“The Valley skill set that should be in highest demand and greatest scarcity is neither engineering nor design, but rather internet marketing.” – Dave McClure

San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur and founder of the incubator 500 Startups, Dave McClure’s statement makes a lot of sense, right? Internet marketing has only been around for a little over 15 years while design and engineering have been around for far longer. Given the relative infancy of Internet marketing, there still isn’t solid training and education available. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of information out there — you just need to be able to find the right resources by filtering through a lot of noise.

Where To Start

The hardest part about doing things is starting. Internet marketing is no exception. The trouble in this space is that there are a lot of people writing content for the sake of gaining search engine rankings or for quick affiliate marketing wins.

The big takeaway with learning Internet marketing today is being able to discern signal from noise – getting the right information from the right people and taking action on it. I’m going to cover the areas that I think are most important in Internet marketing below.

Must Read Blogs

• SEO

  Organic search (SEO) is still the top growth channel in most cases today. It takes the most time and effort, but if you can execute well it brings the most long-term value. One blog for SEO: Moz Blog – on top of having “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO,” the Moz blog has a lot of advanced SEO tips plus a helpful video series every Friday called Whiteboard Friday. Read more articles on SEO.

• PPC

  Pay-per-click (PPC) has evolved quite a bit from just text link ads in search results. Now there’s access to social ads, retargeting, video ads and much more. It might seem overwhelming, but if you have the basics down for AdWords, you should be able to transition into other forms of pay per click. One blog for PPC: PPC Hero – PPC Hero has great how-to posts that provide lots of utility to the reader — their popular posts are a good place to start. They also have a series of guides and whitepapers. Read more on PPC.

• Analytics

  If you’re not looking at the numbers, you’re not going to get anywhere. Average order value? Bounce rate? Engagement? Traffic? Conversion Rates? All inside your analytics. If you’re at a tech startup, you’ll probably be paying attention to lifetime value, churn and more. One blog for analytics: Occam’s Razor – Avinash Kaushik is the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google and really knows analytics. Most of his blog is Google Analytics related, but it’s great for anyone that is just starting out. Read more on Analytics.

• Email

  Email is still one of the best acquisition channels today. Just think about it — it’s essentially the world’s biggest social network. One blog for email: E-mail Institute – Includes a plethora of email marketing best practice tips. Read more articles on Email Marketing.

• Copywriting

  Writing great headlines is one of the easiest ways to generate more click-throughs and eventually more conversions. One blog for copywriting: Copyblogger – Great for improving your copywriting skills. Take a look at the headlines for their posts and try to mold them into your own. They say that the headline is worth $.80 of the $1 you spend on your content because if people don’t click on it, your content is almost worthless.

• Social Media

  At the end of the day, social media is all about connecting with people that care about what you do. There’s new platforms coming out every year and it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. One blog for Social Media: Social Media Examiner – Provides valuable, actionable social media posts to emulate. Read more articles on Social Media.

• Content Marketing

  Content marketing is a new buzzword but the practice has been around for ages. The short explanation is that content that brings utility to your readers helps build brand awareness, likability, trust and more. Like SEO, content marketing takes a lot of time, money and effort to see results but it compounds over time. One blog for content marketing: Content Marketing Institute – Up-to-date tips and tricks on doing content marketing effectively. Read more articles on Content Marketing.

• Startup Marketing

  Startup marketing is a different beast from typical marketing. It’s very metrics driven and requires a lot of testing through different channels. It’s also a different mindset because there’s a finite amount of time to hit numbers. Most startups need full-stack marketers (re: growth hackers) to help with growth but there unfortunately aren’t many around today. You’ll also learn about customer development, product market fit and driving growth with little to no budget. One blog for startup marketing: Startup Marketing – Sean Ellis’ blog covers a lot of these different topics well. Read more articles on Marketing.

• Affiliate Marketing

  Affiliate marketers are sometimes seen as shady, untrustworthy marketers, but I have found that untrue. They’re actually some of the most creative marketers because they tend to just make things happen by doing anything it takes to get the job done. If you’re trying to grow a startup and you start an affiliate program, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of managing an affiliate program. One blog for affiliate marketing: Affiliate Marketing Navigator – Geno Prussakov’s blog on affiliate marketing.

• Video

  Let’s look at some YouTube stats since it is the world’s second-largest search engine: 600 million views come from mobile devices every day; 500 years of YouTube video are viewed on Facebook every day. 700 YouTube videos are shared each minute on Twitter; and Over 800 million unique visits to YouTube each month. Video will continue to grow as people shift more of their attention online. It’s a good idea to get in now while it’s still the Wild West. One blog for video: ReelSEO – For video advertising and YouTube tricks.