A Non-Negotiator's Guide to Negotiating

For most of my life, I was a terrible negotiator. I accepted lowball offers, I never demanded the raises I deserved, and I overpaid for everything. I knew that you needed to “drive a hard bargain” and “be willing to walk away from the table” if you wanted to get the best possible deal. I just never seemed to be able to do it, ever.

It reached the point that my husband actually forbid me from negotiating the price of a car, a home, or even a used toaster at the flea market. And while I wouldn’t usually take too kindly to being silenced, I had to admit that I saw his point. In a negotiation, I was the weakest link.

Two programs of research helped me to see what I was doing wrong – specifically, how I was thinking about negotiations the wrong way.

Epiphany #1

When people are about to enter a negotiation, they see it as either a threat or a challenge. Studies show that people who see negotiation as a threat experience greater stress and make less advantageous deals. They behave more passively, and are less likely to use tough tactics aimed at gaining leverage, compared to the hard-ballers who feel negotiation to be more of a challenge than a threat.

This makes so much sense to me. My husband absolutely sees negotiating as a challenge. He looks forward to a good haggle. I do not. Reading about these studies, I realized that I have always seen negotiations as threatening, and just wanted them over with as quickly as possible, no matter what it cost me. Why prolong a stressful, threatening situation when you can throw in the towel and move on?

But why do I see negotiations as threats, and not challenges? To answer that, I needed…

Epiphany #2

There is more than one way to look at any goal. Some of us think about our goals as achievements or opportunities to advance – having what psychologists call a promotion focus. Others see their goals as opportunities to keep things running smoothly, to avoid loss, to do what you ought to do – this is called aprevention focus.

Promotion and prevention-focused people work differently to reach the same goal. When we are promotion-focused, we are creative, embrace risk, work quickly, and are fueled by optimism. When we are prevention-focused, we are more thorough and deliberate, more analytical, and better fueled by defensive pessimism (i.e., thinking things might go wrong if you don’t do something to prevent it.)

When it comes to negotiating, having a promotion focus will give you the clear upper-hand. The promotion-focused (like my husband) see negotiation as an opportunity to gain something, and studies show that this helps them to stay focused on their (ideal) price or pay targets. The prevention-minded (like myself) see negotiation as an opportunity to lose something – they worry too much about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving them more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.

When it comes to getting what you want, it pays to focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you might lose, so that you can see it as a challenge (rather than a threat), and be better able keep your eyes on the prize.

Now, when I enter any negotiation, I make a deliberate effort to refocus myself beforehand. I stop and reflect on what I have to gain by getting a great deal, or by fighting for better compensation – the opportunities for happiness and growth they will afford me.

You wouldn’t believe the deal I got on our last toaster.

HEIDI GRANT HALVORSON

more posts →

Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, of Columbia’s Motivation Science Center, is an author and speaker.  In Succeed, she revealed surprising science-based strategies we can use to reach goals.  Her new book is Focus:  Using Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence.

http://99u.com/articles/14494/the-2-epiphanies-that-made-me-a-better-negotiator

10 Killer SEO Landing Page Tips

Grant Simmons, April 15, 20138 Comments

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When we talk landing pages, most online marketers think pay-per-click, where the input of a destination URL into Google's or Bing's paid search offerings allow marketers to drive keyword-targeted traffic to (hopefully) optimized pages.

My previous article extolling the death of keywords talked about developing intent-based topics and building content that connects with those topics – intent to content.

We can now apply that mantra in a "first engagement" scenario, after a user clicks a search result, to ensure SEO landing pages:

• Connect with intent: Offering a user what they expect.
• Resolve (initial) user query: Answering their initial query.
• Engage the user: Sending user signals to search engines.
• Drive further user engagement (if necessary): Additional signals to both users and search engines.

A searcher intent to site content engagement scenario I call "CRED".

In these scenarios where signed in users, search query modification, Chrome browsers, "cookied" users and toolbar data provide massive datasets of engagement signals to search engines on how users interact on sites, we need to drive optimal engagement scenarios.

Here's a checklist of 10 "killer" tips to ensure you're able to add a bit of CRED to your SEO campaigns, as well as demonstrate campaign success!

Connecting

1. Are the primary headlines aligned with intent?

The first thing users notice is content structure, headlines, headers, bolded elements, graphics etc. Your 2 seconds of opportunity to grab attention begins with a mental assessment that needs to immediately connect with the original search query and inspire additional engagement via clear communication of what the page is about.

Content should be created with specific intent in mind, with headlines, and/or graphic headers that are obvious, short, surrounded by adequate white space. And the content must be specific enough to inspire a user's attention.

2. Are you matching content type with query intent?

If the target query includes "how to", "best", "top 10", "compare" or other intent refining modifiers, or if the query demands a certain level of text content, are you obviously offering something that visually connects, confirms relevance, displays lists, video or images?

Users won't have time to read, but they will make a quick decision on whether the format they review matches an expectation. For example, a query on top 10 bars should have a list with numbers displayed – or one entry with numbers. Or a query on the history of search should probably have an index and look robust – not just a 200 word paragraph.

Users have short attention spans, and most have a preconceived expectation of what theyshould find, not matching that initial expectation can equate to a quick "back click.".

Query for "best health insurance plans for single men". Ask Men offers a clear header and an image that immediately screams "authority"

Resolving

3. Can users perform a quick scan above the fold to answer who, what, and why?

As noted above, users don't actually read on a first pass, they make a decision based on visual cues and click expectations (what they expect after they click).

Some websites fail in obviously reinforcing the click expectation, missing an opportunity for engagement, underscoring brand recognition, and providing obvious reasons of time-worthy value.

Click through to your site and ask the following:

1. Is your brand obvious?
2. Is it obvious what you do?
3. Is it obvious why they should stick around?

Especially important with homepages, but equally important on other SEO landing pages, is ensuring your brand is obvious. Make sure what you do, or how you plan to address the user's intent, isn't buried. Give users obvious information and/or justification to stick around and/or click around is key to moving people to engage further.

Query for "flat head screw driver". Home Depot offers clear branding, white space to highlight product, and additional information that is clearly visible and offers visual cues that the tabs are clickable.

Remember: for instant user assessment of resolution potential, anything below the fold doesn't exist!

Engaging

As noted with the Home Depot example, key engagement options exist such as an "add to cart" action button, search for intent refinement or modification, other options to dig into additional information and links to similar products that other customers have purchased.

Each of these elements contribute to answering the next question:

4. Is it obvious what they should do next?

For Home Depot, the answer is most probably yes. It's easy to find the "Add to Cart" button, it's placed in an obvious position and there's multiple options to view additional information.

The product page offers multiple ways to engage, with a zoom button (subjectively probably not big enough), and plenty of other user-centric options such as writing reviews, checking inventory, etc.

Occasionally there can be too many options that can confuse users. In the Home Depot example there appears to be duplicated "check inventory" buttons/links, but these may have been tested and justified.

5. Are there on-page modification options? (based on query modification)

Home Depot offer a good example of obvious search functionality, related products, and other options that can help modify the user's search query onsite rather than have them click back to the search results to modify.

These kind of onsite modifications do not always need to be driven by site search.

Breadcrumbs, side navigation, filters, related prods, color/size selection are all feasible options to mitigate click backs and improve onsite engagement signals.

Driving

6. Are 'next clicks' consistent?

Part of great site engagement is a consistent user experience for similar queries. By monitoring user interaction on a per query basis, website owners can identify consistencies or deficiencies in matches of search intent to site content.

Duane Forrester of Bing said in January 2013:

"In the long run, the brand names secure rankings through depth of content, trust in brand, and user interaction (searchers clicking a SERP result and staying on their site because the site is trusted and answers the searchers question)"

Providing key "next clicks" – obvious steps from landing pages to conversion or core information – is a better user experience = better potential rankability.

7. Can they share what they've found?

Probably the most obvious of tips, it the provision of social sharing and social connection buttons. If landing pages provide the value users expect, will they be inspired to share, and if they are, can they?

Sharing of a page is different than a click through to your social property (i.e., Facebook page or Twitter stream), and should be a key component on most landing pages, with the caveat of audience vs. social platform.

For pages with images, is there an option to share on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter? For business text content, is LinkedIn an option? Social signals are imperative in closing the loop on user intent satisfaction, demonstrating to both users and search engines an endorsement of your content.

8. Ultimately, can users find the banana?

Seth Godin published a book a few years ago called "The Big Red Fez" – rather than repeat all the key concepts, I can state simply is it's all about bananas – users finding what they need from obvious choices. There's an excellent synopsis here.

I love Helen's Cycles, great stores and service. But visit their website and you're presented with way too many choices (red) and a certain level of confusion (green). The green element talks about Helmets, Cycling Essentials and Clothing"¦ but offers no way to click or a link to relevant content.

Give your users clear navigation to improve consistent engagement and "banana-discovery."

Measurement

The final two tips cover justification through measurement of metrics that matter.

9. Have you segmented traffic by topics?

Google Analytics offers segmentation by query topics through Analytics filters (beyond the scope of this article but more information can be found here) or by exporting data and consolidating offline in Excel.

Custom segments allow you to monitor performance across keyword query topics, understand topic traffic and conversion trends, and leverage this data to identify the key landing pages for each topic.

10. Are you tracking first click queries for optimized pages?

Although in an ideal scenario the page you optimize will attract the keyword queries you'd expect, custom segments by topic also offer up insights into competing pages (entry pages in your site that compete against each other), highlighting opportunities to consolidate similar pages, mitigating potential thin content issues and improving topic relevance on merged pages.

Utilize custom segments, organic traffic keyword query reports, together with landing page association to provide insights into potentially competing pages.

Music genre site, with custom "rock music' topic filter applied, highlights the anomaly of "type of rock music" query being mapped to an Anime genre page. Worth investigating why?

Summary

Landing pages have historically been the domain of paid search marketers seeking improved conversion rates.

User experience, site usability, and onsite engagement have become more important for major search engines in their assessment of a site's "rankability", so SEO practitioners need to ensure SEO landing pages have CRED as a key to SEO success.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2261323/10-Killer-SEO-Landing-Page-Tips?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=10%20Killer%20SEO%20Landing%20Page%20Tips&utm_campaign=04%2F15%2F13%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

It Doesn't Matter What You Call Your Online Strategy!

Kevin Gibbons, November 9, 20128 Comments

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One thing I've always found surprising is the amount of strong opinions we seem to have around the nomenclature of SEO/SEM/content marketing, etc within the industry.

I ran a poll a while back asking what the best term to use was - content marketing or inbound marketing. This generated lots of responses and opinions:

It's always interesting to see the results, but when you think about it - does it actually matter?

Is looking at each individual channel really the best way to go?

1. SEO: If all you do is optimize a website for search engines, you'll probably have the most finely-tuned website with no links and no rankings on the internet. Congratulations! However, the SEO role obviously involves a lot more than just optimization, link reputation clearly plays a large role in 2012, which is very difficult to do without content/social/PR.
2. Search Marketing: Yes, you're marketing yourself to generate more search traffic online - but surely there's more to it than that that adds to the mix? For example, converting that traffic into customers, or engaging via social channels maybe?
3. Link Building: You're building links - what about the quality/relevancy of these links? And how does that affect your overall search strategy? On its own it doesn’t mean anything of value.
4. PPC: Do you optimize your paid search campaigns to pay for each click? Of course not – you want to maximize the revenue from your campaign. That requires content, call-to-action, email marketing campaigns, conversion rate optimization etc.
5. Content Marketing: I'm clearly more of a fan of this term than others, but if all you just focus on marketing great content - without any SEO knowledge or social media expertise, you're definitely missing the bigger picture.
6. Inbound Marketing: Likewise, there's much more to the content you create than the links that it produces. And this mixes in with your social and search strategies of course.
7. Social Media: Marketing yourself on social media without great content to share is far more likely to just be shouting, not that anyone will listen.
8. Conversion Rate Optimization: Again you could have the most finally-tuned website for generating sales, but no traffic!

I could go on, but you get the point!

And like anything, you can't just trust a single metric on its own - it doesn't matter what it is. If it's business, you can't judge performance by looking at revenue without considering profit. In sport, you can't just look at games won, without games lost etc…

Sticking it All Together = Marketing Gold!

Wouldn't it make more sense to integrate all of this together? That way you'll have an optimized website, a strong/natural link profile, it generates targeted traffic from keywords (both organically and paid), it's highly-converting and attracts new visits via social content, whilst engaging with customers. That sounds much more effective surely?!

I recently wrote about the need to ditch the silos when building a team.

For the best strategies you need to get everyone all involved from day one and get them working together - then they can all help each other out. I really like an analogy from Greg Boser, who said that it's like a Chinese food court - you just ending taking bits of each without worrying where they come from, and it probably doesn't work very well together!

So What Should we Call it?

Some people dislike the term "content marketing", even more seem to dislike "inbound marketing" - largely because they're both new and maybe considered buzzwords. Yet others are saying "SEO" isn't the most accurate name to use anymore either (which feels a bit like we're going round in circles, SEO was once a buzzword too!).

I think there's a strong argument that SEO has grown up a lot recently and that you no longer need to just specialize in search to succeed in Google. That doesn't mean SEOs can't adapt and involve social/content into their strategies though.

Likewise, for the reasons above - there are also arguments that any of the other suggested replacements are flawed too. There are just too many factors to consider in a modern online strategy. Perhaps we should just use an old term instead? Marketing seems to have worked pretty well for a while now!

But let's be honest - who really cares?

Do Your Clients Care What it's Called? No, You Take a Budget and Spend it Where it Works Best!

And that's the way it should be - CMOs are judged on generating revenue from their marketing budgets. What it's called when they report this is irrelevant. And if you look at the reasons above, it's clear that if you have an integrated search strategy - the whole is going to be much greater than the sum of all parts.

So you can focus on getting great results - and leave your competitors to argue semantics.

Do You Think it Makes a Difference?

I don't want to turn this post into a debate on what it's called - that's not what it's about. But do you think the name of your marketing activity makes a difference? And does that affect your day-to-day strategy?

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2223233/It-Doesnt-Matter-What-You-Call-Your-Online-Strategy?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=It%20Doesn%27t%20Matter%20What%20You%20Call%20Your%20Online%20Strategy%21&utm_campaign=11%2F09%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

The Hope of a Link: Mashable Content Analysis

October 29th, 2012 - Posted by Kate Morris to Content & Blogging

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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.

The holy grail: A link from Mashable. 

Don't kid yourself. We all want one. They are a content powerhouse with a mind-blowing community. Moz has that type of community, but Mashable touches on everything from kittens to major trends in the economy and technology. If it's interesting to the Internet community, they'll publish a about it. Their domain authority and homepage authority is a whopping 96. Of course we all want a link. 

The first thing any reputable SEO would tell you is that you need two things before you can even begin hoping for a link from Mashable:

1. Great content - it has to be beyond good by this point, it must be great
2. A relationship with Mashable

I'm not going to claim that those two things are absolutely necessary, but I would agrue that you need to know more about Mashable before you go pitching your content to them. Well, I've done some of that for you, and today I'll teach you how to do it for other sites as well. This is Advanced Content Analysis ... starting ... now.

The Brain Child

The idea to do Advanced Content Analysis on Mashable came from a conversation Carson Ward and I had one day about getting a link from them. He made the quip that all you really need to do is write a post along the lines of "7 Ways to Do X." I laughed because it's sort of true (list posts do well), but then asked myself:

"How many of Mashable's posts are lists?"

Once I dug into how to get the titles of as many posts as possible, I realized just how much more data was available and how much deeper the analysis could really go. 

Data Process

I thought I'd pull six months of Mashable posts; that is, until I started pulling the data and realized they put out almost two thousand posts a month. TWO THOUSAND. Holy content, Batman. Two thousand posts and one month was plenty for my analysis. If anyone wants to do more, I'd love to hear about six months of data.

I used three tools to pull the data necessary for analysis: ImportXML for Google Docs, SEOTools for Excel, and Microsoft Excel.

ImportXML

To gather the post titles, I used ImportXML for Google Docs. The linked guide will tell you more than I ever could about how to scrape content from a site using ImportXML. For those that are curious, I've included the formulas I used for Mashable. If you just want to see the forumlas in action, here is a document that is read-only for you to investigate. 

The first important part is the page to scrape. You want to get to the blog/site's archive pages. For Mashable, you can access them by hitting "next" on their homepage. This gives us the page to scrape. A1 below is where you input the page number you want to scrape. This forumla is cell A2 for me -- you'll need to know that in a minute.

=CONCATENATE("http://mashable.com/page/",A1,"/") 

Below that, you can complete the import. These three take up A3, B3, and C3. As previously mentioned, once I pulled the titles, I figured I'd just keep going. The URL is important for the things you can pull using SEOTools, so be sure to add that one. The date and comment number was important for in-depth analysis. The number of comments along with social metrics are the only real "success" metrics you can pull externally. I mean, unless Mashable wants to share the traffic numbers with me for each of the posts ... no? Dang. 

Titles: =importxml(A2,"//a[@class='headline']")
Post URL: =importxml(A2,"//a[@class='headline']/@href") (muy importante) 
Date, Author, Comment Count: =importxml(A2,"//p[@class='byline clearfix reviewer vcard meta']")

Side Note: Dear tech guys and gals at Mashable, sorry, I crawled tons, and others might, too. Though that is probably like .001% of your server traffic. :)

From here, you simply copy and paste into an Excel sheet, and keep going (change the page number in A1) until you get the number of posts you want. 

SEOTools

This is my new favorite tools for a number of reasons, not least of which is the ability to use Regex in Excel. Are you excited, too? Well, it can also return social metrics using a URL, return the canonical URL, and so much more. If you haven't downloaded it, please do. And donate. This thing is worth it. 

Alright, so I promise not to bore you, but I used SEOtools to do a few things:

1. Download the Facebook shares (Twitter wasn't being nice when I tried, but it's possible)
2. Return True/False if the post title included markers like Infographic or Video. Mashable is nice and gives us a marker in the title if the post is about something big like that. 
3. Return True/False if the post title included a number. More on this later. 

Microsoft Excel

This section is all in Excel. I did one more thing and checked to see what day of the week the post was made live. That's made simple with a formula like this: 

=TEXT(WEEKDAY([@Date]), "ddd")

The [@Date] references the cell in the table with the date. 

Content Analysis

Now I have the data, it's time to learn some stuff about Mashable and their content. After de-duplication (they post weekly recaps of videos, etc.), I analyzed 1,159 posts. Below is a look at the content types from what I could tell. Other includes smaller types like Audio and just plain text posts. 

It looks like in the last month Mashable has preferred videos over infographics, which is something to keep in mind when deciding what content to develop and pitch. But this is just in terms of the number of posts. We have answered our original first question: how many of Mashable's posts are lists? 13% in the last month (in the chart above I am referring to "# Posts"). Nothing to cough at, but not as many as Carson and I figured. But what about performance of these posts? What days are they posted? And for that matter what about video and infographic posts? On to dataland we go.

Note: the "other" category includes all other posts that are not lists, or are something different as noted in the title of the post. Mashable has a habit of marking posts with [MODIFIER] which I used to break these categories down. All other are smaller tags and any other "regular" posts. 

Lists, Infographics, and Video Posts -- Oh My!

How well do they perform? I'm picking on these because they are the content types that we all harp on so much. The results for comments on the post types and Facebook metrics. The most suprising find here is that while video posts have more shares and comments, there is a higher number of list posts. I think this has more to do with traffic and brand building than actual engagement. I theorize that if we could see average unique visitors to these posts, that lists would have a much higher view rate. Reason: people are lazy and just want to skim for data. Lists work well because they are easy to skim and give people information in just a few seconds. One day I'd love to see a study in which Mashable looked at the new visitors from a list post and watched how often they came back to Mashable, and compare that to other post types. THAT would be fascinating. 

Now to the more fun stuff - days of the week. This has little consequence in my book, but it's fun to look at. 

Above is the average for the site overall in the last 30 days. Fun factoids: 

• Mashable posts less on the weekends, but the audience is more active in comments and sharing. Weekend numbers are similar to Tuesdays. Tuesday is apparently the day that Mashable audience members are bored at work. But more likely, there are just fewer posts those days. Averages run higher when you have a smaller base. 
• Monday is the big post day. No surprise to me there. 
• Wednesday and Thursday are when intereaction drops off. 

What about by post type? How many are posted on each day? It turns out that the videos and lists are posted more on Mondays, and infographics on Wednesdays. Why do you think this happens? I have my theory, but I'd love to hear yours on this one. 

How did these content types perform per day? Let's just look at the "lists" category for this part as we are getting pretty deep, and this post was originally about lists. 

Remember my theory on boredom on Tuesdays? *points like Vanna White at the chart above* See?!?!?!? The count of total shares and comments back my theory up. Even though there are fewer posts on Tuesdays, they got more interactions on average. Huh. Maybe this is why we post on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Distilled. Will and Duncan are smart cookies. (No, really, I doubt that had a ton to do with it, but Will or Duncan can correct me later.)

Final Thoughts

• Content Analysis is much easier with tools like ImportXML and SEOTools for Excel.
• You should consider doing this with the content on your blog or a competitor. What's really working for them? Back up your analysis with hard core numbers of interaction with the audience, not just what you see them doing. Don't get inspiration (see I didn't say copying?) from something that isn't working. 
• Post awesome stuff on Tuesday.
• Develop great videos for Mashable, as infographics are on the way out. 
• List posts get attention, but not as much interaction. 

What else did I miss? This isn't fully scientific, but it is fun and gives us much more data to help make decisions than we might have had before. Take everything above with a grain of salt, pull your own numbers, and see for yourself. 

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-hope-of-a-link-mashable-content-analysis