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Welcome
to a special edition of the SEO Elite newsletter – today, I'm
going to share something very important with you:
My
daily “reading list”.
As the Internet mushrooms beyond recognition, it has become harder and harder to get a “handle” on the news rushing at us from different mediums. Between managing my online ventures and spending time with family and friends, I barely get enough time to stay in touch with the SEO industry – forget participating in forums, I'm talking about not having enough time to read the latest “news” in SEO circles.
To make sure I got a grip on things (and as part of a larger time management effort), I started keeping a list of the blogs and “resources” that covered the whole industry, and put them all into an RSS reader (more about this later).
But before I share my “reading list”, here's an interesting thing I realized today about the SEO community and the internet marketing community...
The "Real" Difference Between SEO and Internet Marketing. |
When I was looking into my list for internet marketing blogs, I came with just 2 that fit the bill. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find 5 pure “blogs” on internet marketing that are regularly updated, contain useful content and are unique in nature. It's puzzling, but very understandable.
You see, internet marketers don't depend on search engine optimization to earn them money.
For marketers, as the cliché goes: the money is in the list.
For search experts, on the other hand, blogs provide a great medium to “build” a consistent stream of “free” traffic while communicating with the “list”. If an SEO expert wants to sell a product or advertise a service, they put it on their blog / website, and let their traffic take care of the rest.
Don't be caught into the trap of following just one line – leverage your list, but make sure you take advantage of SEO to build a steady stream of free “targeted” traffic to your website.
And now, on to the reading list.
If you are looking to keep in touch with the top SEO news and discussions (including search engine news, algorithm updates, forum thread reviews and debates on SEO techniques), make the following sites part of your daily reading list. Better yet, put them on your RSS reader and get all the news in a neat, organized format in one place.
RSS readers
If you're looking for an RSS reader, I'd recommend going with a web-based option – it's simple to use, and you can access your account from anywhere. Here are three web-based RSS readers (out of dozens) to get you started:
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Here's my personal list of SEO blogs on my RSS reader – they're presented in no particular order, and are not “rated”.
Search
Engine Roundtable
Started by Barry Schwartz (and supplemented by guest bloggers), this is by far the best source for getting a bird's eye view on the main SEO forums. In addition, Barry offers excellent SEO advice, and is a “white-hat” SEO – meaning that he is as concerned with the ethics of the SEO tactics he uses as he is with the website traffic that he gets.
Threadwatch
Nick Wilson's Threadwatch.org is a unique experiment in community participation – is it a forum, is it a blog? It looks like a blog (individual blog posts) but acts like a forum (anyone can register and then post on the blog). After a year in existence, the jury's still out, but one thing is clear – Threadwatch gets the news to you fast, and it covers everything from SEO to marketing to search engines to technology issues. All in all, an excellent site to start your “information” dose with.
There's just one problem though – for the most part (and especially Nick W), Threadwatch and its authors are anti-Google.
Search Engine Watch Blog
This site wins out for its professionalism and sheer quality of reporting and boasts top SEO minds such as Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Usually, Threadwatch and Search Engine Roundtable cover all the good stuff on the SEW blog, but with the SEW Forums so nearby, a trip to the SEW blog quickly becomes a habit.
SEOmoz
Home of Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz is unique in the SEO community for its balanced and calculated perspective on SEO. Rand (or randfish, as he's known in the SEO forums) is also the author of “ Search Engine Ranking Factors ”, an authoritative list of “key” SEO factors a webmaster should keep in mind.
If you want an intelligent discussion on SEO without the hype and bias, go to SEOmoz.
Stuntdubl
Another blog with an emphasis on quality writing and insight that puts it heads and shoulders above the rest. You might not find the “live” coverage that blogs like Threadwatch and SERoundtable support, but the site serves a different purpose – to educate the reader about how search engine optimization actually works – for searchers, for search engines and for webmasters.
Search Engine Employee Blogs
We all know about the search engine blogs – Google has one for its search engine, for AdWords and even for AdSense. Similarly, Yahoo has a blog or two as well.
However, these blogs toe the official party line, and while they are genuinely helpful, there's no substitute for one-on-one help that you can get from a search engine employee (such as GoogleGuy, the Google representative who posts on Webmaster World). Here are two blogs by search engine employees, and these offer valuable insights on how people on the inside think about SEO.
Top Internet Marketing Resources. |
Internet marketers, for one reason or the other, don't keep “marketing” blogs as such. Instead, they focus on products (such as ebooks, video tutorials or audio seminars) and newsletters to communicate most effectively.
So instead of blogs, here's my personal list of top internet marketing resources that you MUST have (and no, there are no hidden affiliate links in here – I'm not trying to sell you anything). These are all free, and available on the Internet.
John Carlton's Blog
John Carlton is a kick-ass copywriter with a natural talent for salesmanship. Considering how internet marketing is simply salesmanship on the Internet, John's advice works, the first time, every time.
His blog contains a truck-load of strategies, techniques, home-truths and proven marketing tactics that you can use in your online businesses. John's “business” is copywriting, and as such there's a lot you can learn from not only what he has to say, but the way he writes as well.
Perry Marshall
While Perry Marshall initially made a name for himself by becoming the “expert-everyone-turned-to” for Google AdWords, he's also a savvy marketer and a very, very smart businessman. The link above will take you to a grand list of his articles, and each and every one of them is worth reading twice.
Internet Marketing Seminars
This is, quite simply, your go-to resource for information on almost ANY internet marketing topic, be it list-building, popups or sales letters. This site contains a large collection of freely available “IM” seminars (audio) featuring almost all top marketers (you'll find everyone here, from John Carlton to Jay Abraham to John Reese to Corey Rudl to Joe Vitale).
And did I mention that this was free?
Gary Halbert
Gary 's part of the John Carlton / Jay Abraham generation – marketers who made it really big during the 80's and the 90's. The site is a collection of Gary 's newsletters, and this is, after John Carlton's monthly newsletter (which requires a hefty subscription), the best information on marketing on the Internet.
The Allen Says Blog
You might wonder why I'm including an “abandoned” blog in this list (Allen stopped posting in March 2005, and the site might not even be up when you read this). The answer is, as always, in the quality of the resource. Allen Says, of Internet Warriors fame, has a wealth of online marketing insights stashed in his blog. His short e-book (the “Private Posts”), hosted on the blog, is a collection of strategies to make money on the Internet fast.
That's it for today. I hope that this list, brief though it is, helps you build your own "reading list" / Rolodex and helps you filter the "signal" from all the "noise" .
All the best,
Brad Callen
Professional SEO
http://www.seoelite.com
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