Perhaps one of the greatest opportunities online marketing offers is the ability to accurately measure results. Once we’ve measured these results there is a tendency to organize and rank each in order of importance from top to bottom. Maybe this is why the online marketing industry produces so many “Best of Lists” each year. We heart rankings.
So in that spirit we’ve put together a list of the 50 “Best-Of” lists covering the online marketing space. Note: Rankings are divided by categories and numbers are only used to prove we got to 50.
Online Marketing
1. The marketing nerds over at, well at Marketing Nerds, rank the 50 Best Mobile Marketing Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet. My personal favorite: Flash Widgets blog. Nice stuff geeks!
2. I’ve got 99 problems but finding a blog ain’t one. At least not when I’m viewing Wikio’s list of the 99 Top Online Marketing Blogs. Sorry Jay-Z.
3. Gyutae Park’s Winning the Web website uses Alexa, PageRank, Technorati and Feedburner among other metrics to measure Internet Marketing Top Blogs. Total number: 370.
4 . The ad industry’s publication of record, AdvertisingAge, has compiled its Power 150 – A daily ranking of marketing blogs.
5. Kaiser The Sage’s (AKA marketing consultant Jason Acidre) Top 90 Online Marketing Blogs. He’s obviously been busy.
6. Nicholas Einstein has put together a genius (I know, lame) guide to practical online marketing blogs. It is called Top 10 Practical Online Marketing Blogs.
7. Yvette Pistorio, senior supervisor of Media Research and Beth Blanchard, supervisor of Media Research at Cision teamed to unleash a list of the Top 100 Social Media and Internet Marketing Blogs on you.
8. The little guys need some love too. That’s why DIYSEO has given us the Best SMB Marketing Blogs: The Definitive List of Small Business Marketing Blogs. Check out.
9. The team at Blogstorm say a good deal of blog ranking tables created recently use the hugely inaccurate and outdated Google PageRank as a method of measuring success. There solution? A table that uses Alexa Rank and Technorati Rank to calculate the popularity of each site. The result is Top 100 SEO & Internet Marketing Blogs.
10. HubSpot created the Hot 100 Marketing Blogs list in order to make it easy for people to discover the top internet marketing blogs. “We’re continually collecting 3rd party data for several thousand blogs that cover Internet marketing topics.”
11. The Top 20 Digital Marketing Blogs from Sparxoo. The first five below:
- Seth Godin – Of course we had to add one of the most famous marketing gurus of all time.
- Hard Knox Life – Dave Knox brings fresh perspective to digital marketing trends and overall marketing strategy.
- Guy Kawasaki – Guy Kawasaki shares his incredible insights from years of experience at Apple and other leading companies.
- Chris Brogan – Chris Brogan, a social marketing guru, posts the latest insights for marketers.
- AdRants – Steve Hall takes no prisoners in his reviews of the latest ad campaigns.
- Ads of the World – Want inspiration? Check out creative minds from around the world.
12. The 100 Best Marketing Blogs from Cool Marketing Stuff. Direct and to the point, the list from Cool Marketing Stuff is as comprehensive as it is complete.
13. The Big List of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Blog from Top Rank has it all from blogs that cover a range of Internet marketing topics ranging from SEO and PPC to blog marketing, marketing with social media, content marketing and online public relations. The collection of over 400 SEO and Online Marketing related blogs is assembled by the staff at TopRank Online Marketing.
14. The marketing nerds over at, well at Marketing Nerds rank the 50 Best Mobile Marketing Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet. My personal favorite: Flash Widegdets blog. Nice stuff geeks!
Everybody loves rankings. So here is our 50 best of “Best-Of” articles covering the online marketing space.
Search Engine Optimization
15. An interesting twist in the best of genre, Daily Blog Tips The Top 25 SEO Blogs list ranks the blogs according to their Google PageRank, Alexi rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. How’s that for factoring analytics.
16. Usually “can’t misses” are reserved for baseball prospects and political candidates, but when 43blogtips put together 18 SEO Posts That You Must Read they obviously had done some serious scouting. Informative and entertaining these articles are among the best on the Web. Nice job guys.
17. This SEO Linking building guide to the best SEO linking building articles (wait, didn’t i just say that?) has it all. Case studies, organic link building tips directly from Google themselves and a great piece by Search Engine Watch about backward link building. My favorite: The 30-minute-a-day link Building Plan from iMedia Connection. Now if only someone could come up with the 29-minute-a-day link Building Plan.
18. It wouldn’t be a 50 Best of List without a Top 10 offering. So here goes: The team at top-10lists.com has offered their opinions on the 10 Best Learning SEO Learning Websites. I think they got it right. However, maybe Blue Fountain Media’s blog should be on this list.
19. Mashable. I’ve heard of these guys. Mollie Vandor just this month weighed in with her excellent 20+ Essential Resources for Improving Your SEO Skills. From beginner (SEO for Dummies) to advance placement degree (Matt Cutts) she’s got it all covered and that’s why Mollie finds herself among the Best of the Best.
Social Media
20. Even a newbie marketer can appreciate a good social media campaign. Nearly everyone has seen one and many of us have been party to one whether we realized it or not. Forbes.com pulls together a great pictorial of the Best-Ever! Social Media Campaigns. Spoiler alert: The Blair Witch Project comes in at #1. Pretty impressive considering it was among the first social media efforts way back in the day (1999).
21. Not to be outdone, social, marketing and media blog The Wall decided to go the distance with 40 more and release the Top 50 Social Media Campaigns. Oddly enough, The Blair Witch Project doesn’t even crack the top 50. Guess these lists are a bit subjective. Plus, with these guys being British and all they may have missed that buzz way back when. Still enjoyed their list.
22. Of course, you can’t even say social media these days without wondering what Marc Zuckerburg is doing for lunch today. Social Media Examiner apparently also has the Zuck-bug and decided to create a 10 Top Facebook Pages post. Number 1? Red Bull. Apparently they are in tune with their audience.
23. In the case of Smart Blogs,the best means the worst: as in Jesse Stanchack of SmartBlog on Social Media put together the best Worst of list this year about The Suxorz Picks the Worst Social Media Moves. Among the gems: Dell’s “Dr. Ashley” campaign, Volkswagen’s “Sluggy Patterson” character, Cisco’s “Ted from Accounting” videos and Smirnoff Ice’s handling of the “Bros Icing Bros” phenomenon.
24. Stephanie Klein of Blogs.com offered up the Top 10 Undervalued Social Media Marketing Blogs while offering up several links to each blog’s recent articles. Nice work, Stephanie.
25. Using eCairn Conversation(tm), software technology company eCairn generated the Top 150 Blog Posts. The top five? Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, Seth’s Blog and Social Media Explorer. There must be something to the eCairn Conversation chart. I think these guys are on to something.
26. Alright, so maybe Social Media Explorer’s 19 Best Social Media Practices is a little outside our purview here but I liked it so its here.
27. And a bonus from those same guys at unlucky number 13. The Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2011 (and it’s not even over yet!).
Going Viral
28. According to the crew at ProspectMX, a viral campaign is a marketing blitz that essentially creates a pitch which is cool and interesting enough that consumers will spread it on its own. Well said. And with that in mind their 15 Best Viral Marketing Campaigns put together an interesting list mixing the old (there’s that Blair Witch again) and new (Old Spice guy).
29. Fall is officially here and the team at Social Times decided to celebrate fall’s arrival with 30 of The Best Viral Videos of Summer 2011. All 30 on this list have resulted in over 1 million views and have resulted in tons of conversions, accoridng to Social Times. Check them out.
30. Visible Measures along with AdvertisingAge provide weekly The Top 10 Viral Video Ads Chart for the Web’s top-performing brand-driven ad campaigns. This week its iPhone 4 s and Lady GaGa among others. Shocker.
Email Marketing
31. And Tamara Gielen at Blogs.com was nice enough to drop her Top 10 Email Marketing Blogs post on us earlier this year. Living is learning.
Pay-Per-Click Blogs
32. Pay-per-click success takes a good deal of focus. Tom Demers at BoostCTR keeps his eye on the ball with his list: The Best PPC Blog – The Definitive List of Pay-Per Click Blogs. Among my favorites: The Certified Knowledge Blog (Formerly bgTheory), Bryan Eisenberg and PPC Blog & PPC Training Community.
33. Want to succeed in a big way? Of course you do and Kronik Media was kind enough to provide a list of Top 15 Blogs You Should Follow to Succeed on The Internet. Read it here and succeed there (wherever there may be for you).
Conversions
34. It’s all about the conversions these days and Kristi Hines at Kikolani put together the most comprehensive 50+ Awesome Posts on Conversions for Unboucne. According to Kristi, there’s something for everyone, from blogging to social media, landing pages to squeeze pages, increasing conversions vs. conversion killers, design, and more!
Web Design
35. The team at InstantShift believes one of the best ways to survey the evolution of Web design over a number of years is to compare different versions of websites. So they decided on taking a look at 15+ Inspirational Examples of Website Redesign. The results: an interesting comparison of redesigned websites to their earlier incarnations.
36. 9 Best Modern Web Design Tutorials and Articles from Skyje.com identifies the distinctive features that make a modern Web design interesting look fresh, appealing and easy to use.
37. Once again Daily Blog Tips served up a top 25 list based based the analysis on Google’s Pagerank, Alexa rank, Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. This time its Top 25 Web Design Blogs.
38. What’s better than a Top 25 Web Design Blogs? How about a Top 30 Web Design Blogs? Well the creative online journal for design Web enthusiasts, Web Design Dev, has given us just that. And the extra five go a long way.
39. 50 Best Web Design Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet from WWWdesigns Blog. What are you waiting for?
40. We’ve covered the Best, the Top and even the Worst and now we are finally have a Must: 29 Web Design Blogs You Must Follow from [Re]Encoded. Here is a list of the 29 best Web design blogs to subscribe to. The web design industry is always changing, so as a web designer, it is important to always be ahead of the curve.
41. WordPress is a great CMS and the guys at Web Design Fan have provided us with the 20 Best WordPress Tutorial Blogs. Enjoy!
Guerrilla Marketing
42. A firm with the name Creative Guerilla Marketing should know a thing or two about Guerilla Marketing. And they do. Check out The 15 Best Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Example Videos.
43. Ryan Lum, founder and editor of Creative Guerrilla Marketing, delivers again with 10 of the Best Guerrilla Marketing Blogs the Web has to offer.
44. Designer Daily’s 20 Creative Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns from Designer Daily proves that it is still possible for creative agencies to make ads that stand out. These 20 certainly do.
Content Marketing blogs
45. The Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs list highlights the best bloggers on the Web discussing content marketing. Each blog on the list has been rated by the staff in terms of content strength, depth, regularity and, to a very small extent, popularity.
Affiliate marketing
46. Hey Geno Prussakov: Nice work. Want to know something about affiliate marketing? Check out Geno’s Afilliate Marketing Blog’s Top 25 Affiliate Marketing Blog Posts.
47. From Affiliate Top 50: The Top 50 Affiliate Marketing And Make Money Online Blogs In The World. More money, more money, more money.
The Best Songs
48. One of my personal favorites 7 Awesome SEO and Social Media Songs. Sorry, had to do it.
49. Hey, these guys had a song on my Top SEO song list. Now they’ve landed on my Best of the Best list. This British SEO throws down and TOP 5 SEO songs. And unlike me, they don’t put themselves on their own list.
Landing pages
50. Marketers are becoming more and more interested in measuring the ROI of social media. According to eMarketer, four out of five US businesses with at least 100 employees will be using social media for their marketing efforts this year. This makes measuring the effects of these marketing efforts even more important. That is why HubSpot Blogs created 20 Examples of Great Facebook Fan Pages.
Bonus Best: If beauty is truely in the eye of the beholder this list is arbitrary. But we are talking design here people and KISSmetrics’ 5 Beautiful Landing Pages That Prove Great Design Still Sells demonstrates can indeed be judged.