Time has flown by! I left Champaign-Urbana (Illinois, United States) and arrived into Beijing on June 1st, not knowing anyone, and without having even secured an internship. After about a week of interviewing and waiting, I entered into the Search Engine Marketing industry for the first time as a Search Marketing Analyst with adSage. I’m really so thankful for adSage to have accepted me as an intern, because really, I had no experience in (let alone idea about) the search marketing industry- but since finding this industry, I’ve definitely grown a passion and interest in digital marketing, and is the industry that I hope to build my career in.
I’ll be traveling to Hong Kong next week, and when I return, I’ll be taking a full-time position with the in-house online marketing team at Morodo Group, a UK-based startup in telecommunications services, here in Beijing. It’ll be an exciting journey, especially since there’s so much activity within the mobile internet and telecommunications industry right now.
Anyhow, that was a long tangent; I wanted to list out some sources that helped me to get up to speed on the digital marketing industry. Pretty much everything that I learned was self-taught and I didn’t really have a mentor or supervisor to direct me along my way- which was pretty awesome as well, since I was able to learn about whatever I wanted, and is also how I ended up being bumped over to the MeshTop branch of SagesGroup during my internship, to serve as their Social Media advisor.
SEM/SEO Books & Courses:
Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: I was handed this book to read on the first day I arrived at adSage, and I managed to finish it in about two weeks. This got me up to speed with how search engines work, and gives a good explanation of both SEM and SEO practices. One thing that I was really pleased about when I read this book, was that it even talks about user search behavior and intent- something that I think a lot of people can overlook when thinking SEO. Instead of just thinking about the ‘nitty gritty’ technical side, it’s important to think about what the search user wants, and how they think.
The Art of SEO: I actually haven’t read this book, but it seems to be getting pretty good recommendations, and I’ll hopefully be able to pick this book up soon.
Hobo Guide to Google SEO: Not as in depth as Search Engine Marketing, Inc., but I also did read through this free (yes, free!) e-book.
Google Analytics Conversion University: After reading the books I found out that Google has their own training lectures for AdWords, and Analytics; I’d recommend going through these as they’re pretty helpful in getting you up to speed on the general idea of how to use these tools.
Google AdWords Learning Center: Google’s own training lectures on using their AdWords product.
W3Schools: I decided to learn some HTML/XHTML, and CSS- I’m by no means proficient, and won’t be able to build my own webpage from scratch, but I have to start from somewhere, and W3Schools is an awesome resource.
Blogs:
A large part of my reading (as if reading through the whole Search Engine Marketing, Inc. book isn’t enough reading- but face it, this industry is pretty much a 24/7 industry that’s always evolving and progressing) is actually done on Google Reader- I have about 60 blogs (I know, it’s a bit over-the-top, and I’ll need to filter out some blogs soon- but when I first got into the industry I just subscribed to as many ‘useful’ blogs as I could to get caught up as quick as possible to get a broad spectrum on the industry) subscribed on Google Reader, and I’ll daily filter out the articles that I deem ‘useful reading’ with the ‘star/favorite’ feature in Google Reader, and then slowly peruse through the articles during a lunch break, or after work (as I said, it’s a 24/7 job, haha).
I’ll just mention five six blogs that I would recommend following, in particular order of preference:
Online Communities:
I’m actually not subscribed to any online (paid) communities, but I’d love to join one- in due time. In due time. Anyhow, for those of you who are stuck in considering the age-old question of whether to join SEOmoz, SEOBook… well, try SEO Dojo! (haha). If you’re not a follower of TopRankBlog, then you probably didn’t know that SEO Dojo was chosen as the best paid subscription SEM community. It’s got me sold (almost… hehe- once I start getting my full-time salary. Salary is pretty low here in China, especially with the conversion rate and all).
Well that about gives a good summary of the material that I read through to get pretty much up to speed with this industry. I hope that some of these resources help you understand a bit more about the digital and online marketing industry as well!
-Duncan
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