Deathmatch: Twitter vs. Email Marketing

In the graphic above, I pulled searches for "twitter tools" and "email tools" in the United States. (email tools=red, twitter tools=blue) I could have just pulled a report of twitter and email marketing, but I think this gives us a more clear picture of how people are searching. When using a technology, people tend to look for tools to help them manage that technology or make things more efficient. Obviously there are more people with an email address than a twitter account, but this gives you some insight into how much real activity is taking place in this space.

Does this mean that Twitter is going to replace Email?

Lets take a look:

• Tools and Analytics: Both technologies have tools available to measure impact, emails are more mature. (Let)
  
• Subscribe: This one is pretty easy, just follow someone on Twitter, like me @seanhecking (Advantage Twitter)
• Content: 140 characters? please! Email allows you more space for delivering your message with branded content (Deuce)
• Forward to a Friend: Twitter allows for a retweet (RT), the equivalent of forward to a friend. Email allows for traditional forward to groups (Let)
  
• Unsubscribe: Twitter also allows you to unsubscribe (unfollow) and means it! (Advantage Twitter)
• Tagging: Twitter allows for content tagging to help organize tweets. Email: "what are tags?" (Game, Set, Match?)

What are your thoughts on this match?

Rand on the future of SEO

One topic that doesn't get discussed often enough, in my opinion, is the future of SEO. While doing some research, I found an interesting video interview with Rand of SEOMoz. In the video are a couple topics I would like to highlight:

• Trends to Watch: Searches on search engines vs. searches in social network sites.
• Links: Still the trump card for gaining search engine rank for traditional SEO.
  
• Google Tags: Helping webmasters with technical issues.
  

Good Email Design Checklist

I wanted to add some additional tips for email marketers looking to optimize their email designs. Below is a helpful checklist of items for email marketing designers and developers. This list will help you avoid the junk box and spam filters for good email design.

Tables - if your email HTML contains a lot of CSS or in-line CSS, try converting as much of the design to HTML tables. Using tables exclusively will help display your design correctly and improve the total delivered emails to the in box.

Image Size - if your email is full of images and slices totaling more than 150k, try to reduce your total by using more HTML formatting. Reducing images will improve your chances of getting past spam filters. Using Photoshop, generating GIFs at 64 colors or JPEGs at 50-60 quality will help reduce your image size.

Copy Check - does your email contain phrases or misspellings that may flag it as spam? Many email marketing platforms will perform a spam check as part of their delivery service. Use these tools to your advantage.

ALT Text - does your email contain descriptive ALT text for things like headers and buttons? These are the main call-to-action on an email. Don't forget to optimize your email for a good user experience.

Measuring the Value of Link Building

During a link building campaign, a topic that almost always comes up is the value of link building. While folks in the search marketing community have a decent grasp of why to build links, SEO buyers and business associates sometimes struggle with the value links provide.

After some deep thought, I thought it would be helpful to illustrate the role links play in an SEO campaign. As you can see in the graphic below, each function of search engine optimization has it's role in gaining visibility.

Technical - Technical recommendations are the foundation of SEO, allowing your Web site to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Improving your site structure helps search engines and visitors find information they need more quickly.

Page Content - Without quality content on your site, visitors and search engines will fail to see value in what you have to offer. If they don't see quality content, they may visit but not come back very often.

Link Building - Links are the most effective way to gain traction in search engine results. Good content and technical fixes will only get you so far. Going from #8 for a given keyword to #3 can sometimes mean big gains in traffic. To reach those levels for competitive keywords, links are the driving factor when all else is equal.