I want to learn about marketing on the web — the right way.
May 29, 2010 12:31 PM

I am interested in learning more about legitimate old-school marketing applied to the web, including how it relates to SEO, web analytics, usability testing, email campaigns, social media, etc. I'm looking for books and other resources to help me learn the basics of both technology and philosophy.

I hesitate to even use the term "Internet marketing" because of how sullied it is by affiliate marketing, pyramid schemes, and keyword stuffers. This question from last week — specifically the comments by jeb, acoutu, and fremen — begins to touch on what I'm talking about. I don't want any of that junk.

I'm much more interested in learning how the fundamental principles of marketing that go WAY back apply to the web today. I'm interested in learning how to set up and read into analytics data, what legitimate techniques in SEO work, how to test your sites and optimize them for your readers/customers, etc, etc. I want to know how customers interact with content and with products. I want to know what it means to write well for the web.

What books, websites, and other resources should I be looking at? There is the obvious Godin, but I'm also interested in learning technologies as well as marketing philosophy. And again, I don't want any black-hat or even questionably legitimate stuff. I'm not doing this to make money, just to teach myself how to drive traffic and satisfy customers in 100% honest ways. (And yes, I know: "build good content first.")

Any advice you can throw my way would be appreciated.
posted by joshrholloway to Computers & Internet (2 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
Search Engine Land , Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics, including the blogs and forums for the Google sites, are good sources for information on SEO and analytics.
posted by asphericalcow at 12:27 AM on May 30, 2010


Check out avinash kaushik's blog for a great overview on analytics. Reading through the archives will keep you busy for weeks. Check out his book too for a broader overview of digital analytics in general
posted by jourman2 at 5:14 PM on May 30, 2010


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