Email newsletters: the old in-and-out

I wake up screaming. In fear of smothering in email news updates. I use RSS as well, but find that it's easier to prioritize, file and dump content pushed to my incoming email box.

Aside from the newspapers -- New York Times, L.A. Times -- I'm on the receiving end of something like two dozen SEO-related newsletters.

A client once asked which SEO books I'd read while learning that voodoo. Well, there were a couple of books (good and bad) but the nature of SEO is right here and right now. And so every day, the mailbox groans under the wisdom of the SEO elite.

These email provide an excellent alternative activity to writing. All writers have cherished ways of dodging that blank screen. This is my No. 1. Convinced myself that "ongoing education" in SEO must eat up at least 90 minutes a day. Good for the clients, bad for the blogs.

New law: If a new email product comes in, one must go out.

IN: SearchCap: Outstanding roundup of posts about "what happened in search today as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web." Easy format: Homegrown stories up top with heds and blurbs, then categorized headlines below. I head straight for the "Searching" and "SEO & SEM" listings, skimming over a lot of links in categories such as "Paid Search & Contextual" and "Local Maps & Local." A terrific free service from Search Engine Land, which just celebrated its first anniversary. Happy birthday to them.

OUT: Copyblogger: I've been reading this popular blog since midsummer and have tired of trying to figure out why it's popular. To be fair, I'll say several posts have been quite good, including this one about writing and fear: The Nasty Four-Letter Word That
Keeps You From Writing. I'm not in the target audience, which seems to be wannabe ad copywriters and marketers. Copyblogger's content soon came to grate on me -- lame link-bait headlines and too many watery posts by guest bloggers. The blog clearly is bigger and more useful than Write for Blogs (a leisurely side project for me), and it just might provide inspiration and illumination for you. (If so, here's hoping for a quick graduation.) Whatever. I'm putting a -30- on that clutter.