have a Blog Commenting Strategy? (Caroline Middlebrook): Commenting on blogs has helped Caroline grab others’ attention.
• The Power of Search: Driving Traffic to Your Blog (Vanessa Fox): Vanessa spoke at BlogHer this past year (I’m so jealous) and applies three concepts (relevance, discoverability, and crawlability, for a total of four posts!) to making blogs more heavily trafficked in the search engines. Maybe next year, I’ll steal her presentation…
• Strike Up a Conversation Today for a Relationship Tomorrow (Blogging Experiment): Ben Cook talks about the steps he’s taken to score some pretty awesome guest blogging stints.
• How to Get Darren Rowse to Read Your Blog (Cornwall SEO): Want to get someone’s attention? Write about them. (Hint: I have an alert for both “techipedia” and for “Tamar Weinberg”. I notice that Robert Scoble adds me to his link blog when I write about him too. Hi Robert!)
• Pattern Your Audience: How Editorial Calendars Increase Your Readership (Dosh Dosh): Make your readers expect to hear from you, so set up an editorial calendar to know when to visit your site next.
• Five Ways to Attract More Comments (Blogging Experiment): Need more comments on your blog? Ben shows five ways to compel more people to participate.
• How to ACTUALLY Get Blog Comments (Snowboardjohn): John talks about advanced concepts that will not just cause people to comment — they will provoke them to comment.
• Create 50000 Links in 11 Weeks (Blogstorm): Patrick Altoft talks about his blog marketing strategy and how it worked for him.
• Blogging is About Writing (Problogger): Guest writer Lorelle VanFossen lists ways to get your blog noticed: writing matters.
• 99 Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free (Vandelay Design): If you think you’ve run out of ideas to promote your blog, you’re probably wrong.
• 19 Strategies to Help Turn New Visitors into Loyal Readers (Skelliewag): How do you maintain a new reader? There are at least 19 ways!
• 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To (Search Engine Journal): As Loren once said, BLOG = Better Listings on Google. That said, submit your blog to many directories to get maximum visibility.
• 15 Ways to Become an Influential Blogger (NxE): If you are aiming to become a blogging celebrity, take heed to these 15 tips and apply them to your blogging right away.
• 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers (Newest on the Net): Newcomer Fred Peters talks about how he increases his RSS subscriber count. Many of these tips should be implemented into any blogging strategy!

Content Generation

• 11 Unique Content Sources in Saturated Markets (SEOBook): What do you do if you’re in a competitive area and want to write something original? Aaron Wall answers the question.
• 10 Helpful Hints for Creating Strong Web Site Content (10e20): Jake over at 10e20 talks about how you can pump out some great articles if you research, hire experts, do competitive research, and focus on alternate languages, among other excellent tips.
• The 4 Essential Elements of an About Me Page (Quick Sprout): Neil explains that it’s important for your about page to have an image, a statement about yourself, an expressed willingness to help others, and contact information.
• How to Use the Simple Power of Contrast to Become More Persuasive (Copyblogger): Using analogies, Brian Clark examines “contrast” and explains how you can change perceptions to get people to proceed with a purchase.
• Using Google to Target Bloggers & the Mainstream Media with Search Queries (SEOBook): Aaron Wall presents some excellent content-generation ideas.
• How to Avoid Fool’s Gold and Create Value-Packed Content (Skelliewag): Brilliant writer Skellie talks about how you can make every piece of content more valuable.
• 25 Headline Formulas that Have Plagued and Blessed Web 2.0 (Skelliewag): Still need a good headline? Here are some creative angles you can take.
• Are You Using the Right Content Development Strategy for Your Website? (Dosh Dosh): How do you intend to deliver high-impact that will build up readership quickly? Read Maki’s guide.

Reputation Management

• Reputation Management Emancipation Proclamation: 10 Ways to “Own” Yourself Online (Stuntdubl): How do you build your personal brand? Todd details 10 great tips, including registering your name on every social network, getting interviews, and speaking at industry events.
• Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Tools You Must Have (Marketing Pilgrim): Andy Beal talks about the 26 tools that help you monitor your reputation online. He’s also coming out with a book in February entitled Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online which will give away all his trade secrets.
• Reputation Management You May Be Missing (Vanessa Fox): Using an obscure search engine gave Vanessa incentive to write a post about how utilizing any profiles (even less-trafficked ones) can till help manage your reputation online.
• Full Blown Reputation Management Campaign (Shimon Sandler): Need to bury bad press? Shimon outlines what your campaign should offer should you offer reputation management services.
• Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation (Andy Beal): A positive reputation comes from embracing negative reviews.
• The Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management (Scoreboard Media): Brian Provost gives strategies for owning the first page of the search results.
• 31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online (Search Marketing Gurus): Explore every nook and cranny to get the most out of your reputation management campaign.
• 10 Ways to Fix a Google Reputation Management Nightmare (Marketing Pilgrim): What’s the best content to fill up page 1 of the search results? Ask Andy Beal, or just read this post.
• Beware: Your Digital Footprint is Your Resume (Search Engine People): Jeff Quipp talks about how everything you do can be traced back to you.
• PR Disasters Lurk in Web 2.0 Chicanery (RogerD’s Notebook): If you’re going to go into reputation management, you better understand the Internet. Bad reputation management is noticeable.
• Using Social Media to Help Manage Online Reputation (SearchRank): David Wallace illustrates how reputation management works and explains how engagement in social media can help change perceptions.
• DIY Reputation Management (CNet): Stephan Spencer talks about how to do reputation management right in a short easy-to-read list.
• Reputation Management and Search: Avoiding Chunnel Vision (RB Digital Rodeo): Sure, reputation management is a good step in the right direction, but the reality is that your search engine rankings are usually not where the problem lies.

Video Articles

• How to be a Star in a YouTube World (Wall Street Journal): A news article from the Wall Street Journal about how consistency, finding the right niche, early adoption, networking, and professionalism will make you a popular YouTube star.
• The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos (TechCrunch): This controversial but brilliant article provides many insights into how some marketing firms make their videos really stand out above the rest.
• Definitive List of Video Aggregator Sites (SEO Space): There are a lot of video sites beyond YouTube. Jody Nimetz lists them out for you.
• Ultimate Video Optimization Resources (Web Analytics World): Manoj Jasra provides a list of more articles that will help you in your video optimization efforts.
• Why Online Video is Good for Your Corporate Executives and How to Deploy (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang explains how videos are time efficient, allows executives to talk directly to people, and work well in a corporate strategy. What comes to mind: David Neeleman’s JetBlue apology.

Business

• 5 Ways an SEO a Consultant Can Make More Money (that have nothing to do with Google) (Tropical SEO): I’m starting to see the value of this!
• 8 Simple Steps to Build Traffic for Your Internet Startup (Scoreboard Media): Brian Provost explains how you can create an audience for your product and gain the necessary exposure for fame.
• Breaking Up with Bad Clients: It’s Not You, It’s … Me (Stuntdubl): If your clients aren’t profitable and raise your stress levels, perhaps it’s time to cease the relationship. But how do you do that?
• 16 Tips to Successful Business on the Web (Stuntdubl): Todd Malicoat talks about how he’s successful at his business. Some tips: never be afraid to say no, work with successful people, execute, and overdeliver.
• Your Personal Viral Marketing Plan (Eradicate Perplexity): What are the pros and cons of working for yourself? Scott Orth outlines the positives and negatives of both approaches.
• 20 Work-Life Balance Tips for the Overworked Entrepreneur (Entrepreneur): If you didn’t let Scott Orth’s cons bug you and decided to take the freelancing route, how do you make time for yourself? (Answer: You certainly wouldn’t be writing a blog post about the Internet Marketing Best Posts of 2007 for 10 hours straight on a holiday weekend!)
• Online Marketing 10 Tips (DaveN): Dan Horton shares his thoughts on how to build a firm and reputable marketing strategy.
• How a Small Winery Found Internet Fame (CNN Money): Two words: blogger outreach.
• 9 Random Tips on Becoming a Successful Online Marketer (Shoemoney): Jeremy writes what’s been on his mind.
• What Separates Search Marketing Novices from Experts (SEOmoz): What are the mistakes that differentiates the newbies from experts in the search marketing field?
• 13 Ways to Promote Your Local Business for Free (Wolf-Howl): This doesn’t quite fit under the “Business” category that I was thinking of, but Michael’s post is surely a gem!
• What My Preschooler Can Teach You About Online Success (Social Desire): In a very clever comparison, Shana Albert equates lessons from preschool to business.
• Working on the Periphery: How to Make Any Website You’ll Ever Create a Success (Dosh Dosh): Maki emphasizes the importance of relationships to contribute to the growth of your website or business.
• How to Find the Right Search Marketing Partner (10e20): Chris Sherman speaks at a Search Marketing Now webcast about the factors to consider when choosing a search marketing partner.

Search Engine Optimization

• Why the SEO Folks are Mad at You, Jason (Search Engine Land): Danny defends SEO — again.
• Search Ranking Factors v2 (SEOmoz): Rand Fishkin asked a bunch of experts about what determines search rankings and published the new findings in April.
• The Bloggers Guide to SEO (SEOBook): Aaron and Giovanna have created a great in-depth guide on how bloggers can ensure that their posts are ranked well within the search engine results. Unlike their eBook (aff) which is worth every penny, the guide is free.
• How to SEO Your Site in Less than 60 Minutes (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee acknowledges that you need to take more than 60 minutes to SEO your site effectively, but if you were really in such a time crunch, you might as well use his guide as a starting point.
• Example of SEO Strategy Document (Shimon Sandler): What should you present your clients when you’re offering services in SEO? Shimon literally gave away his trade secret with this one.
• The SEO Playbook (Stuntdubl): Todd calls this “the advanced beginner’s guide” and goes through the techniques that get you top rankings. He also includes a whole lot of additional links for reference which makes this blog post extremely comprehensive.
• Search Engine Optimization Warfare (Stuntdubl): Todd calls this post “the competitive webmaster’s guide to understanding the dynamics of top rankings.” I’ll leave you to read the rest.
• Top SEO Tips (SEO Refugee Forums): GaryTheScubaGuy lists his 12 most important SEO factors.
• What Makes SEO and SEM So Damn Hard (SEOmoz): Marketers face a lot of obstacles in the SEO and SEM sphere and it’s a difficult task. What are the challenges? Rand explains all.
• The Lowdown on Press Release Optimization (Top Rank Blog): Lee Odden knows a lot more about press releases than I do, and he talks about what you can to do optimize those PRs.
• Ultimate Local Search Optimization Resources (Web Analytics World): Manoj Jasra aggregates a bunch of websites and provides resources which should help anyone in the area of local optimization.
• But is it Spam? (SEOBook): Aaron shows through examples that we should come up with the correct search marketing strategy.
• WordPress SEO Masterclass for Competitive Niches (Andy Beard): Is your blog niche competitive enough that you feel that you can’t rank for these terms? Take apart your WordPress theme and make it search-friendly. Awesome.
• A Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon (SEOmoz): For newcomers in the SEO sphere, there are a ton of acronyms and terms that you should get acquainted with.
• 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques (Search Engine Land): Matt McGee explains that these are the things you should do whether you’re hiring an SEO firm or doing SEO yourself.
• Keyword Inspiration: Aaron Wall Shares His Secrets (WordTracker Blog): Where does Aaron Wall get his ideas for the ideal keywords? Now you know!
• SEO Expert Quiz (SEOmoz): Are you an SEO expert? Launched earlier this year, the SEOmoz quiz will let you know how literate you are in the world of SEO.
• Why the PageRank Toolbar is Killing the SEO Industry (Search Engine Roundtable): Barry Schwartz argues that if PageRank were removed, then the whole landscape of SEO would change.
• 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours (Solo SEO): From my experience, it was all about WordPress, but Michael Jensen gives more realistic steps in the absence of the blogging platform.
• 55 SEO Interview Questions (All Things SEM): Marios Alexandrou has been interviewing for quite some time. What questions does he ask during the interview process and what should you also ask?

Search Engine Stuff

• Google 2.0: Google Universal Search (Search Engine Land): Danny Sullivan explains the ramifications of the universal search and what it means for you.
• The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content on Search Engines (SEOmoz): In this article about duplicate content and many others, you’ll quickly learn that Rand Fishkin is an artist.
• What is Google PageRank? A Guide for Searchers and Webmasters (Search Engine Land): Danny talks about the green bar and explains the various applications for SEOs and searchers. This in-depth article is the best I’ve seen on PageRank.
• How to Handle a Google Penalty (SEOmoz): Rand talks to Matt Cutts about a penalty on a real estate website and then illustrates his findings in a flowchart.
• The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Searching within Google, Yahoo, and MSN (HybridSEM): This is the search operators cheat sheet that you’ve been waiting for.
• Restricting the (Google) Search Space (Blogoscoped): Philipp explains that you can get desired results simply by performing certain queries with specific operators.
• Five Things You Didn’t Know About Google’s Search (Matt Cutts): Matt gives away secrets in this blog post… okay, maybe not, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless.

Web Development

• Efficient Web Design & Development: Hacks to Save Time and Money (SEOBook): Need a new website on the cheap? Aaron walks through the steps you should take, from domain purchase to design to content.
• 50 Common Web Design Mistakes (Design Refugee): Before your site goes live, make sure you check every item off of this checklist and address these concerns.
• Thirty Free Image Resources on the Web (About): Wendy Boswell, searcher extraordinare, shares her top 30 sites for finding free images for your blog and other websites.
• 100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images (Virtual Hosting): In case 30 wasn’t enough, here are others that are driven by the community, allow new users, and are small but still very useful.
• Difference Between a Website and a Blog (Social Desire): What differentiates websites and blogs? Look at Shana’s chart.
• 8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You’re Stuck (SEOmoz): My favorite West Coast guy is a brilliant designer (I’ll save the gushing for later) but writes an amazing post on how to get out of designer’s block.
• 404 Funnies: Making “Not Found” Work for You (CNet): Stephan Spencer says that creative 404 pages show a sense of humor. For more 404 pages, check out the Smashing Magazine collections.

Search Marketing Tools

• Analytics on the Cheap: Six Free Stats Packages for the Startup or Small Business Owner (10e20): Can’t afford an expensive analytics package? There are plenty that are free, and here are six that I personally reviewed.
• A Beginner’s SEO Toolbox (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee shares his favorite plugins and tools for doing SEO.
• 10 Ways to Become a More Efficient Webmaster (Lee Dodd): Lee Dodd outlines 10 tools and explains how they help at improving your webmastering skills.
• Five Free “Advanced” Web Analytics Examples (Occam’s Razor): Avinash shows how you can get some great statistics about your website by using tools that are totally free.
• Bookmarklets for the Web 2.0 Jedi Master (MicroPersuasion): Steve Rubel knows his bookmarklets.
• 6 Web Tools that You Can’t Live Without (Square Oak): Brendan talks about some lesser known tools that are quite helpful for search research and for getting things done.

Paid Search

• Re-Upping Your Google AdWords Certification (Stuntdubl): Getting certified? Again? Don’t review the entire course guides once more. Just check Todd’s notes.
• 31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips (GoogleLady): The best-written ads can give you higher CTR and thus conversions. What’s stopping you from trying these?
• Using Paid Search? Here’s How to Maximize the Impact of Your Ads (10e20): Chris Sherman speaks about the importance of paid search in yet another webcast that I transcribed.
• Example of a PPC Strategy Document (Shimon Sandler): If you’re offering PPC services to a client, here’s a strategy document template to use.
• PPC Success in Five Steps (ISEdb): It’s all in your keywords, ads, landing pages, organization, and analysis, but there’s more to the article than what I just wrote!
• How to Turn Around an Unprofitable PPC Campaign (SiteProNews): Kalena Jordan highlights mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns and how to remedy them.
• Five Common Paid Search Mistakes that Can Sink Your Campaign (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer Laycock describes the five most common pitfalls and how to solve them.
• Starting From Scratch: A Paid Search Primer (RKG): If it’s your first time in paid search, this is a good guide to get started.
• Optimizing the Mix of Paid and Organic Listings (10e20): Is it good enough to simply be ranked #1 in the organic listings? No, complementing that with paid listings can boost your brand, according to Chris Sherman.
• How to Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid (eWhisper): Brad Geddes gives you a strategy you’re hopefully taking advantage of if you’re using paid search.
• Website Conversation Rate 101 (Invesp Blog): To increase your conversion rate, you need to invest time and energy. Khalid presents an 8-step tutorial.

Recommended Books

• 5 Books All Search Marketers Should Read (SEOmoz): Except John Battelle’s book, I don’t own the listed books.
• 5 More Books Search Marketers Should Read (SEOmoz): Here are 5 more books to keep your marketing learn on.
• Books that have Changed My Business (Shoemoney): Jeremy is an audiobook type, but now I have to obtain the audiobooks since I have no time to read with all this writing I’m doing. Summary of this section: I need to get reading (or listening) right away!

Affiliate Sites: My disclaimer here is that I’m not at all too familiar with this area, but I think these articles will certainly get me started when I make the time!

• How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M (Tropical SEO): Andy Hagans talks about how time, effort, and a defensible website can give you a good push.
• How to Survive the Affiliate Revolution (Sugarrae): Rae explains that you need to find the right domains that have the right keywords and that unique content really does sell. Engaging the community and building a well-designed website are also important elements.

Domaining: Another disclaimer – I’m also not really involved in the domainer’s sphere yet, but these are really good reads.

• Master of My Domaining: 10 Things I’ve Learned About Domaining Since I’ve Jumped in the Pool (Scoreboard Media): Once Brian Provost took domaining seriously, he had lessons to share for those of us who haven’t. I’ll keep these in mind.
• Interview of Frank Schilling, the World Famous Domain Investor (SEOBook): Aaron interviews a guy even I’ve heard of.
• Diary of a Domain Virgin (SEMpdx): Todd Mintz talks about how he got started in domaining, but acknowledges that the results may not be visible for quite some time. (Tip: It’s all about patience!)
• The Domaining Revolution (Search Engine Guide): Todd talks about the recent Domain Roundtable conference with a beginner’s post on domaining.
• Why Warren Buffet Recommends You Invest in Domain Names (Tropical SEO): Andy draws very interesting parallels between stock investments and domain investments. The idea is that investing now is valuable in the long run.
• How to Get Started as a Domainer (Aviva Directory): So, have the articles convinced you to jump on the domainer’s bandwagon? Here’s how you can get started.
• Top 4 Lies Domainers Tell Themselves (Tropical SEO): Andy Hagans lies to himself, but at least he admits that he has a problem.

Miscellaneous

• 50 Perfect Gifts for Webophiles, Bloggers, and Internet Marketers: Rand lists some awesome gifts, and now I want them all!

And finally, Techipedia’s Best Posts for 2007 (that aren’t rants)

• Top 6 Idea for Incredible Viral Content
• A Review of Social News Site Mixx
• 11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience
• How I Network on Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace
• Reputation Management with Marketing Gone Bad
• 29 Super Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API
• 13 Reasons Why I Am an Obsessive Compulsive Facebook User

Lastly, one real final milestone for me: my first mention in Forbes!

This reading should set you back 12 months… until 2009. But don’t only read these articles, because you’ll still need to catch up on the latest and greatest in Internet Marketing developments over the course of ’08 — unless you just want to come here next December.

This post has been brought to you by SMS Gateway software.

[ Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

(Note: It will soon become evident that I started this on the plane. However, it’s Wednesday and I finally wrapped it up.)

As I write this post on the plane, I am already beginning to miss SES San Jose 2007 (August 20-23), which was one of the most successful search conferences that I was fortunate enough to be able to attend. Not only was it educationally enriching, it was also an extremely successful and exciting networking event. And this flight, which actually is running early, was by far the easiest check-in and take-off in my entire life of traveling. Even though my seat is broken (the seat back flung backwards as soon as the plane lifted into the air), life is good.

During the day, life was all about business, and the intellectual stimulation began. Seventeen (!) sessions were liveblogged by yours truly, and Search Engine Roundtable covered a whopping 64 of the 74 sessions. The evenings were filled with a little more laid back fun, from an Ask.com dinner on Monday night to an incredibly awesome Google Dance on Tuesday and a pretty crazy WebmasterRadio bash on Wednesday night. I have to say that it was great. Thank you Barry.

Where to begin… I obviously owe a ton of love to a bunch of people, so I will do my best to remember all of them. First, I have to pay a special thanks to Steve Boymel, who is sitting next to me watching me write this blog (I feel like I’m still liveblogging, which would put me at 18 for the entire conference). He helped me carry my incredibly heavy bag of schwag on the plane. I commend you, Steve. You rock.

It was great seeing all of my old friends and meeting a few new and truly cool ones.

So, in no particular order, shout outs to my BFF (Lee, take note!), The Lisa, Rand (who knows that link suits him well!), Gillian (Barnard alumni unite!), and Rebecca. I would like to declare my admiration for Matt in case it wasn’t obvious at the conference, and howdy to the other two: Matt and Matt. Of course, it was also nice to see familiar Googlers Adam and Susan (who just got married!) and I got some great photos of former Googler Vanessa (which totally rocked, but after all the pictures I took with her with her eyes closed, I think she hates me). Whenever I saw Vanessa, I also saw Michael, so he gets the next mention. And it’s also great to see people from my old clan: Chris and Danielle. I also ran into familiar conference faces: Li, Kim, David, Jill, Shoemoney, Jon, Joe, Chris, Chris, Andy, Christine, Carolyn, Brent (and thanks again for the shirt, Daniel!), Mike, Brett, Jarrod, Loren, Rhea, Todd (a very photogenic dude), Cameron, and Neil. Of course, there’s also Todd, Greg, Barbara, Dave, Dax and Cesar too.

But for the first time, I met Simon, which was very cool, because he has a British accent and I find myself singing that Mike Myers SNL skit every time I see him (it’s in my head right now. Thanks, Simon). I also helped Darcy score some schwag (you owe me!) and met Patrick, David, Rob (whose accent also totally rocks), and Frank (again, kickass accent). I also met a bunch of other guys for the first time: Daron, Adam, Shimon, Mike, Andrew, Kevin, Greg, Jon Kelly, Debra Mastaler, and Justin Davy (who I actually met on the airport on the way back to Newark, but that was cool, since he blogged for us).

On Monday night, I was able to join a pretty awesome Ask.com dinner where I (finally!) met Gary and had a nice chat with Bloglines GM Eric Engleman whose team came out with an awesome product this week. I also got to meet the rest of the Ask team: Patrick, Erik, James, and some other guys whose names I didn’t get. It was good company!

It was also great meeting and hanging with Aaron, Bruce, and Bradley, Pat, Andy, David (and Brian), Michael, Michael, Jonathan, Jim, Scott, Dillsmack, Natasha, Eytan and Natala, David from Chicago, Sujan, Jennifer, Jennifer, Andy, Jill Sampey (who did me a huge favor and went with me back to my hotel room so that I could get my ID), and Bill.

I especially thank the guys who actually took the time to introduce themselves to me: Brian Mark, Brian Park (no, I am not kidding), Manoj, Jody, Avi, and Lucas.

Special thanks to Matt Bailey for a really awesome shirt. And finally, thanks to Danny!

Of course, we missed Rae, Jane, and Ben.

And now for some commentary and takeaways on some of the sessions:

• Are Paid Links Evil? was by far the most wicked session ever. Michael Gray, I have respected you a ton in the past, but you totally rocked my world. You are no longer a kitten. You are a ferocious tiger. Please tell me that the video of that presentation is online somewhere. (If it is, I’ll link to it!) If not, here are his presentation notes. I admire your gusto.
• The SEO Reputation Problem: For those of you who understand programming jargon, SEO != spammer. The fact that people keep making this comparison is inaccurate. Thus, this little tidbit made me happy.
• Actually, Matt writes a list of 14 good SES takeaways. Read his instead.
• For more lighthearted humor, here are 45 other takeaways from San Jose.

Finally, before I return to our regularly scheduled program, here are some obligatory pictures in a cute little collage format (click on the images for large sized). We had fun.

Additional photos can be found from me, Matt McGee, Kim Krause Berg, Christine Churchill, Li Evans, Lee Odden and co., Mike McDonald, Brent Csutoras, and Simon Heseltine.

Other recaps are at Barbara Boser’s blog, David Mihm’s blog, Cre8pc (Kim Krause Berg), Rebecca Kelley, and others.

As for the next conference, will it be Vegas or Chicago? My mind is set on warmer weather… how about you?

[ SES San Jose 2007 Recap is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.