I was recently asked by a friend which Online Marketing websites she should be reading. Not only are there a ton of them out there is also a ton of them in each category. We have SEO gurus, niche marketers, affliate marketers, PPC marketers, and the list goes on. Each category has different learning and implementation requirements.
We at Lokolee deal primarily with organic SEO with niche marketing being a distant second. We don’t deal much with affliate marketing or PPC marketing because we don’t help people who want to advertise other people’s products, and we don’t help companies with any PPC (Pay per click) campaigns.
We believe in the power of organic search and dialing down into your niche. We don’t believe it takes a lot of money to get to the top of search results for your local business in your local niche. And we believe that search is just one aspect of attracting people to your business online.
In any case, here are some great links to get you started with any type of online marketing you would like to pursue.
SEO Gurus
- SEOmoz.org – SEOmoz.org is pretty much the number one most respected SEO website out there. And Rand Fishkin is the number one guy to follow. I’ve learned a lot from him about SEO.
- SEObook.com – Aaron Wall’s SEObook is a close 2nd for me, but many people would rank his website higher then SEOmoz. I’ll just let you be the judge after you check out both websites.
- Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal. – I lump these three together because,… well… they just have too much irrelevant content. Granted, they have real gold if you are willing to dig for it, but they act more like aggregators then real content publishers. Check them out and decide for yourself.
- SelfSeo.com – I mention these guys because they provide quite a few easy to use SEO tools, and have some decent articles on SEO. Worth a visit.
- Sphinn.com – Internet Marketing News & Discussion Forums, Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Again, do you want to dig for the gold or not? It’s good to have when you need to compile a lot of data.
Niche Marketing
- DavidMihm.com- David has pretty much made himself the center of the Local Search Universe with his Local Search Ranking Factors project. BTW, group projects are one of the best ways to market your business. Anyhow, check out his list of contributors on the right side of his Local Search Ranking Factors page to delve more into the Local Search niche. (may I recommened Andrew Shotland to start…)
- Kikolani.com – I love reading Kristi’s work on blogging. If your marketing involves blogs and/or social media at all she is worth following.
- My Wife Quit Her Job – This is a guy who knows his niche. He operates a very successful wedding linens business, and luckily he writes about how he does it for everyone’s benefit. If you are looking to sell a product online you probably only need to read Steve’s blog, and take it from there. He also has become a good online friend of mine. His blog is well worth checking out!
Online Marketing
I am a little hesitant to provide links to sites about affiliate marketing and PPC marketing. As I said before I don’t really follow these types of websites, and it is not my expertise. But I decided it would be good to list a few very general websites here for you to check out. Let me know what you think.
- Web Marketing Today – It’s good to follow the people who have been doing this from the beginning. It’s also hard to follow them because they produce so much material, but go check them out, dig down a bit, and see what you can find.
- Seth Godin – Seth Godin is pretty much my hero. He writes on all the topics I love to read and if you are serious about marketing online you should be subscribed to his blog. His latest project is all about self publishing so if you are interested in writing a book to gain credibility in your industry you need to check out what he is doing.
- Marketing Pilgrim – I put these guys up there because they are easy to follow and write some great articles. I would say they have a great overview site, and give you one of the best all around perspectives on marketing that you can get anywhere.
There are so many more websites out there, and if you know of a great one I didn’t mention please feel free to mention it in the comment section. Hope this gets you off to a good start on your SEO and online marketing education!
