29 Brilliant Posts You Have to Read Before I Call You an Internet Marketer

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks are full of people that call themselves “internet marketers“, “social media experts“, “ninja SEOs” or even “gurus“. But what’s their real level of knowledge so far…?

For about a year I was bookmarking every brilliant post I spotted online. This resulted in a small collection of 241 bookmarks which are publicly available here. However following the Pareto principle 80% of value lies in about 20% of all the posts that I’ve bookmarked. That is how I decided to go through all of them and pick only the most important ones, which resulted in this list of Brilliant Posts:

Post #1.

---

I knew I needed something really stunning to open this list. However there was no hesitation when picking this post to be an “opener“. If I only could suggest you one single post to learn Internet Marketing – that would be it!

One of its kind, a huge post by Oli Gardner with a 15,000,000 pixel infographic had an overwhelming success at SEOmoz. One little hint from me – this post is not only interesting because of it’s content and supporting graphics, but if you’re attentive and smart enough you can actually see how Oli uses this work to promote Unbounce – the company he’s working at. This whole thing is just BRILLIANT!

Post #2.

---

Now, while you’re burning your mouse wheel by scrolling till the end of the “Noob Guide” by Oli, I will shoot you with another awesome post which he published at SEOmoz. This time Oli was teaching us on how to improve a landing page for better performance.

Yeah, this post also has an infographic… actually even two! Every time I start working on a new landing page for some project I tend to open this post and check if I’m going the right way. I’m sure this post will end up in your bookmarks too!

Post #3.

---

Ok, let’s step aside from SEOmoz posts, I’m sure there’ll be many of them ahead. Let’s talk about CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) now, where these guys tend to be the best. Don’t believe me? Check the list of their clients in the header of the website.

108 tips! This is really A LOT! If this post won’t help you make some extra money with your landing pages then I’m afraid nothing will.

Post #4.

---

Every blogger knows that “the money is in the list”. And if you have a blog without a single email optin form how even dare you to call yourself a blogger?

Ok. I’m just kidding. You can call yourself a blogger, even if you don’t have opt-in forms. But why are you missing this huge opportunity?

Go read this post.

That’s the best collection of lead generation tactics and techniques that I ever stumbled upon! I guarantee that after reading it you’ll be able to grow your email list with ease!

Post #5.

---

Ever heard of SmashingMagazine? This is world’s most influential web design blog! They rarely post about internet marketing, as they have a somewhat different niche, but when they do – you can clearly see that there’s a different approach…

This time they took the 7 Deadly Sins: Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Lust, Greed and Wrath, and explained how can one use them to acquire customers. Definitely a must!

Post #6.

---

Speaking about CRO and landing pages, have you ever heard of those “long sales pages“? I’m sure some of you may have heard rumors that those convert like crazy. I didn’t ever try one myself (yet), but the post above seems to be the best piece of information you can possibly find online.

It was written by Jeremy Reeves who is a pro copywriter, and what I like about his post is that he is presenting some real life examples of those “long sales pages” alongside with the tips he suggests.

Post #7.

---

If you don’t know Neil Patel yet, you better fix that now! This guy is the owner of two successful internet companies: Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics and he’s only 26! I mean when this guy is giving you a free advice – you better sit down and listen.

In a post I’m sharing with you Neil is giving away his own strategy of growing RSS subscribers by 243%!! I was so impressed with his results that I’m about to use his findings here on BloggerJET and I really hope this will help me get those 100k in 6 months.

Post #8.

---

Now moving from CRO to SEO… This post, published by Scott Mclay back in the days, was not really big in size, unlike the majority of posts that are being promoted from YouMoz to the main SEOmoz blog. However looking at the amount of “thumbs up” it got from the community of professional internet marketers you can tell that this “101 Guide to Linkbuilding” was “approved by professionals“. This is just about enough reason to include it in my list :)

Post #9.

---

Speaking about linkbuilding, there’s that fundamental post by Rand Fishkin that can literally turn a SEO noob into advanced SEO in just about half an hour.

Read this post (twice) before you put any effort into your linkbuilding campaign and I give you my word that you’ll succeed! Rand got 202 “thumbs up” for this post from SEOmoz community. I don’t know if it’s a record, but I rarely see numbers that big.

Post #10.

---

Ever dreamed of “natural linkbuilding on autopilot“? Well, nurture your own community to build links for you! That’s what Geoff Kenyon from Distilled is trying to teach us in his post at SEOmoz.

By no means the tips and tricks described are easy to accomplish, as Community Building has always been a very slow and tough process. However once the goal is achieved, the ROI will surprise you!

Post #11.

---

Remember Neil Patel? Here’s another great post from his blog that made me click that “save to bookmarks” button. Again Neil is giving away something fresh by sharing his own experience rather than giving the same advice everyone else does. And besides, mediocre posts don’t get 422 tweets, do they?

Post #12.

---

UPDATE: looks like this post as well as this website is not live anymore

I think I’ve spotted this post by accident while digging deep into Google for quality content for my Email Marketing Guide. I’ve never used Publisha and never met Ian Howlett online before. But the strategy for growing a startup that he shared in this blog post did blow me away. I am already using some of the methods he suggested, and I strongly recommend you to check this post if you have your own startup or about to launch one.

Post #13.

---

Let’s get back to SEOmoz. ( I’m not an affiliate, it’s just those guys are too great! :) ) In this post Rand is sharing step-by-step the best practices of launching a new website. In general all the steps may sound familiar to you, however I’m sure there are some hidden germs that you haven’t seen before.

Post #14.

---

This awesome list of 53 tools was personally gathered by Dainis Graveris who appears to be the founder of 1WD.CO and a really nice guy at the same time :)

Dainis managed to grow his blog to become the third most popular design blog after SmashingMagazine and Hongkiat. – “Wanna grow “big & strong”? Listen to what “uncle Dainis” tells you!” :)

Post #15.

---

Launching a startup? There’s a unique community that either will help you out a lot or just bury your dreams. It’s called HackerNews and lots of smart IT people hang out there. If you manage to attract their attention (again I want to try this with BloggerJET) – they will give you lots of valuable advice and maybe even huge traffic. This post is uncovering the best practices of submitting your startup to HackerNews – don’t miss that!

Post #16.

---

I’m sure you’ve been to Copyblogger before, but this blog is so damn big that one can’t claim he read at least half of it. The post I’m sharing with you is just a list of formulas for building successful headlines. Can’t say I use these formulas too often, as most of them are already “cliche”, but at least you can get some fresh ideas of your own while going through this list.

Post #17.

---

Once you’ve managed to hook people with your headline, here goes the content. On blogs like Problogger and Copyblogger there are tons and tons of advice on how to write engaging and valuable content. However what I’ve never met, is some tips on styling your content for better readability.

I always felt that some blogs are more comfortable to read and others are not, though the quality of content was exactly the same. That’s why I was really happy, when one of the major blogging resources published this set of tips. I do like how my content looks here at BloggerJET, but I really want to test those tips. I guess I’ll do that in future, once I have more readers, as this will allow me to receive a more precise feedback.

Post #18.

---

Speaking about content, some bloggers may go even further and style their blog posts as if it was a paper magazine. There are millions of blogs out there, but only the major ones are able to invest time and money to create such content.

I’m a huge fan of art directed blog posts, and it is my strong belief that in the nearest future 80% of content on the major blogs will look like this.

Post #19.

---

Now let’s move on to some advanced SEO. Keyword research is not something new, but the approach by Ian Lurie (who is the owner of Portent) is worth every single minute of your time.

Post #20.

---

You cannot just talk about advanced SEO and not mention Rand Fishkin :) In the above post Rand mentions some SEO problems and suggests handy tools to solve them.

By the way, SEOmoz is #1 provider of top-notch SEO software, so just go and try them for Free! Again, I am not an affiliate, but I’ve been a pro member for a while and I really enjoyed the experience.

Post #21.

---

Distilled is the Shaoling of SEO, so some of their posts may seem even too advanced for you. This one is not an exception. Before this post I did not even suspect you could do such awesome stuff with Google Spreadsheets.

Post #22.

---

735… This is the number of tweets this post has. .htaccess is another fundamental part of SEO, and the tips presented will not only help you optimize your website for better performance in Google, but you’ll actually learn some security tricks to protect your website from hacks.

Post #23.

---

I’m a big fan of Dan Zarella. This is a one hour long video where he explains his concept of the “Science of Social Media“. If I had to choose whether to watch “Transformers 3” or “The Science of Social Media” – I’d definitely choose the latter (there’s no Megan Fox in both, anyway…)

Post #24.

---

When it comes to Social Media – Twitter is one of the biggest players. I’m sure many of you don’t care how your Twitter profile looks (mine looks cool, thanks to @playgrey), and this post suggests that you should.

Post #25.

---

Meet Glen Allsopp – I’ve been following his blog for quite a while and he was always able to feed me with some unique stuff. In the post above he is explaining the most common ways bloggers earn money. This guy is quite transparent and I like it!

Post #26.

---

Speaking about transparency… I think this was the first post that I’ve read at “A Smart Bear” and the ideas behind it appealed so much to me, that the blog appeared in my RSS feed and the post was bookmarked.

Post #27.

---

Not a post actually, but a really awesome Slideshare presentation, which was featured on their front page for a lo-o-ong time. As an internet marketer you may need to present your ideas/findings/strategies to different people. Check the slides above and your next presentation will be way better than all the rest.

Posts #28 & #29.

---

I know this sounds like an impudent self promotion, but I’ve spend too much time and effort on these two, not to mention them here:

• Twitter Marketing Guide: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
• The Complete Email Marketing Guide: You Won’t Believe What You Will Learn

Post #30.

---

I promised you 29 articles.

Well.. I guess I lied :)

I hope you will agree with me that this collection is quite useful for any n00b in the field of internet marketing. I also hope that you’ve enjoyed my selection and found something useful, even if you’re a professional internet marketer way more experienced than me. If so, please click some of those “social buttons”, for I will consider this as a “Thank You” for my work putting this whole thing together :)

DISCLOSURE

The trick with self referencing this post and asking you to share it was taken from this outstanding case study analyzing the success of this blog post. (the fact that I’m disclosing it does not mean I don’t need your “likes” and tweets – I more than desperately need them! Please share the post :) )