Employers in all fields today look for candidates who know a bit more than the usual Windows, Internet and MS-Office. They would like you to know about blogging, social media, new media etc. You should be aware of the latest developments, know the difference between a Kindle and an iPad. Its an era of information overload, where each and every employee needs to be tech savvy to survive, or perish to the line of the unemployed.

Learning web skills is an essential component, especially if you work in a media related industry. The knowledge of creating facebook fan pages, internet marketing, web design, search engine optimization etc would certainly hep in getting the word out about the product or service a company or individual has to offer.

Top 5 websites I recommend for learning web development and internet marketing:

1. Digital Point Forums: One of the biggest webmaster forums in the world. Has thousands of peope online at most hours..since people all over the world are members. I learn’t most of my web skills in the different boards on this forum..starting from adsense to blogging to installing scripts to template design. The forum also boasts of a thrivi9ng marketplace where you can buy and sel products and services.

2. SitePoint Forums: Probably the second most popular forum after Digital Point, but said to be much more professional. Their ebooks and paperback books on web development, design and programming are said to be one of the best resources for specialized web training.

3. Mashable.com: Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 30 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new Web sites and services, and offering social media resources and guides.

4. Warrior Forums: A great forum where experienced internet marketers share knowledge on socia media marketing, ways generating online revenue and has one of the most active marketplaces where unque and original internet marketing products are sold.

5. SEO Chat Forums: Learn and discuss Search Engine Optimization, the basis of getting ranked high for certain keywords on Google and other search engines.

There are many more resoources availabe online and offline, once you learn the basics from the above, you might get sufficiently interested to start with the advanced stuff. The aforementioned sites will certainly hep with that as well. Many members at Digital Point, Sitepoint and Warrior forums are old and experienced members and discussing things with them can always help you get a headstart on the ways and means. Its easier than learning from books, as its easy to get bored when reading up technical stuff. Learning by discussions in forum boards on the other hand, although slower, is a much more interesting way at getting to your goal.

1. Dont Spam

1. Keep in mind as you find college and university blogs, that you really ought to post highly relevant comments. Go out of your way to provide value when you post comments, or your comments will get killed.

2.: Do not post the same exact comments on every single blog. You want to avoid “blog spam” as you generate your links. If you’re not adding value and your comments are not unique enough, you run the risk of getting banned by Google.

3. Some people might feel that these tactics are “black hat” or “gray hat” search engine optimization
(SEO) but our position is that if you are providing value, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t enjoy links from .edu sites.

2. Find the right blogs

It isn’t enough to know about college and university blogs. You need a weapon to find the right blogs under the right circumstances.

The weapon of choice is definitely Google.

Here are the first two secrets:

site:
inurl:

So, your search query should start like this:

site:.edu inurl:blog

This tells Google to return a list of results that includes .edu sites that have blogs. Last I counted, this
will result in about 842,000 results. Here’s a small glimpse of what you’ll get with the search above:

3. Focus on the Good Blogs

You want the “sweet” .edu blogs. Ones that don’t cause you any pain or grief. Don’t do any work until
you know you’re going to strike gold.

Right now, your search query looks like this:

site:.edu inurl:blog

This is good, but it isn’t great. You want to narrow down your search to only those blogs that allow you to comment on them. There are plenty of closed blogs, i.e., blogs that are on .edu sites but you cannot post. These are a waste of your time. So, you need to adjust your search query to look like this:

site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment"

This will drop your results down to 400-500K, depending on the day you search. I don’t know why it fluctuates, but it does. In any event, that’s still 400-500K blogs available to you.

4. Remove Useless Blogs

You still need more focus. To do that, you have to remove more garbage. You need to eliminate blogs that force you to log in. You need to ignore blogs where you cannot comment. At this point, you’ve narrowed your search using the following search parameters:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment”

The problem is that many blogs are not open to comments (i.e., they’re closed). So, you need to add another parameter. You need to add a subtraction parameter to eliminate blogs that are closed to comments:

-”comments closed”

So, as you can see, you are subtracting blogs where comments are closed by using the minus sign as well as the “comments closed” text. But, you’re not done! You also want to remove search results where the blog forces you to register and log in. Do you have time to create an account and log in just to leave a good comment on a blog? No way! So, you need to add another subtracting parameter…

-”you must be logged in”

When you do this, you filter out blogs that require you to register. This doesn’t always work, but it is very effective.

5. Find the right niche

You’ve got just the blogs you care about, but now it’s time for one last trick: finding the right blogs for
your niche.

Here’s the (almost) final result:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in”

We use this trick all the time to find outstanding .edu blogs. We then post high quality comments and we get excellent backlinks.

We also get good traffic from .edu blogs when we post high quality comments. So, if you make the investment, you will get good backlinks (i.e., Google Pagerank boost) but also direct traffic from smart, interested readers on your topic.

That leads me to the next point. You can add another word or two to your search to get exactly the right blog. For example, just add “seo” to the search string and you’ll find .edu blogs that are openly discussing the topic, where you can post your comments and get excellent backlinks. Result:

site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "seo"


Utilize Google Toolbar

If you’re looking to rapidly fill out blog comments, give Google Toolbar a try. You can rapidly update Googl Toolbar with your name, email address and web site URL. Then, you can focus on your comments on the blog.

If you’re trying to whip through a bunch of blogs then Google Toolbar can help you work magic. However… It is important to post quality comments. If you don’t you’ll get them deleted. Also, remember that there is value in the traffic from the links alone. There’s more to consider than just backlinks.

Bonus: You can quickly determine the Pagerank of the blog using Google Toolbar. This is pretty obvious but it will help you decide if your postings is worth the effort or not.

So, start cranking out outstanding comments on .edu blogs and get the backlinks you want!