The Linklifter

Hey guys!

We are pleased to announce that the new site for our publishers is finally, finally, FINALLY online.

If you are a Linklift publisher, then just log in using the usual method:

https://www.linklift.co.uk/user/login

As we said before, all opinions (both good and bad) are welcome. We want to know if we’ve made a bit of a spelling mistake or if something’s not easy to find, just as much as how much you like it!

Hands up if you like the new site!

Dear Linklifters,

Remember how we launched our new site www.linklift.co.uk around this time last year?

That was only the frontend that also brought you our crazy talented bunnies.

This time we have a new design for backstage, which we made especially for you – our awesome publishers!

Below you can see the ancient publisher site that we are still using. I think we all agree that it is time for a change.

So, with spring cleaning comes a new look which will be visible in the next few days, if not the next hour.

Stay tuned on Facebook to be the first one to see our new publisher site.

We’re not normally one’s to brag, but we feel like it’s going to be a big hit.

Let us know your thoughts on it too – absolutely all opinions welcome!

Today we have for you a beautiful graphic which discusses the ever changing world of SEO!

The site Fuzz One has created a very interesting graphic on the changes that came about during the last two years of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates being enforced.

What a well-designed beast! Whilst we think a summary of information like this is great and very useful, we particularly like how they merged the Panda and Penguins together!

What do you think? Have you changed your perception of SEO and your work/blogging habits along with the updates?

And on a more lighter note, here’s an adorable Panda (of the red kind) and a cheeky Penguin (watch from about 0.35) to sign off this quick post.

Hey lovely Linklifters,

So we encouraged you to go be social and connect to your fellow bloggers a while back, but now we want to approach the subject of being social from a different angle.

How about being socially visible?

We believe that 2013 is really the year to begin being socially visible on the Internet.  If you aren’t doing it already, you should be, because it’s good for you and your blog, anchoring it to earth and granting it with the gift of “realness” (which actually is a real word… kinda).

It also helps improve your ranking and is something that BB Google and other crawlers will start to look for.

And how you become a socially visible blog? With Google Authorship of course.

You can tell a blog has undergone the “Google Authorship Treatment” (only available in select Spa’s), by searching for it in Google.  A small picture (normally of the blog or sites author) should appear next to the title of the blog, as well as the number of Google + circles the author’s part of.

We’ve roped in a willing assistant to give you a visual example. Enter Matt Cutts, Google employee.

Beautiful ay?

Authorship assigns each site (if only you are working on it) or each post (if several people are posting on one site) with paternity and identity.

This creates credibility for the readers and once people can see there is a person (with a face and personality) behind the writing, traffic should also increase to your site and posts. A personal connection has now been made and trust has been built. Excellent.

Another great aspect to this, is that it will help fight against content being copied without citing the source, or even completely duplicated (how very dare they), as the text is officially and clearly bound to one person.

You may say, “But I’m already on Facebook and Twitter, isn’t that enough?”

The answer in fact lies in the question little one.

Google always tend to favor it’s own products in it’s search engine (including Adwords), so aside from addressing the points mentioned, you would be aligning with their expectations of a good, nay awesome blog.

Let’s demonstrate this by typing “Google Authorship” into Google and looking at the first 4 results:

Two results that refer you back to a Google site, and another two that have already configured their authorship! You shouldn’t need more convincing than that

And how do you set this all up then?

The general approach is to configure it manually through your Google+ account (which you should also get if you don’t have one already!).  Enter the email address of your site (which must use same domain as your site, eg emailaddress@yourdomain.com), and then add your name (eg. Joe Bloggs) on the pages of the site.

You can follow this link for a more detailed explanation from BB Google itself, about how to link your Google+ profile and the content you’re creating.

Do be aware though, that if you use WordPress, it may be easier to link your account by clicking on the categories “Users” > “Profile” > “Google+”. Then just click save.

Ta-da! Easy as Pie, or was that cake?

And how do I know Google received my application and has made the changes?

Google will let you know that you’re successfully the proud father / mother/author of your content when you see the signs we mentioned above (ie. picture & name.) But if you want to check before the few days that it takes to implement this change, you can do so by using one of Google’s Webmaster tools. Just enter your website URL and it allows you to see what will appear after processing your authorship request.

So what are you waiting for? Scrub up, take that picture and show everyone who’s the boss!*

*author.

Dear Linklifters,

In a few days it’s Easter – the season for eggs, chocolate and new beginnings. What better way to spend your time, than with friends and family (both young and old!) hunting down Easter eggs and gobbling up the reward?

To accompany this feast of cocoa our bunnies are giving out a 20 € bonus (about £17) to all new publishers who register with us before April 2^nd by using this URL: http://backstage.linklift.co.uk/webmaster-special and typing in the following code: 8724155039. Please note that your site has to be approved by our technical team before you can receive the 20 €.

And feel free to share this page with your blogger friends so that they can take part in this offer aswell!

Have a happy Easter, and see you soon at Linklift!

Dear Linklifters,
You guys are a clever bunch, so you’re most likely very familiar by now, with how your site benefits from social networking, and how search engines view being actively social as a sign of quality and authenticity (but in case you aren’t, you can read a bit about it in one of our previous posts: “Being Well Rounded and Connected“). Saying this, we’ve recently come to the decision to focus on having only one Facebook account for the whole company, which will include all our international postings and hopefully become a knowledge hub!

“But what’s the dealio? Which language will you post in?” I hear you cry. Fear not – we’ve got it sorted….

The Facebook FAQ is very thorough on this subject, but we thought we’d make our own little “How-to” guide anyway. So, imagine you were about to type a message or post on your Facebook wall. As soon as you click in the box to type, you’ll notice some extra buttons appear below.

Activating your account is easy!

Go to “edit page” and then “Manage Permissions” and check the “post privacy gating.”

Select the image of the Target and the “Add Targeting” drop down option will appear. This button allows you to actually choose who you want to receive or see a particular post.

Here at Linklift we’re an International bunch (speaking 5 languages fluently) so the option that interests us the most is “Language”.

At the moment we have numerous accounts across different social media sites, each written specifically in one language. But now, with this new option, we hope to be able to merge our Facebook accounts into one Grand, Official, Ultimate Linklift Page, whilst still targeting one language at a time, rather than send all posts, in every language, to everyone! This is great for all you blogs out there that do post bilingually.  Or maybe it could even be a way to put that 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th language you’ve been meaning to learn, into practice?!
Another thing that’s handy, is that if we decide to organize an event in Berlin, then with this new tool, we can also geographically target our followers in the capital!
That’s the advantage of this option: You can be very precise when selecting your audience and should therefore achieve better results and feedback than you would if you sent it out to everyone at once. Who wants to have a post in Russian or Japanese come up on their feed, when they don’t speak it? Not a lot of people, that’s for sure!

So here’s where we wave “Au Revoir” to our French Facebook Page, and link up to that new ULTIMATE Facebook site of ours, where we shall be refocusing our efforts! If you speak English, French, German, Italian or Spanish, we hope you’ll join us there sometime soon to check out our whimsical musings and blogging tips, all in your language of choice!

Own a blog?

Like earning money?

Haven’t worked with us previously?

Like the idea of not having to make huge changes to your blog?

Like cute banners, or even stylish, chic banners?

Like cake?

Ok, so the last one IS optional.  Whilst we all love a good slab of cake and a full biscuit tin here at Linklift, what we like even more is making it a piece of cake (ie. super easy ) for us to work with you, and for you to earn some extra dollars (or £ or €!) with the least amount of effort!

And that is why we put our heads together and created the Linklift Affilate Program.

We are constantly on the lookout for great blogs (other than your own!), and you can help us find them by simply placing one of our Affiliate banners somewhere on your blog, such as in the sidebar or in your blogroll.

The banners come in a variety of sweet-ass styles (including some without bunnies, we promise!), so there should always be one that fits nicely in to your own blog design.

If you are feeling a bit more ready, willing and able, then other affilate methods include:

-          Writing a post and placing a text link or affiliate banner in the article. (If you do write an article, we’d love to know about it, so that we can feature it  on our own site!)

-          Sharing the affiliate link on your social network accounts to reach a larger audience.

Reaching a larger audience means more click-throughs and more click-thoroughs mean potentially more of that extra dollar!

This is because, for each new blogger that arrives to us from the link in your banner, registers  and whose site is approved by our support team, we will pay you a bonus of 13 GBP (about $19/15€), which will be visible on your LinkLift account 30 days after the new blogger has signed up and been approved.

So that’s:

A bit of extra money for you – tick!

Lovely new bloggers for us to partner with – tick!

If you are not already on our online platform, you will need to be, but for the Affilate Program you only need to create an account, not register a website. If you already have an account with us, then we simply need to tick a few boxes, pull a few levers and you will be good to go.

Once that is all set up, the pretty cool thing (aside from how easy this is!), is that you can always keep track of how many people are clicking through your link, as well as how many are registering and being approved. You just need to go to your Linklift account and click on „Affiliate Program“ in the bottom right corner of the page, like so:

Interested?

To see the full selection of our awesome banners, just send an email over to: support_uk@linklift.net.

Our Support team will then get in touch and help set you up with everything that you need, including registering you on our system if you aren’t already registered with us. Easy!

Now, put your feet up, the kettle on, and enjoy that slice of monetized chocolate cake – you deserve it!

That’s it – the wait is over.

In order to properly celebrate St. Valentine’s Day, we asked for your two cents on one of the most abused, inspiring and everlasting subjects of all times; one that has already been discussed, researched and explored by the greatest philosophers  and the finest thinkers : Love.

You wrote about unrequited feelings, serial killers and idyllic relationships, submitting to our Facebook contest some seriously heartbreaking pieces of writing.

Now we hope you have your acceptance speeches ready, ’cause it’s time to disclose the names of the official winners of the first (of many, hopefully!) Linklift Showdown.

To begin with, the writer with the winning story was collecting votes like no one’s business! Alas, he had forgotten to insert the key phrases. We decided to give him a chance to add the key phrases, but assigned him with a penalty of -250 votes for forgetting in the first place (always read the instructions carefully guys!). Nevertherless he still came away as the winner with 321 votes – not half bad at all we say!!

So, all things considered, we’re proud to announce that the Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 (7.0) for the most voted love story goes to…

L’essenza dell’amore, a touching story about love doomed by illness.  by Filippo from Italy

Congrats to Filippo! His path in our contest was a head-to-head race (until the very end!) with another talented Italian contestant. Although he only got the second place, the delicacy in his narration and the outstanding number of votes that he received (almost 200!) convinced us to give him a special prize, which we had not previously announced:

The “Special-Jury-Award” (consisting of an Amazon Voucher) goes to La magia dell’amore by Marco from Italy

And now the four winners of our internally judged awards, who will receive one 25€ Amazon Voucher each. They weren’t easy to pick, but we’ve made our choice and are pretty satisfied with it:

“Chucky’s Choice Award” – La Scelta by Alessandra from Italy

“The Julia Roberts Award” – Daniela et son marin de Valparaiso by Christopher from France

“Best Forever Alone Award” - Longing for the Girl by Dan from the UK

“The Twister” – An Old Internet Lovestory? – by Yvonne from Germany

The six winners will be contacted via email to firm up delivery options. We just want to say a big Thank You to everyone who entered the competition or voted on our Facebook page.

The stories will still be available for everyone to read (but only until the 15th!) on the Showdown’s official Facebook page.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day everyone!

So you lovely Linklifters,

Do you know what time it is? (don’t look at your clock…the answers not there)

It’s time to unveil our Linklift Valentines Love Story Showdown!

 In case you didn’t understand fairy tale story yesterday , here’s the low down…

Recent discussions around the water cooler have led us to believe that some of the writing talent we’ve seen out there could easily surpass some of the most popular stories. And what better way to put that to the test than with our Valentines Love Story Showdown

Win, and not only could you join William Shakespeare in the history books, (not guaranteed, but who knows!) but you’ll also get your hands on a Samsung Tablet. There will also be four further prizes (4x 25€ Amazon Vouchers) awarded to the stories that also fulfil the titles:

“Chucky’s Choice” for the best horror content

“The Julia Roberts Award” for the story with the highest potential to replace Romeo and Juliet as the best love story of all time.

“The Forever Alone Award” for the most unfortunate ending

“The Twister” for the most original twist

So, how do you win?

Well it’s not just up to us! In order to get your hands on the first prize you’ll need to receive the largest amount of likes – so spread the word about the Showdown and your own story!

Then us dudes here at Linklift will decide (fairly and based on a few different criteria), who will win one of the 4 runner up prizes.

Did you already tell me how to enter?

Nope! To enter, you just need to submit a short love story (max. 500 words) that will contain our 3 magical key phrases that have been carefully chosen by all of us here at Linklift (we did a vote for it and everything).  When we say “submit”, we simply click here. and follow the instructions!

Because Linklift is an international company, we encourage you to write in the language you prefer. German, French, Italian, Spanish or English – it doesn’t matter, we’ve got the people here to read it.

But when does it start?

Our showdown starts on the 1^st February and will run until the 12^th of February, with the winner(s) to be announced and congratulated on the official commercial day of love – Valentine’s Day(14^th February). How appropriate!

So the Keyphrases? Drum roll please………..

“Dancing with a Giraffe”

“Poker Face”

“2 Horned Unicorn”

Yup you heard right – the three key-phrases, selected specifically for your writing pleasure.

But beware!

We do want a Love story, but we also want to be surprised!

Pssst! And throughout the duration of this competition we’ll also be offer a little Valentines gift (15€!) to anyone who signs up with by clicking on this link with the following code: 7755483592

Enjoy!

Showdown Rules/Terms & Conditions:

1. Each person may only submit 1 Story but will have 3 votes.
2. The Showdown is open to anyone aged 18 or over, from any part of the world, provided the Story submitted is in one of our 5 Linklift languages.
3. Entry to the Linklift Love Story Showdown will end at 12 Midday Berlin time on February 12th 2013.
4. No former or currrent employee of Linklift Ltd can win the Showdown. They may apply (just for fun!) but their entry will always be marked with “Linklikt“.
5. The Winner will be the person who receives the most genuine Facebook likes for their Alternative Love Story.
6. The Winner (s) of the 4 further prizes will be judged by our international team here at Linklift according to the award.
7. All Winners will be contacted by email and announced here and on Linklift’s various international blogs on 14^th February 2013.
8. The cost of the shipping the prizes will be covered by Linklift Ltd.
9. The Showdown is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. Please understand that you are providing your information to Linklift and not to Facebook or any third parties.
10. We won’t use your data for any commercial activities, but only in the context of this competition.
11. Linklift reserves the right to cancel or suspend the contest, as well as withhold the prizes should we feel the Facebook likes for a particular Love Story are not genuine.

See the “House Rules” Tab on our Facebook page for further information.

Gather round boys and girls, and let me tell you a story….

“A long, long time ago, in a city far, far way (well, Berlin) was a place called Linklift.

One day the king, Sir Link of Lift thought it would be a good idea to hold a grand competition to reward one of his lucky towns people with a Samsung Tablet if he or she wrote the best Alternative Love story of all the land that included three carefully selected phrases.

Smaller prizes would also be awarded to those he deemed to have “the best horror content”, “the story with the highest potential to rival Romeo and Juliet”, “the most original twist” and “the story with the most unfortunate ending”.

And this is where you come into it!

Check our either The Linklifter Blog or our Facebook page tomorrow to find out how…..