Zemalf's Posterous

Sharing Stuff That Matters. Or Not.

If you believe in love, you need to see this

I found this video as I was checking the song contest winners of the Blizzcon 2010 today...

The winning song was The Queen of the Blades by a guy/girl/band I hadn't heard before... Sure enough, I check their YouTube channel and find The Armada...

And I gotta say, this is one of the most awesome videos on YouTube this year. It's creative, it's original. The song is good. And hey, it's a love story and it's an adventure...

If you believe in love, and enjoy creative videos, watch this one and tell your friends about it too (I think it deserves way more attention than the 85k views it has now):

Here's the link The Armada by Galt Aureus. (if you can't see the embedded video below)

It'll make you feel good :)

p.s. if you enjoy their music, check out their website at www.galtmusic.com


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Revealed: Why Your Email Newsletters Are Left Unread (and 3 Ways to Ensure That Never Happens Again)

Email marketing still works. It never stopped working. In fact, it works better than ever:

When it comes to customer relationships, newsletters must be seen as a long-term investment: they work their magic over time.

BUT email has changed, and every email newsletter owner and marketeer with a mailing list should pay attention to the Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for November 2010...

Or what do you think about study showing that the: number of new or unread messages is now 300% higher than it was just 4 years ago.

To get your emails read, here's what you can learn from Nielsen's findings (E-Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability):


  1. The most important thing (still) is to use clear "from" and "subject" lines to ensure your messages attract attention; in fact, busier inboxes simply make these guidelines even more important.

  2. Focus on high-value content at the start of a message, since users are less likely now to look beyond it.

  3. Pay attention to message previews, since users do that more and more. (mobile usage!!)

    4. And don't leave it at those three tips...

    I clipped some interesting notes below too, but the whole article is a must read for every email marketeer. Read it here: E-Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability


     

Amplify’d from www.useit.com
Summary:
New research finds improved usability metrics for subscribing to newsletters, but problems with reading them on mobile devices.

It's clear that users are falling further behind in keeping up with their email. This doesn't change the old guidelines regarding the importance of using clear "from" and "subject" lines to ensure your messages attract attention; in fact, busier inboxes simply make these guidelines even more important. In the past, a newsletter might have gotten away with a generic or spammy subject line. Today, that same design will doom it.

In addition to subject lines, users now pay more attention to message previews. This change is partly driven by the increasing email volume (users can decide whether to dispose of or keep messages without opening them all) and partly driven by more mobile access (users can't see much on a small screen).

It's always been a guideline to start a newsletter with the most important stuff, but the increased use of previews makes it even more important to focus on high-value content at the start of a message, since users are less likely now to look beyond it. (It almost goes without saying that "high-value" is judged based on what's valuable to the recipients – not on what you feel like promoting today.)

Read more at www.useit.com

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How to Build Links with a Link Wheel

Inbound links are the most important search engine ranking factor. Great content can pull links naturally, but it's a common way to do SEO and link building by building forced links using article marketing and various web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hub Pages.

Many people do this by linking all those articles and web2.0 pages directly to the "money site", but it's more effective to build a link wheel instead, where each article or web2.0 page links to another web2.0 page in addition to the money site and all links are one-way, thus creating a wheel.

Link Wheel? Link Trio?

Instead of just including a link back to my website, I can also add a link to another article I’ve written.

In his post, Glen of Viperchill calls the link wheel a link trio, but it's the same thing.

Whatever name you use, the fact is that this thing works...

How to build a link wheel

The individual services you use doesn't matter, but do start building the wheel from a site that allows to easily edit the links, e.g. Squidoo or HubPages. (This example uses the same "relationship blog" and "online dating" example as Glen's Link Trio post.)

  1. (you have your blog / site / page you want to link to, e.g. "relationship blog")
  2. (you have your other blog / site / page, e.g. "online dating")
  3. start with a service where you can add/edit links (to close the wheel in the end), and continue counter-clockwise and build the wheel
  4. create a Squidoo lens related to online dating and link it to the online dating blog
  5. create article to GoArticles related to online dating, and link to the online dating blog and the Squidoo lens you just created
  6. create article to EzineArticle related to relationships, and link to the relationship blog and the Go Articles you just created
  7. create Hub Page related to relationships, and link to the EzineArticle article and the relationship blog
  8. edit the Squidoo link and add link to the Hub Page

You'll need to wait in between, if you use article directories like EzineArticles, which take a while to approve each article.

You could grow the wheel by adding more properties instead of closing the wheel at step 8, and you can even leave the wheel open, or "break the wheel" intentionally, but the above is the basic link wheel.

The key is to use different sites on the wheel, e.g. not have two Squidoo lenses or two EzineArticles.

Here's what it looks like in the end:

Link-wheel

Continue growing the wheel by building links to the articles and web2.0 pages. Pat Flynn explains one way to do this in his backlinking strategy.

Take another blog / site / page optimized to another phrase, rinse and repeat.

If you liked this SEO / link building tip, check my blog at http://zemalf.com for more and send me an email using the contact form there, if you have any questions.

 
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