iSmart Communications Blog

Reflections on the Sales Skills Bootcamp with David Weinhaus and Aaron Soh

The 3-month training by Mr. David Weinhaus and Mr. Aaron Soh of HubSpot during the period of Nov. 2017 to Jan. 2018 was quite an unforgettable experience.

Taking the first Sales Lions Training with Mr. Dan Tyre in the middle of 2017 was an eye-opener for me. The focus was on making a “warm” Connect Call to a prospect to build some rapport with him or her. It was an exciting experience for me to realize that it was actually possible for us to use the telephone to build some relationship with strangers without meeting them physically.

This is a personal blog post from our director, Stanley Mak. He was enrolled in HubSpot’s Sales Lions training program, conducted by HubSpot’s international sales trainer, Dan Tyre.  

Inbound Marketing is still in its infancy in most of the countries in Asia. In view of the extreme popularity  of  WhatsApp and other messaging apps in Asia, I believe that being  able to use the telephone to make connections with prospects and turn them into actual sales is a very valuable skill.

There seems to be a perception that SEO requires some technical expertise, and since it is technical, IT can just do the work. While there is a technical component to SEO, it requires way more than just technical chops, so I’d think long and hard before handing an entire SEO project to IT or a web designer.

In the spring of 2015, Google had an algorithm update called “Mobilegeddon,” which expanded Google’s use of mobile- friendliness as a ranking signal. The update rewards mobile-friendly websites, and penalizes those that aren’t fully optimized for mobile in mobile search results. 

Though it may seem like an impossible feat to beat out Wikipedia for Google’s answer box spot, it’s completely doable.

See the image below as an example of a website that beats Wikipedia because it created content that was more highly relevant. The example shows a list-based post when I search “how to blog.” This list-based option came up first because it is the most digestible piece of information Google could find on this topic.

For a long time, it was okay to neglect the images on your website and still rank without using alt text and image title names to boost your page relevance. However, on-page SEO is more important than ever now, so excluding images will prevent your website’s SEO from being the best it can be. 

Search engines cannot see images on websites, so it is important to give the image an alt text and relevant title name to ensure Google knows what the image is about. By not creating this text, you lose a huge opportunity to be as visible as possible online.

Short answer: Yes, they will!

Just like Santa Claus knows if you’ve been good or bad. Just like the Tooth Fairy knows when you’ve lost a tooth. Just like your parents can sense when you’ve missed your curfew.

What is an HTTPS Website?

“HTTPS websites come with SSL, which is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private.”

Source: SSL.com

The Question: Is having HTTPS important for your SEO Ranking?

 In the past, building as many links as possible without analyzing the linking domain was how SEO typically worked. By doing this, your website was sure to rank higher in Google search results.

Building links is still a very important part of SEO ranking factors.  

It is among the top five most important ranking factors, according to a correlational study on ranking factors by Searchmetrics, which is a company that provides SEO analytics and reporting tools for large enterprises. But you must build links in a different manner than what you used to do in the past.

How Does Google Work?

“When you do a Google search, you aren’t actually searching the web. You’re searching Google’s index of the web, or at least as much of it as we can find.

We do this with software programs called spiders. Spiders start by fetching a few web pages, then they follow the links on those pages and fetch the pages they point to; and follow all the links on those pages, and fetch the pages they link to, and so on, until we’ve indexed a pretty big chunk of the web; many billions of pages stored on thousands of machines.”

While a brand new site can submit its URL to Google directly, a search engine like Google can still index your site without you submitting it.”

- Matt Cutts in Lesson 1.3 of How Search Works. Watch the video here.

Are LinkedIn Groups effective for promoting your business?

My short answer is 'yes' and here's why...

LinkedIn Groups are virtual meeting rooms (or forums) where people with similar interests can post and hold conversations around topics they want to share or learn more about.

For those of you who have been leveraging LinkedIn Groups for a while, you may be aware that LinkedIn recently made some pretty big changes. Groups are now private and membership must be approved (though once you're in, your conversations no longer require moderation), and there is no longer a promotions tab or subgroups.

The use of social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter offers instant visibility for your brand, helping you to not only accelerate brand awareness, but also disseminate key brand messages among your target audience.

We propose to set up, manage, monitor and report on your social media profiles on an ongoing basis.

As part of our management of the social media profiles, we will engage in the following activities: