Above the Fold Part 4 - Aggressive Linking

Linking for SEO Results

Ok, so now that you have completed part 1-3, established keywords, focused on content and structure and checked your work, now the long arduous road begins:  linking.  Where and how?  Below is a quick guide to linking and what works:

1. Blogs - If you have not put blogging into your daily routine, get it there.  When I say blogging, I not only mean writing your own posts, but also participating in discussions that surround your product and industry, and placing content specific links back to your site.  In part 5 I will discuss an overview of creating a blog network to help in this area.  If you already have a blog, create a links module with some of your core keywords back to specific site content.
2. Press Releases - Most of the major press release houses now allow the creation of dedicated links, release embedded links as well as highlighted links within their interfaces.  This is a great way to get your information on the street, and also provide keyword-based links back to the site.
3. Partners - in the business to business world, your partners can be a phenomenal linking resource.  Don't be shy about asking for specific keyword links back to your site to be placed on their web site.

The steps above cannot just be done once, you need to constantly link, and get others in your organization to participate.  The more the better.  Encourage employees to create their own blogs, and contextually link back to home base.

iPad 2 Apps for Sales and Marketing

I have had my new iPad 2 for almost a week now.  I wanted to purchase it prior to my trip to Australia, and needed to get it loaded with apps.  I am amazed at how it has simplified my morning rituals, especially with news and all my feeds.  Below are some apps I would absolutely recommend for any sales or marketing individual:

1. Flipboard - oh my goodness.  Every morning I had gone through a ritual, reading all my feeds from Google Reader, hitting tech news sites, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Flipboard was recommended from numerous sites, and it is absolutely fantastic.  The app provides a tiled, "flipable" interface for all your information sources, and presents them in a newspaper like fashion, making it a breeze to get your morning briefing quickly.
2. HootSuite - for those who want a quick and easy way to distribute posts, tweets, etc, this is a must have.  With one app you can write a single post, and send to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.  I find it a necessity, as I have multiple accounts on some social networks, and it makes it oh so easy to manage.
3. Dropbox - It really amazes me how pervasive this app's functionality is throughout other apps.  If you want centralized cloud storage that is included as a save destination in just about every app, this is the way to go.
4. Keynote - I bought the whole apple office suite, including Keynote, Numbers and Pages, and it saved my rear today.  I had left my power converter in my room, and arrived at my business partner's office with no way to run my laptop.  I opened up the iPad, browsed to my Dropbox, and opened my training presentation.  Fortunately for me, I had an iPad to VGA cable to run my presentation all on the iPad using Keynote.
5. ThinkBook - what a great organizational tool.  ThinkBook provides a fantastic and intuitive interface to organize notes, todos, projects, questions, etc.  It also allows dashboard creation, with a master list of todos or questions as a reference based on tags.  And it integrates with...Dropbox :)
6. Notability - one of the things that most excited me about the iPad is that i could get rid of my Journals.  For years i have carried around a "book of life" with all my meeting and call notes, todos, etc.  Notability, along with my stylus now gives me a digital notepad, and it integrates with...Dropbox.
7. WorldClock - having distributors in 6 separate areas of the world is always a challenge, and add to that traveling and changing time zones.  This app lets me know when I can make that call with Skype.

This is my short list, and I have already been using these apps religiously from day one.  If anyone has any others, please comment and let me know.

Is SEO Really Necessary?

I just read a popular discussion within an executive group on LinkedIn focused on Sales and Marketing.  The entire discussion was about SEO, initiatives and strategy.  Some of the comments were quite interesting:

“I don’t believe SEO will drive 'leads and profits' for any and every industry.” 

“SEO is not for all industries”

There was entire section of the discussion where folks went back and forth on the pertinence of SEO, and how certain industries just do not benefit.  The primary example was Berkshire Hathaway, who was used as an example over and over. 

My initial argument and post was below:

Obviously as sales people, we want our SEO efforts to drive leads, and ultimately revenue. But so many SEO initiatives run right out of the gate with that as the immediate goal, day one (damn sales people are impatient ;) ). I see so many companies hire “I can get you to the top in 5 days” guys we are so familiar with. SEO should be a broad reaching program based on content, that if done correctly, can help you:

1. Shape your market and industry attitudes
2. Establish your organization as a thought leader
3. Ultimately drive people to your site and produce high quality leads

It took our company quite a while to get to the top 10, but we took a slow and calculated approach designed to shape certain niches of our industry with defined and specific content for our target markets, and the results have been fantastic.

I disagree that it is not pertinent in all industries. All organizations can benefit from the above, regardless of industry.

I woke up this morning, and began to think about my post topic, and decided to rethink my post.  I started with a look at the Berkshire Hathaway site:

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

I started laughing…it looks like my first site I built back in the Day.  But it got me thinking.  Does a company that is a massive owner of all different types of businesses really need an SEO optimized site, or content for that matter.

So, being the informed investor I am, I logged into my ETrade account and did some research.  I found that the analyst community is just hammering the company. The company is rated at Hold, Poor, Neutral,   Negative, etc.  Could Berkshire Hathaway benefit from a massive PR overhaul, starting with their site? What would be the direction and strategy?

Thoughts?