10 Reasons Why You'll Blow That Big Deal

Okay, maybe not you personally… I'm only speaking in hypotheticals here. But let's face it, some of us are better at closing than others, and that's okay. We can get better.

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile, but really wanted to frame it in a way that would allow everyone to pull value from it, regardless of your function. As I thought through that framing, I realized that there's no surefire way to close more deals, per se, but there's a lot of things that you need to avoid to better your chances.

That's what we'll focus on here.

A deal can be many different things, depending on your business -- really, I'm just using it as a placeholder. Whether it be a new client, a big partnership, a fresh distribution, a juicy link, even an acquisition, they're all in the same ballpark. From experiencing it first hand in my work to being on the receiving end of some really bad attempts, here's 10 reasons why you'll blow that big deal.

The most common screw-up is probably a lack of understanding or care to understand the business that you're trying to work with. I can't tell you how many times I've been pitched for services that are dependent on Moz being a consulting company. This obviously isn't relevant anymore, which means that you wasted my time and yours.

Each business has very different drivers that dictate the decisions they make. Before you can provide value, you have to take the time to truly understand what they find valuable and what will help their business. Sounds simple, I know. Yet, it's one of the most common mistakes, because it takes extra effort. Before pitching anyone, make sure you do your due diligence; dig through Crunchbase or run a quick search.

Aaron Levie from Box said it best.

Email length is proportional to how much happiness you want to take away from your recipients.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) June 11, 2012

The same goes for pitching. The importance of distilling your message down to only the most important information is often times a deciding factor in the what gets ignored and what doesn't. As a rule of thumb, any email over two (very short) paragraphs and some bullets is likely too long. Distill your message down to the most pertinent points, and then refine it even further. It's not dissimilar from pitching press; the same concepts apply.

If you're talking to the wrong person, you're done before you even get started. The organizational structure varies greatly from company to company, which of course makes it difficult to track down the right person to talk to. Just try to think about it as logically as possible -- your intuition is likely right. Typically, I like to start from the top and work down. I've found that more senior folks usually have a stronger vested interest in the company and thus help you navigate the waters a bit more efficiently.

I rely on tools like Rapportive (screenshot above) on a daily basis to help refine and guess the contact info of the people that I need to get ahold of, if it's not shown on Linkedin or a personal site. 

Pro Tip: If you're trying to guess the right email address, start with first name @ domain.com and press tab, if it's correct, their profile will show up on Rapportive. If not, guess again. The folks at Distilled have some clever tricks, as well.

Have you ever had anyone ask you to sign an NDA before you even know the context of the discussion? Me too, and it kills the conversation before it even starts. A lot of people let legal take precedence over the basics. Legal is a necessary evil, but it's something that rarely comes into play.

You've got to know where to give and where to take with legal, and less is always more if you can get away with it.

People can't move forward if they don't know what they need to do. Some of the best folks that I've worked with on a deal are always action oriented. After every call, they lay out a clear list of action items in bullet format. Laying out next steps in this format allows both parties to stay focused on progression. Here's what a typical follow-up email should look like.

YOU Check in with your legal department to see whether the amendment has been approvedYOU Send over logo on transparent background for our announcement blog postME Coordinate with team on announcement timelineME Tell Jen Lopez she's awesome, and buy her cupcakes

Bullet format is usually more efficient than putting the action items in a long paragraph. Separate out what needs to get done, and keep on keepin' on.

As the person initiating the deal, it's your job to make sure it doesn't fall off the radar. Agree on a check-in timeframe after each correspondence. If you don't hear back after that timeframe, it may not be because they're not interested -- it may mean they got busy. Life happens.

There are a lot of good tools out there for remembering where you left off and reminding you to follow-up, Stride is one of them that I helped create. Other good tools are task managers like Wunderlist or FollowUpThen (screenshot above), which is made specifically for email reminders.

This is the #humblebrag portion of the list. I'm not one for name-dropping, Justin Beiber, but it's important to make it clear why others should listen. Use things like customer names, press coverage, usage numbers, success rates, etc. to shine your best light. Nothing wrong with making it clear that you're the real deal.

There's a fine line between overly persistent and not persistent enough. When you're actively engaging with another company, it's important to walk the line. The reason why it's so difficult is that it varies on a case-by-case basis, but the signals you get back from the other side can likely direct you on whether or not you're being persistent enough.

As with not dropping the ball, some people need persistence to stay on top of things. It's better to be overly persistent than not enough. Walk the line, but don't overstep. If someone tells you that it can't happen right now or that they're not interested, that's not a cryptic message to keep bothering them.

You may be the cat's pajamas offline, but if you're online life doesn't reflect that, who would know? As you're well aware, we all have access to the Googles, and we're likely to research someone before we engage with them. Take the time to clean up your Linkedin, set up a personal site and for goodness gracious, get to tweetin'. 

Personal branding is a separate post in and of itself, but for the sake of this post, realize that it's one of, if not the most, important pieces to being able to do a deal with a person or company.

As with the last point, the personal side of a deal matters. We do business with people we trust. When you're looking to work with someone, you've got to take the time to make the personal connection. Follow on Twitter, friend on Facebook -- become top of mind. Don't make it all about business, find commonalities and make the connection.

 

Let's take the wonderful Sha for example. She saw on my Twitter feed that I was damning myself with trying to learn Ruby. So, she whipped up some Ruby on Rails Cookies to help me through the process. Awesomeness person award goes to... you guessed it. Next time I get an email in my inbox from Sha, guess who's getting an immediate response? 

When you're in the sales process, the things that matter most are the subtleties, the tiniest bit of finesse is what separates winning from losing. Go about your business how you'd like, but keep these pitfalls in the back of your mind. Take the pain points that you experience while others are pitching you and learn from them -- don't inflict the same.

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Which Page is Canonical?

It sounds like an easy question, doesn’t it? While we hear a lot about duplicate content since the Panda update(s), I’m amazed at how many people are still confused by a much more fundamental question – which URL for any given page is the canonical URL? While the idea of a canonical URL is simple enough, finding it for a large, data-driven site isn’t always so easy. This post will guide you through the process with some common cases that I see every week.

Before we dive in, let’s cover the biggest misunderstanding that people have about “pages” on their websites. When we think of a page, we often think of a physical file containing code (whether it’s static HTML or script, like a PHP file). To a crawler, a page is any unique URL that it finds. One file could theoretically generate thousands of unique URLs, and every one of those is potentially a “page” in Google’s eyes.

It’s easy to smile and nod and all agree that we understand, but let’s put it to the test. In each of the following scenarios, how many pages does Google see?

www.example.com/www.example.com/storewww.example.com/aboutwww.example.com/contactwww.example.com/index.phpwww.example.com/store.phpwww.example.com/about.phpwww.example.com/contact.phpwww.example.com/index.php?page=homewww.example.com/index.php?page=storewww.example.com/index.php?page=aboutwww.example.com/index.php?page=contact

The answer is (A) 4, (B) 4, and (C) 4. In Google’s eyes, it doesn’t matter whether the pages have extensions (“.php”), the home-page is at the root (“/”) or at index.php, or even if every page is being driven off of one physical template. There are four unique URLs, and that means there are four pages. If Google can crawl them all, they’ll all be indexed (usually).

Let’s dive right into a few examples. Please note: these are just examples. I’m not recommending any of the URL structures in this post as ideal – I’m just trying to help you determine the correct canonical URL for any given situation.

I’ll start with an easy one. Many sites still use URL parameters to track visitor sessions or links from affiliates. No matter what the parameter is called or which purpose it’s used for, it creates a duplicate for every individual visitor or affiliate. Here are a few examples:

www.example.com/store.php?session=1234www.example.com/store.php?affiliate=5678www.example.com/store.php?product=1234&affiliate=5678

In the first two examples, the session and affiliate ID create a copy, in essence, of the main store page. In both of these cases, the proper canonical URL is simply:

The last example is a bit trickier. There, we also have a “product=” parameter that drives the product being displayed. This parameter is essential – it determines the actual content of the page. So, only the “affiliate=” parameter should be stripped out, and the canonical URL is:

www.example.com/store.php?product=1234

This is just one of many cases where the canonical URL is NOT the root template or the URL with no parameters. Canonical URLs aren’t always short or pretty – many canonical URLs will have parameters. Again, I’m not arguing that this structure is ideal. I’m just saying that the canonical URL in this case would have to include the “product=” parameter.

Unfortunately, the word “dynamic” gets thrown around a little too freely – for the purposes of this blog post, I mean any URLs that pass variables to generate unique content. Those variables could look like traditional URL parameters or be embedded as “folders”.

A good example of the kind of URLs I’m talking about are blog post URLs. Take these four:

www.example.com/blog/1234www.example.com/blog.php?id=1234www.example.com/blog.php?id=1234&comments=onwww.example.com/blog/20120626

Again, it doesn’t matter whether the URLS have parameters or hide those parameters as virtual folders. All of these URLs use a unique value (either an ID or date) to generate a specific blog post. So what’s the canonical URL here? Obviously, if you canonicalize to “/blog”, you’re going to reduce your entire blog to one page. It’s a bit of a trick question, because the canonical URL could actually be something like this:

www.example.com/blog/this-is-a-blog-post

This is why we have such a hard time detecting the proper canonical URLs with automated tools – it really takes a deep knowledge of a site’s architecture and the builder’s intent. Don’t make assumptions based on the URL structure. You have to understand your architecture and crawl paths. If you just start stripping off URL parameters, you could cause an SEO disaster.

It might seem strange to put the home page third, but the truth is that the first two cases were probably easier. Part of the problem is that home pages naturally spin out a lot of variations:

www.example.comwww.example.com/www.example.com/default.htmlwww.example.com/index.phpwww.example.com/index.php?page=about

Add in complications like secure pages (https:), and you can end up multiplying all of these variants. While this is technically true of any page, the problem tends to be more common for the home page, since it’s usually the most linked-to page (both internally and from external sites) by a large margin.

In most cases, the technically correct home-page URL is:

…but there are exceptions (such as if you secure your entire site). I don’t see the trailing slash (“/”) causing a ton of problems on home pages these days, since most browsers and crawlers add it automatically, but I think it’s still a best practice to use it.

Another common exception is if your site automatically redirects to another version of the home-page – ASP is notorious about this, and often lands visitors and bots at “index.aspx” or a similar page. While that situation isn’t ideal, you don’t want to cross signals. If the redirect is necessary, then the target of that redirect (i.e. the “index.aspx” URL) should be your canonical URL.

Finally, be very careful about situation #5 – in that case, as I discussed in the first section of this post, the “index.php” code template is actually driving other pages with unique content. Canonicalizing that to the root or to “index.php” could collapse your site to one page in the Google index. That particular scenario is rare these days, but some CMS systems still use it.

In some ways, product pages are a lot like the blog-post pages in Case #2, except moreso. You can naturally end up with a lot of variations on an e-commerce site, including:

www.example.com/store.php?id=1234www.example.com/store/1234www.example.com/store/this-is-a-productwww.example.com/store.php?id=1234¤cy=uswww.example.com/store/1234/redwww.example.com/store/1234/large

If you have a URL like #3, then that’s going to be your canonical URL for the product in most cases (especially #1-#3). If you don’t, then work up the list. In other words, if you have #3, use it; if not, use #2; if not #2, use #1. You have to work with the structure you have.

URLs #4-#6 are a bit trickier. Something like the currency selector in #4 can be very complicated and depends on how those selections are implemented (user selection vs. IP-based geo-location, for example). For Google’s purposes, you would typically want them to use the dominant price for the site’s audience and canonical to the main product URL (#1-#3, depending on the site architecture). Indexing every price variant, unless you have multiple domains, is just going to make your content look thinner.

With #5 and #6, the URL indicates a product variant, let’s say a T-shirt that comes in different colors and sizes. This situation depends a lot on the structure and scope of the content. Technically, your T-shirt in red/large is unique, and yet that page could look “thin” in Google’s eyes. If you have a variant or two for a handful of products, it’s no big deal. If every product has 50 possible combinations, then I think you need to seriously consider canonicalization.

Now, the ugliest case of them all – internal search pages. This is a double-edged sword, since Google isn’t a fan of search-within-search (their results landing on your results) in general and these pages tend to spin out of control. Here are some examples:

www.example.com/search.php?topic=1234www.example.com/search/this-is-a-topicwww.example.com/topicwww.example.com/search.php?topic=1234&page=2www.example.com/search.php?topic=1234&page=2&sort=descwww.example.com/search.php?topic=1234&page=2&filter=price

The list, unfortunately, could go on and on. While it’s natural to think that the canonical version should be #1-#3 (depending on your URL structure, just like in Case #4), the trouble is pagination. Pages 2 and beyond of your topic search may appear thin, in some cases, but they return unique results and aren’t technically duplicates. Google’s solutions have changed over time, and their advice can be frustrating, but they currently say to use the rel=prev/next tags. Put simply, these tags tell Google that the pages are part of a series.

In cases like #5-#6, Google recommends you use rel=prev/next for the pagination but then a canonical tag for the “&page=2” version (to collapse the sorts and filters). Implementing this properly is very complicated and well beyond the scope of this post, but the main point is that you should not canonicalize all of your search pages to page 1. Adam Audette has an excellent post on pagination that demonstrates just how tricky this topic is.

Finally, an important reminder – the most important canonical signal is usually your internal links. If you use the canonical tag to point to one version of a URL, but then every internal link uses a different version, you’re sending a mixed signal and using the tag as a band-aid. The canonical URL should actually be canonical in practice – use it consistently. If you’re an outside SEO coming into a new site, make sure you understand the crawl paths first, before you go and add a bunch of tags. Don’t create a mess on top of a mess.

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Define and Align: A Manageable Content and Social Media Marketing Process

In our experience, we’ve discovered that we usually have to ease our clients into the realities of organic web marketing. They can get behind the groundwork of SEO easily enough; user experience and integrating the right keywords: these are not totally alien concepts to anyone who’s been around the marketing scene for more than three seconds.

But when we get into the truth of how much time and effort goes into the actual work of raising their web visibility--that it’s an ongoing process that will require them to generate content and build relationships--we often see some reluctance.

To combat that reluctance, we’ve put a lot of thought into how we conduct and explain our particular version of content marketing.

Before we get into that, a quick note about said version of content marketing. In general, we understand that content marketing is usually considered different from social media marketing. Content marketing is about drawing attention to the content on your website; social media marketing is about encouraging engagement on the various social media forums out there in cyberspace.

When we work with clients on their web marketing, we tend to blur that line between content and social media marketing. Every strategy we develop includes both. Valuable content--blog posts, infographics, videos, whatever content type aligns with the client’s goals--forms the foundation of any web marketing effort. Once we’ve got the value, we utilize social media to get the word out, engage, build relationships, and ultimately brand awareness. See the blurring?

To us, the label matters less than having a deliberate and intentional strategy to provide something of value on an ongoing basis, because content and social media marketing ultimately work together to build:

Value in your company or organization (or on behalf of your client)A personality and brand that people know and trustSustainable relationshipsA supportive online communityDomain authority and desired rankings

So, when our clients consistently had a tough time grasping what it takes to raise their visibility on the web, we decided that something had to be done.

To that end we’ve developed an approach that clearly explains and delineates the process, step-by-step. It spells out who does what and when and how and just, in general, makes the whole thing both more manageable and more palatable to our hesitant clients.

We always start out by explaining that our organic web marketing process includes three stages:

Stage One
SEO & Local Search (research & implementation)Stage Two
Link Building & Social Media Strategies (research & development)Stage Three
Ongoing Implementation & Measurement (which never, ever ends)

This graphic depicts Stages Two and Three. It is the process that we use to develop and implement content and social media marketing strategies for our clients:

By the time we get to this part of our (almost painfully) well-defined process, two things have come to pass:

[1] Stage One Has Been Completed
Way back at the beginning of Stage One, the clients completed a data collection questionnaire that provides us with a general understanding of the following:

design preferences & assetslogins (website, analytics, social)competition (top 3)target audience (and level of expertise)website (most important pages, most significant tasks)calendar (highs and lows, significant events, holidays, roadblocks)team (point of contact)marketing efforts (print, social, SEO, email marketing)goals & expectations (SEO, social media)

We have reviewed these findings and worked through all of the necessary website and SEO efforts that are part of Stage One of the project (site audit, navigation development, user experience, keyword research, on-page optimization, local search integration, etc.). ??Stage One lays the groundwork so that the website is optimized and ready for all the targeted traffic we’re going to generate. We’ve also discovered the keywords that we will be integrating into both their link building and content/social media marketing strategy so that we are building links to the right pages on the website once we get to Stage Three.

[2] We Have Defined & Aligned Everyone’s Expectations & Responsibilities
Every client has different budgets and expectations of participation. Some clients have a large internal team that can dedicate the time to ongoing content generation and strategy implementation. Other clients really need to lean on our knowledge, expertise, and resources, so at that level we act as their third party web marketing team and carry most of the load for them.

No matter what level we are working with a client, we always make it very clear what it takes to achieve desired results and who will be held accountable for achieving these results. If a client asks us to assist them with research, analysis, and strategy development, but they want their internal team to do the ongoing implementation, we cannot be held accountable if our recommendations are not carried through. It’s really important to establish these guidelines with a client even before you go under contract. It will certainly make for a more successful and long lasting consulting partnership.

All that being said, here’s how content marketing and the social process breaks down:

?In this first step of the process, you’ve got to get a really strong understanding of the the social climate. Analyze what the client is currently doing (or not doing) with their social on their website, blog, and print marketing efforts. Do the same for their competitors. Get a solid understanding of what is going on in their industry, focusing on the social space.

??Your goal with this analysis is to put together a list of general observations: what are the common threads between the client and their competitors? What could be done better? Note the gaps in content and where gains can be made. We record these observations on a chart so that we can integrate them into the analysis and recommendations that we provide the client. These observations will also be very helpful when you begin developing the strategy and calendar in Step Three below.?

?In Step Two, you will be establishing the foundation for the online community. At this point, the goal is simply to get acclimated to the social spaces where the client will be following, reading, engaging, and at some point, providing valuable content. ??

So, based on what you discovered from the data collection findings about the target audience(s), current efforts, and goals, which social media outlets seem like a match?

??Let’s say you’re going to recommend Twitter and Google+ as targets in their content marketing and social strategy. Find the thought leaders in their industry on Twitter and Google+ and follow/circle them. Read the content they’re passing around, engage with them where appropriate, add the people that they are following to your list. Start to get a feel for how the online community operates (posting frequency, content type, tone, etc.) and get acclimated. Take it slow.??

Reminding clients that social media is a tool and not a strategy helps them to understand that it’s important to have a plan in place. It’s not about being on every social media outlet. It’s about being on the right social media outlets and customizing the content to the target audience. This will ultimately build the best online community and bring your client desired results. ??

Developing an online community is an important and ongoing process that is worth a great deal of dedicated time and effort. This community is going to help you carry the load. If the community trusts and values you, they will help to do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the word out (marketing your content). More on this in Step Five.

As mentioned, at the beginning of a project, we ask our clients to define their goals and expectations. This allows them to communicate their desires, and it gives us an understanding of whether their expectations are realistic.

If there are any red flags (i.e. wants a too-quick turn-around: 15,000 followers in six months with no budget to fund large campaigns), then certainly we address any concerns at the beginning of the project. ??

Before we begin developing the strategy and calendar, we outline a list of realistic goals and how we are going to work toward them. Again, we integrate this chart into the analysis and recommendations that we provide the client so that they have an understanding of what we are going to be accountable for.

These goals and action items are just the precursor to their strategy. The analysis and recommendations that we provide the client includes a very detailed, step-by-step breakdown of their strategy (all the stuff we’re going to help them do or do for them). ??

As you’ve probably guessed, every strategy we develop includes content generation on an on-going basis. But we also include targeted strategies and ideas for whatever is necessary to meet their unique goals, things like apps, contests, events.

?Our strategies are detailed and very specific. We provide step-by-step instructions for every campaign (i.e. what to do prior to the contest to ramp up, what to do during the contest, what to do after the contest), so that the strategy can be easily followed by the client’s internal team (in case we’re not handling the implementation). And, hey, if their budget allows us to do the work, then these details make it easy for our team to execute.

??The narrative of the social strategy is also accompanied by a digital calendar that includes all actions to be taken and who is responsible for completing them. We make sure the calendar allows plenty of time for first-draft content reviews and revisions prior to launch/implementation.??

?Our clients prefer that we provide some guidance, so each of these calendar items includes a brief description of the task. If you click on one of the calendar items, there is some detail so that whoever the task is assigned to, they know exactly what is expected of them. Because the calendar is digital and everyone on the team has access, when we make changes to their schedule or strategy, everyone is alerted.

When you’re developing the content and social media marketing strategy, make sure that you are aligning all efforts (SEO, link building, social media, email marketing, etc.). Everything, from print to web, should be integrated and leveraged. You can then determine which tools and methods you will use for measurement (we love Raven, SEOmoz, Google Analytics, and Sprout Social) so that you can show the client the progress that is being made.

Once the strategy is ready, it’s time to create the content. Clearly this is an ongoing effort, but having a strategy to follow will ensure that content is being generated on a regular basis and that it is working towards meeting the goals that have been outlined. It will also keep everyone involved organized and focused so that you’re not heading towards burn out.

??On a side note: we like to encourage clients to integrate links to other valuable content (articles, video, infographics, etc) in their posts. This helps to provide a more engaging user experience and it also gives the opportunity for link and egobait. You can always publish a post and alert the author that you liked one of their articles and mentioned it in your post.

The content has been created, so now comes the fun part. When getting the word out, you have two main goals:?

First, provide something of value.

Second, be authentic (and make sure that you’re consistent with voice).
Every social media outlet is different and your approach should reflect that. Don’t use the same teaser for Facebook as you use on Twitter. Not only are the formats of these outlets different, but so are the audiences, their behaviors, and their expectations. Take the time to customize your messages and you’ll get better results. You can then measure and analyze these efforts in Step Seven and determine if you need to try a different day of the week, time of day, reduce/increase frequency, or a whole different approach altogether.

?Once the content is out, you will want to be hands on, so get ready to monitor and engage. If you’re not getting bites on your content (re-tweets, mentions, etc.) try some direct engagement. Tweet, use other social outlets, or even email people directly to encourage some action. ??

As we’ve said, depending on budget, we may do some or all of this work for the client. We always define specific tasks that the client is responsible for and specific tasks that we are responsible for (and they are always noted on the calendar). Joint tasks usually include things like daily review of the online community and social media outlets, as well as responding and engaging. ??

Even if we are not engaging on behalf of the client, we are always monitoring the client’s efforts. This provides the client with useful feedback that will help them to learn, improve, and ultimately be successful. Certainly we are always monitoring data, and we provide a series of reports analyzing and explaining their metrics in the next step, Measure & Analyze, below.

?Accountability is really important, especially because clients will always be concerned with ROI which can be difficult to quantify with content and social media marketing.

We continually communicate with the client and provide bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports that all serve specific purposes.??

The bi-weekly report is meant for a quick look. It’s a short, 1-2 page report that we email to the client that includes a ‘Way to Go’ section (things they’re doing well), a ‘Some Reminders’ section (things they need to remember to do to keep them aligned with the strategy), a ‘Benchmark’ (current state of social efforts), and a ‘Looking Forward’ section (actions required). It’s a quick accountability report that provides the client with an understanding of what we’ve been working on (and perhaps what they need to be working on). ??

The monthly report is the month at a glance, including significant social media activity (increase in following, furthering reach, etc.), trends we’re seeing, and other things to look out for (there may be some link building or SEO items to point out here). We include screen shots from both Sprout Social and Raven, as well as any screenshots of analytics specific to the social media outlet (i.e. Facebook).??

The quarterly report is the most in-depth as it includes a look at the global picture. This report illustrates the progress of everything we are working on for the client: SEO, link building, content marketing, and social media. Clearly we are monitoring, analyzing, and taking action on these pieces throughout the quarter, but this reporting session is meant to really dig in, analyze the data over a longer period of time, and make the necessary improvements in all areas (SEO, link building, and social media). This meeting is always a sit down, face-to-face (if possible) with the client. We may make changes to the strategy in this meeting or address new work that the client would like us to take care of.

Once you’ve completed this process, you can start over with a new idea, a new goal, and a new strategy. Follow the same steps and customize the process for the work you do with your clients. ??

Along the way, don’t forget to celebrate the little victories. We get really excited about getting re-tweets, targeted links, and engaging with thought leaders. We teach our clients to bask in the excitement of even the smallest accomplishment. It helps them to understand how hard we work for them (with them) every day.

So, that’s how we do it. For now, anyway. We are continually working on shaping our systems and processes so that we can provide our clients with the most value (and get them desired results). You can certainly use this process as a guideline, but keep in mind that every client and project is going to be unique and will require customization at some level. And, of course, as content and social media marketing evolves, this process will require adjustment.?

We’ve discovered that spelling things out, dissecting and cataloguing the entire process, severely reduces the terror that our clients experience in the face of the alien world of content marketing (just like Area 51 does it). And it makes sure everything runs smoothly for us as we implement as well.

So, how about you? How do you convince your more timid clients to commit to the real deal? And, since we are always striving for improvement, we’d welcome your thoughts on how we do it, too.

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Download Facebook Account To Your Computer

Hello there,
Today I will teach how to we can download our FaceBook profile all details including wall posts, photos, videos, links, and all other contents we have added to our profile, now we are going to see how to we can do this,
Fist you must log on to your FaceBook account, then you can see top tabs like home, profile, find friends and account tabs, click on the account tab,




Then select account settings option then you will see account settings page, at this screen you can see download your information option, then you can select learn more link, now you will see next step all information about downloading your account, it is give some warring to us this information contain some sensitive details like our personal details. After reading and understand all of the information you can click on download button, 


After clicking above button, popup window as confirmation window, click on download button, 



Now you will notify, as “you will receive email your download is ready for download” now you can get this all information as zip file. Now you can extract this file in any local directory then you can brows your all account details as locally.

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Googlebot Crawl Issue Identification Through Server Logs

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Sifting through server logs has made me infinitely better at my job as an SEO. If you're already using them as part of your analysis, congrats - if not, I encourage you to read this post.

In this post we’re going to:

Briefly introduce a server log hitUnderstand common issues with Googlebot's crawlUse a server log to see Googlebot's crawl path.Look at a real issue with Googlebot wasting crawl budget and fix it.Introduce or reacquaint you with my favourite data analyzer.

It’s critical to SEOs because:

Webmaster tools, 3rd party crawlers and search operators won’t give you the full story.You’ll understand how Googlebot behaves on your site, and it will make you a better SEO.

I’m going to casually assume that you at least know what server logs are and how to obtain them. Just in case you've never seen a server log before, let's take a look at a sample "hit".

Each line in a server log represents a "hit" to the web server. The following illustrations can help explain:

File request example: brochure_download.pdf

A request for /page-a.html will likely end up with multiple hits because we need to get the images, css and any other files needed to render that page.

Image credit: Media College 

Every server is inherently different in logging hits, but they typically give similar information that is organized into fields. Below is a sample hit to an Apache web server, and I've purposely cut down the fields to make this simpler to understand:

50.56.92.47 - - [31/May/2012:12:21:17 +0100] "GET" - "/wp-content/themes/esp/help.php"  - "404" "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" - www.example.com - Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)/wp-content/themes/esp/help.phpIn reality, there are many more fields and a wealth of information that can only be gained through web server logs. 

Specifically in regards to SEO, we want to make sure that Google is crawling the pages we want to be crawled on our site - because we want them to rank. We already know what we can do internally to help pages rank in search results, such as:

Ensure the pages are internally linked.Keep important pages as close to the root as possible.Ensure that the pages do not return errors.This is all typically standard stuff and you can get this information easily without server logs, but I want more, I want to see Googlebot.I want to look for Googlebot specific issues like:Unnecesary crawl budget expenditurePage it considers important / not importantIf there are any bot trapsIs Google making up 404 errors by trying to make up URLs (think JavaScript)Is Google trying to fill out forms? (Yes, it happens)Step 1:  Get some server logs.

Ask your client, or download a set of server logs from your hosting company. The point is to try and capture Googlebot visiting your site, except we don’t know when that’s going to happen – so you might need a few days worth of logs, or just a few hours.

To give you a real example:

Example domain has a PageRank of 6, DA of 80 and receives 200,000 visits a day.  Their IIS server logs will amount to 4gB a day, but because the site is so popular, Googlebot visits at least once a day.

In this case, I would recommend a full day worth of logs to ensure we catch Googlebot.

Head over to http://www.splunk.com, sign up and download the product – free edition.

Note: the free edition will only let you upload 500mb per 24 hours.

I would recommend that you put your server logs on you local machine to make this process nice and easy.

I've put together a quick few screencasts, I know they sound cheesy, but whatever.

Simply click on the Export link and wait for your massive CSV to download. (Note: If the link doesn't appear, it's because the search isn't finished yet)

Every time Googlebot came by the site, it spent most of it's time crawling PPC pages and internal JSON scripts. Just to give you an idea of how much time and crawl budget was wasted, please see below:

The real problem is that we had pages on the site that hadn't been indexed, and this was the cause. I wouldn't have found this without the server logs and I'm very grateful I did.

It's possible to crawl or visit a site using the Googlebot user agent, and even worse - it's possible to spoof the Googlebot IP. I always double check a list of IPs to what I see in the server log report and I use the method officially outline by Google.

1) Crawling PPC pages

I checked that these pages weren't indexed or receiving any traffic first, then I used robots.txt to block only Googlebot from these pages. I was very careful about this since I wanted to make sure that I didn't block Google Adbot (the robot that needs to crawl PPC pages).

User-agent: GooglebotDisallow: /*/cppcr/Disallow: /cppcr

2) Infinite GET requests to JSON scripts

This was just another simple robots.txt block because Google didn't need to request these scripts. Googlebot basically got caught in a form, over and over again. Realistically, there's no reason for any bot to crawl this, so I set the user-agent to all (*).

User-agent: *Disallow: /*/json/Disallow: /json

I'm pretty happy to say that a week later, there was an increase of 7,000 pages in the index as reported by Webmaster tools. 

Rand wrote about some good tips to prevent crawling issues, so I recommend you checking it out, as well as special thanks to the folks at ratedpeople.com for being kind enough to let me analyze and experiment on their site.

Additional resources

Feel free to follow me on Twitter @dsottimano, don't forget to randomly hug a developer - even if they say they don't like it :)

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How to Write Email to Get a Better Response Rate

A successful SEO campaign is the perfect combination of all strategies. Whether you're working with on-page optimization, content development, social media, or link building, all of these factors contain equal value. When it comes to picking the most difficult SEO strategy, I will always give my vote to link building as this part is one of the most difficult, boring ,and time consuming strategies you can implement.
A few days back, I shared a picture of the perfect bedroom for a link builder on Facebook:

Almost perfect, despite the coffee pot missing ;)

Yes, link building can be boring, tough, and time consuming. However, one person on the team can dive into link building and get their hands dirty to get the job done in order to produce effective and action-driven results for the business.
Many people use different tactics when it comes to link building. One of the famous and most effective techniques that almost every ethical SEO uses is to manually outreach to other webmasters and ask for a link. Although the rate of response can be low, implementing a few smart email writing tactics can actually increase the response rate.
In this post, I will discuss a few tactics that I have used in recent campaigns where I had to write good amount of manual email to a variety of influencers and bloggers to ask them for a link favor. I tried out a few different ideas and finally created a format that allowed me to write every email as personalized as possible, while saving a lot of my time.
Here I go!
The first section of an email everyone reads is the title. It is important to have a catchy title or else your email will soon be sent directly to the trash bin. Do not try to manipulate the reader by creating false title, but instead create a title that is interesting and captivating to act as a perfect lead-in for the valuable content of the email.
Some good examples of titles are:
Rand, your comments on my link prospect research will be valuableWould appreciate if you allowed me to guest post on your blogSam, would appreciate if you could remove our link from your footer bar (Penguin friendly)
This is an extremely important factor. Do not write a one-line email that clarifies nothing. You want to make sure your email's content delivers the intended actions and requests in a concise, yet inclusive, manner. Similarly, do not stuff the email with tons of unnecessary information. In either case, the recipient is likely to delete your message right away without even reading it (yeah, I can see you having a déjà-vu here).
A perfect email should have, more or less, two paragraphs that describe the solid reason for writing that email.
Not rocket science, but always a good reminder! Use the intended recipient's name while asking them for a favor, or do not expect them to reply back. The people you are writing to are busy just like you, and their to-do lists are already filled with tasks to accomplish. You better make your request sounds important, and that starts with using their name. How many times have you ignored emails addressed to ‘Hello Webmaster,’ or similar? Plenty.
Take a little step forward, do your research, search for their names, and use them! After all, it is all in the name!
Example:
Hello Jennifer,

If you are writing an email of 100 words or more, it is important that your first paragraph should be appealing, smart, and engaging enough to encourage your reader to happily continue their journey through the end of the message. I've tried different formats and ideas for emails, but what stuck best with my campaign was to dedicate the entire first paragraph to the receiver.
This may sound like a lot of work, but checking the social profiles and doing some background on your recipient can tell you an enormous amount about a person. Ultimately, this will let you to talk to him or her more comfortably.
Example:
Hello Jason,
It was great to see your interview and find out more about you on ‘Alessio Madeyski’s’ post. After reading your advice on SEO, I believe you are the right person to ask for an opinion on my research.
OR
Hello Ann,
I am your continuous reader of your different blogs that include Daily SEO tips, my blog guest, and other platforms where you write. I think you are one of the best bloggers who has a great style of writing, and your ability to put down complex problems on paper make them easy to read and comprehend.Don’t drag, just say it!
Now that you've hit the second paragraph, you've made it to the ground floor of your email. If you are going to drag your point out a little longer, then you will probably lose the interest of the recipient. Try to be direct in the second paragraph and let the reader know what you want from him or her. Try to explain your objective in few lines and move towards the end of your note.
Example:
I actually took a step forward to help a specific niche outside of SEO (as much is already happening in the SEO bubble). In order to do that, I researched and compiled a list of 3K+ link prospects which any travel website/blog can use to get authority links.
OR
Although I'm advanced in SEO knowledge, I am planning to start writing and sharing my views to the blogging world and collect feedback that will help me grow as a better professional.Now that you have done your job in describing your objective behind the email, it is time to sum it up nicely in a courteous way.
I would love if you could take two minutes to look over the data and pass along your feedback.
Waiting for your reply!
Regards,

OR
I would appreciate if you could allow me to write a guest post on your blog.
Please let me know if it is possible.
Regards,
I've been working on improving my emails for quite some time now, and this pitch and format has worked for me almost every time. Here are a few reasons why I think this email format is sure to get you a better rate of response:
You are pushing the limit of personalization, so you are leaving less space for the recipient to think about ignoring the email.This format is not short enough to look lousy, but not lengthy enough to bore or overwhelm the reader.Emails that contain a personal touch from the start of the title through the end of the note are set up for a reply.The email contains no dragging content, so there is less of a chance that the reader will get frustrated while reading.The first paragraph is powerful and dedicated to receiver, which makes them happy and encourages them to read the email through the end.Obviously the rate of response is not likely to be 100 percent, but I have found that using this format increases the rate of response for different niches.
If you have any other formatting ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them! Please share your views in the comment section.
About the Author:
Moosa Hemani is a SEO strategist and writes about SEO and related stuff on different blogs. He recently started an SEO Blog where he shares his opinions about SEO, search engines, social, and inbound.

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FREE iPAD, iPHONE, iPOD Application

 You can download for free many application for your ipad, iphone, or ipod here

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How to get better audio quality on Android

Certain genres of music sound better when the bass, treble, and other frequencies can be adjusted higher or lower. If you're on the Gingerbread flavor of Android, you're in luck.
Note: This how to blog post is for users on Android Gingerbread. If you're still on Froyo or older, you'll have to grab a music player with an equalizer built-in, since you can't adjust the settings across the entire device. PowerAMP is a great app to start with for Froyo users.



Grab Equalizer from the Android Market, and open the app. You will see several preset values for different types of music. If you're not looking to do much fussing with the app, you can select one of these settings or even the autodetect option check box and be done



Navigation in the app is done by swiping to the right and left for other screens with more options. If you go one screen to the right, you can view custom presets. However, if you haven't created any of these yet, then simply click the green plus sign to add a new one.



Swiping to the next screen on the right will show you a live equalizer that can be adjusted. Here you can press the play button to listen to a sample track, open a song from your own music, or even save your settings.



The last screen on the right allows you to turn on Equalizer's Bass Booster, Virtualizer, and Reverb. You'll need to press the power button in the top-right corner of the app, and then check off which features you'd like to enable in order to adjust each.



Equalizer offers two widget sizes, both showing the five adjusted frequency bars. A good place to put one of these is near your music player widget, if you're using one.

special thanks for lgchandana 

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How to automatically rename your video files

There are billions of media files out there in the digital ether, and some of them have no doubt found residence in your hard drive(s).

If they've been there for long, it can be hard to remember which episode is which, or even which show is which on occasion. FileBot lets you grab your media, shake it up, and apply file names automatically. Here's how to use it:

If you've got the latest version of Java installed, just click the orange "Launch" button on this page; if not, or if you want to use it offline, page down to the Download section or Win/Mac/Linux installers.

Once it's up and running, you're faced with a clean, but not especially intuitive, interface. It's easy, though: just click "Load" at the bottom of the left pane and open up a folder containing media files you'd like to rename

Now click "Match" in the middle of the window to bring up a list of sources of correct info. You may need to try a few, especially if your show is obscure.

 
Make sure the new info looks right, then click "Rename." All files will be renamed automatically.
It's all pretty simple, and now you should be able to keep track of your TV files much more easily. If you want to poke around in the preferences, it's easy to change up how FileBot names your shows. You can also get subtitles pretty quickly if you need them!

special thanks for lgchandana

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Play latest games without graphic cards(VGA).

Play latest games without buying a new graphic card.


This software uses a part of your RAM as Graphics card memory. For example,if you got 1GB DDR2 RAM,then it’ll use 128MB of it as a Virtual Graphics card,and the remaining 896MB will be used as a regular RAM. 

• Download  3D-Analyzer here.
• Install it.
• Open it and click on select.
• Now select the game that you want to play.(select game .exe file from the main folder,not the desktop shortcut).
• Go to Start>Run>regedit.Then press F3 and search for hardwareinformation>memorysize.
• Click on the file,and modify the binary values to 00 00 00 08.This fools the system into believing that you have 128MB video RAM.
• Then select only the ‘emulate hw tnl caps’ option.Do not select any other.Select ATi Radeon 9800.
• Click on Run.
                                                 Note:-Don't Run Heavy Games which Require Above 256 MB Graphic Card.

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Upside down facebook status and comments.

• 
  Open facebook.
• Go to http://www.fliptext.net/
• Type your status update in the blue box.
• Then copy the text from the purple box and paste it as a status or comment.

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Trick your friends with facebook fake wall.

This is an awesome trick to fool your friends by commenting and posting statuses on a fake wall in facebook from their own names.

 

  

• Go to  www.thewallmachine.com.  
• Click on connect button --> Go to app --> Allow. 
•  You will redirected to the The Wall Machine page.
• Click on Connect again.
• Now start editing everything.(name,time,likes,comments)
• You can select any format.(text,friendship,photo...)
• Save it and post it as a photo.
• If you're friendly with photoshop,you can remove the unwanted stuff and post it as a real image.

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Facebook message hack | How to send message From your friend's id

hello guyzz ...dev is back with a very Funny facebook hack trick which is Damm Simple . today i'll Show you how to Missuse facebook's email Service by Email Spoofing:D:D:D Just Follow this Simple Steps: Required Thing :Facebook email id like abc@facebook.com to know someone facebook email just goto their profile and click info and get it from there. Now Goto this website :http://emkei.cz/ Now fill the desired options: to : abc@facebook.com(receiver fb mail)[Victim] from : xyz@gmail.com(sender id)[your friend :P] subject: this will appear bold message : what ever message u want to send Now Send the message.

credit : Facebook

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