This year content marketing became mainstream. As a result, there were quite a few impressive and/or useful pieces of content created to help you become a better marketer.
So without further ado, let me share the 7 pieces of content that caught my eye this year.
7 can’t miss pieces of content
The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing
Shameless self-promotion, here. I wrote this with Neil Patel, and it may possibly be the most complete guide (free or paid) anywhere online. We take you through the process of developing your strategy, give you ideas and templates for creating content, and even some tips for promoting it.
If you haven’t read it yet, check it out. I think you’ll like it.
How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint
Cyrus Shepard
Even if you’re a skilled SEO, this one is useful. I especially like it because it takes into account the massive changes that have taken place in search in the last few years.
This blueprint is a basic framework that you can use as a foundation for all your campaigns. It doesn’t detail every step, but gives you an outline of the tasks necessary to rank a web page. If SEO is on your list of things to improve, don’t miss this one.
List of Guest Blogging Sites
Peter Sandeen
One of the best ways to build credibility and name recognition is to guest blog on sites that have lots of traffic from your target audience. Finding those sites is the challenge. This list can save you hours of research.
How to Build and Operate a Content Marketing Machine
Marketo
I love this piece because it brings the entire process of content marketing into an easy-to-see process. They give you the 7 components of a content marketing machine, then dive into each one individually. If you’re still puzzling over the big picture of content marketing, this will help.
7 Universal Conversion Optimization Principles
Michael Aagaard
Written by a recognized conversion expert, this ebook is based on 350 A/B tests and 4 years of research. You’re not getting opinions, but proven principles.
Learn how changing one word in the call to action increased conversions on a B2B site by 14.79%, how a concrete headline generated a 38.46% lift over a creative variant, and more.
NOTE: This site is no longer live as of January 3, 2017, so I’ve unlinked the article. Sad, but the world moves on.
8 Guidelines and 1 Rule for Responsive Images
Jason Grigsby
If you haven’t already made your website responsive, that’s priority one for 2014. This article tells you how to think about and handle images on your responsive site.
10 Ways to Speed Up Your Website – and Improve Conversion by 7%
Another issue you need to address in 2014 is the speed of your site. People are becoming less and less patient with slow sites—and speeding it up can even affect your profit margin. (Amazon reported increased revenue of 1% for every 100 milliseconds improvement to their site speed.)
This article, which I wrote for Crazy Egg, goes in-depth with 10 of the top things you can do to ramp up your website’s page load time.
What caught your eye?
These are the pieces of content that impressed me this year. They answered my questions, became research for an article, or helped me solidify a strategy for my own business.
Now it’s your turn. What were your favorite pieces of content this year? Let me know in the comments.
