Part of being an internet marketing professional is staying atop of industry trends and news. I spend at least an hour every day reading blogs, forums, whitepapers, and watching videos - all to keep up to date. For the average website owner, it would be impossible to sift through the silt to get to the real gold. I went through my GoogleReader account and pulled out a mixture of some of my favorite local internet marketing blogs and general all purpose must reads. While this isn't the definitive list of internet marketing resources, you can't go wrong following these RSS feeds!
An internet marketing staple, SEOMoz offers a suite of tools alongside a very compelling community and staff written blog. From experiments to how-to guides, they have it all.
6s Marketing is a fellow Yaletown based internet marketing agency. They're constantly providing new information, from traditional SEO tactics to social media trends. I'm a big fan of their whitepapers. They've also been promoting New York-based Foursquare as a local advertising option, bringing a potential solution to a very thorny problem in the online world: how to move bodies in the "meat space."
VKI Studios has established itself as an absolute authority when it comes to analytics and conversion optimization. As one of the first companies invited into the authorized analytics consultant program from Google, they've had a front seat position from a widely used platform. Their educational seminars on conversion optimization are amazing - from offer positioning to landing page optimization, these guys are experts.
Love him or hate him, Matt Cutts is Google's Czar on all things search. From dispelling myths about the practice of search engine optimization, to calling out areas of the internet he dislikes, Mr. Cutts is never afraid of being controversial. His influence has resulted in groups of dedicated fans going to internet marketing conferences calling themselves "Cuttlets." How can you not read?
The team at Elastic Path really gets ecommerce, and it shows in their award winning Get Elastic blog.
A dumping ground of marketing related news, the Marketing Pilgrim often has great industry news that an internet marketer (or website owner) should be aware of.
Although I dislike their ranking tool (it's too easily gamed, and can lead to complacency from a webmaster when there are underlying issues preventing ranking that no script can interpret), their blog is top notch reading through and through.
Local social media and sales consultant Shane Gibson is a fixture at meetups and events around town. An expert on all things sales, Shane can easily relate the process of social media outreach to cold calling, and he has a knack for being topics back down to the bottom line.
Another huge presence here in Vancouver, John Chow has made a living telling people how much money he makes online. Affiliate marketers take note - the man is an authority..
An email solution provider, Mailchimp is my favorite mailing platform of choice. Their blog is excellent, spanning topics in email marketing far outside the scope of their product.
While by no stretch of the imagination was this an exhaustive list (I have another 150 or so IM related feeds that I check regularly), I'd love to hear from you what your "Must Reads" are. Please let me know!
Written by jpjanze 
Written by Lyal Avery 