“There Is Nothing In This World To Fear, But Change.”

WRONG!

Change is necessary. Change is beneficial.

CHANGE IS THE FUTURE.

Why do we say all this? We live in a world that undergoes drastic transitions with each ticking second.

In business, you need to stay updated and in line with the latest trends. To stay on top, you need to embrace change ahead of your competition. We know, to stay on top you need to stay updated. Why?

SEO’S have changed the digital marketing strategies ever since renowned search engines like YAHOO, Google, Bing, etc. changed their algorithms to favour a much more AI perspective.

Google’s announcement of the use of Rank Brain, as their artificial intelligence system aids in finding pages that don’t have the exact keywords mentioned in the search query.

In short, multiple factors now determine SERP, which makes the conventional ones such as keyword density, linking, and various other norms outdated.

CHANGE, get it? They did, so why can’t you?

Yet, not everyone stays updated and some prefer relying on age-old SEO tactics that were once or sometimes never a success. Hence, they falter from what was once a successful venture during one time, to an abysmal debacle.

The reputed British Broadcast Corporation, BBC was slapped with a penalty in the year 2013 for having unnatural links pointing towards a particular webpage.

In February 2011, Forbes.com was caught in the act of selling links on its own website, without a second thought of adding ‘no follow’ attribute.

 

You certainly don’t want that, do you?

 

Wrong SEO strategies prove to be a bane than a boon, and rightly so, they need to be avoided at all costs.

So which ones are outdated; how do you know which ones to stay away from and if there’s a diamond in the haystack, should you embrace them? Will it actually helpful?

 

 1. Plagiarism:

There’s this huge misnomer in everyone’s mind that replicating the traits of successful companies or anything for that matter, guarantees success.

Nope.

While it’s good to owe inspiration from either the structure of the page or even the contextual combinations, blatant plagiarism is a huge demeanour.

No one wants to see the same thing twice.

Visitors who notice them jump to the conclusion that the webpage (propagating it to the business itself) isn’t inventive enough, and lacks knowledge, and prone to neglect.

 

 2. 3^rd party “Paid” Links

What are you actually paying for?

Matt Cutts says “The vast majority of the time things are incredibly clear: people are paying money outright for links.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s abundantly clear that these are links that are being bought and paid and sold and all that sort of stuff.”

Not only is it like taking the easiest route, these links may possess a stagnant structure that may have been replicated countless times.

Google and various other search engines have always been on the lookout for such stagnancy and they remove quite a few of them too.

Google banned Google Japan from buying paid links.

Now isn’t that enough to stop you?

 

3. Keyword Stuffing :

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the box still underuse. Not for anything good, at least.

So obviously, for your content to be recognized by the search engine the keywords need to stand out. Everyone knows that.

But stuffing a hundred keywords or so into it?

Not only is it unnatural, but it also hinders a certain level of user-friendliness, making it a     viable technique to actually lose customers than anything more. Search Engines don’t like it either and you even stand the chance of being penalized and possibly banned.

It might’ve worked in the past when things were very simple but now, both the search engine algorithm and the visitor’s mindset are different.

How different?

Enough to not fall prey to gimmickry.

 

4. Bots, Spam, Ads, and ClickBaits :

A deadly dozen, to say the least.

Gone were the days when all the content on the web were tailor-made to the needs of the business or the website, and a writer painstakingly sits and writes each and every portion of the text.

With automation and artificial bots come not only the luxuries of having loads of contents prepared by the minute, but also a multitude of problems associated with it.

Why?  Even they go crazy sometimes.

If a certain word repeats all over the content or maybe a similar structure elsewhere was already there, something could smell fishy.

Even if people may miss that, Search Engines do not and it may incur penalties or even less traffic than expected.

Clickbaits take use of flashy yet misleading headlines that would seem to be inviting to the visitor’s eye, particularly to gain traffic through visiting the links and even unknowingly sharing them.

There’s nothing much to say about ads and spam either. Who loves them? Want to make extra money? Improve the content and not resort to stuff like these.

 

5. Cloaking:

Cloaking is merely “sophisticated hiding”.

It’s like presenting a rigged version of the actual webpage such that it satisfies the algorithm of the search engine and hence can be called upon when the visitor searches for the particular keyword.

Doorway pages, there are called which are specially optimized for specific keywords. The page altogether may be entirely different, and may even serve another purpose probably with even questionable content.

Google has banned Cloaking of any form, need I say more?

British Motor Works (BMW) was penalized for cloaking in 2006.

 

6. Article Spinners :

Similar to spam, they were created to produce variants of the same keyword, to establish an alternate version of the same page.

This in turn gave rise to numerous low-quality articles and Search Engine algorithms like Google Hummingbird got updated to further filter out unnecessary variants.

 

7. Spam Comments

Most of the blogs and websites have a dedicated comments section that allows users to post their views on the corresponding content.

However, this was prone to misuse since a lot of bloggers put website links as well, along with the comments – a genuinely false move to induce traffic.

More or less- SPAM.

 

8. Automated Link Building:

Marketers took use of generic software that built links that were embedded in blogs, comments sections, forums etc. They would mostly be redirected to numerous articles that were generally very poorly written.

An ultimate time waster, especially since they might seem to contain information we think we might actually need but often end up as a huge disappointment.

Rap Genius, the famous lyrics-based site fell prey to Automated link building; they faced consequences from Google for allowing users to post links alongside lyrics content resulting in an unnatural hike in traffic.

 

9. Interlinking Websites :

The wrong thing here would be striking the perfect balance between what’s useful and what’s abuse.

Many websites require interlinking them with others for a steady flow of information and even to redirect the user according to their wish.

The problem lies in its misuse. In most cases, arrays of unwanted websites are interlinked of which none might be relevant.

The Google AI has the skill to notice patterns within interlinking spam for its use and it efficiently curbs the rise in low content irrelevant links.

 

10. Short /Thin form Content:

Most of the websites used to get away with this technique where a short word pertaining to nothing specific other than the use of the same word 2-3 times would allow search traffic for their site.

The content may be unrelated to the topic and may not even have other words at all.

 

11. Link and Article Directories :

The Panda Update for Google’s AI bought to a close, the misuse of these directories which basically allowed websites to be categorized based on the needs of the user.

However, misuse crept in especially due to the simplicity of installing the software which powers them, allowing them to create multiple irrelevant links.

Article Directories were even worse.  They were rewritten and became bloated with low-quality content.

 

12. Exact Match Domains :

Matching the domain with the exact keyword phrase allowed microsites such as these to rank up higher than the actual domain for multiple days.

 

13. Paid/ Spammy Guest Blogging

This went out of hand mainly due to its uncontrollable nature.

 

While guest articles were featured on multiple websites, these “guests” took shape of marketers who posted links of completely unrelated subjects along with the content.

A wide flurry of such tactics furthered the need to retrospectively control the content before posting it on the website, and with AI alterations they were taken to their traditional grassroots, favoring the actual content developers.

 

 14. Online Press Releases :

Wannabe website services mimic real journalists by shooting out online press releases with the desire to be scraped up by other websites to induce traffic for their own venture.

Not only is it a genuine time waster, but these releases would also be sold out by sub-standard websites with less visibility that doesn’t offer anything to the client sites which buy them as well.

 

It’s a known fact that Google loathes to confirm any kind of its search engine updates, so it’s always a guess-and-play strategy until there’s an official announcement.

While dealing with SEO marketing, there are some things about which Google has been constant throughout all of its updates, like, spammy links, low-quality content, keyword stuffing, over-optimized anchor text, etc.

Although page content quality is a necessity to remain on the web now, that’s not going to give you page rankings unless you build quality links.

Google’s webmaster guideline is getting strict day by day and this why you need to change your game-plan if you want to stay longer in the game.

Google’s search engine updates have now even started to look after things like the mobile-friendliness of your site, and the fact that improving UX will also increase your page rankings says a lot about how

Google is making it hard for SEO to work on. You need to put in efforts to get in page rankings through other ways too.

As we’re witnessing revolutionizing changes in the mobile industry day by day, mobile phones are proving sufficient in all forms when the user is away from his desk.

The web is now rapidly being optimized for the mobile view, and you should do it too before you start losing mobile users. Just by keeping few factors in mind you can increase your customer to a wide extent, increase your page speed, fix mobile-friendly errors present on your site.

Figure 1:

 

However, the Google updates have never stopped the search engine marketers from developing ways to rank up their pages. Link building is coming up as the most important skill in SEO and that’s why you need to master it now. In this post, I’ll be going in brief through all the possible link-building strategies one should know by now.

 

What are the most effective link-building strategies of 2017?

 

1. Create Linkable Assets

Content Marketing is the new Link Building!

This is one of the oldest techniques being used even before SEO came into being. No content is perfect and you can always approach your audience with better, fresh, and updated content.

Come up with content that would appeal to your audience so that you could generate links.

Pretend you’re an online seller of body-building supplements, for example. For your business, a typical linkable asset could be something like a blog post about 10 side effects to be aware of while taking supplements.

Clearly, it offers valuable insight to your readers and displays your concern towards them without getting too self-promoting. You might as well catch the attention of other websites when they come across your post and if your content is great, that they will gladly post it on their website.

Resource guides, infographics, tutorials, visual content, etc. can serve as linkable assets that fetch you the quality links you want for building a great link profile.

 

2. “Ask the Experts”, Panels, Interviews

Whatever industry you belong to, you can always create these types of posts. Frankly speaking, experts love to be featured on the web because even they need to create an audience for themselves and set up a reputation. With these, you are helping them as much as you’re benefitting yourself.

The first task in the line would be to structure a list of experts in your field of business.

According to their level of comfort-ability, you can outline a panel discussion, interviews, “ask the experts, or an expert round-up on any particular issue.

Sketch ideas for content, and then put together the group of experts suitable to answer the topics in your content.

The primary benefit from these posts is that you’re getting multiple links instantly because all the experts will share your post on their websites, which will again give you immediate access to their audience.

Once you are ready with your content, always make a clear plan about how to promote your post later. Remember these are busy people you will be dealing with, so keep in mind that you might have to remind them a few times before they take action on your content.

 

3. Unlinked Brand Mentions

There must’ve been times where you’d forgotten to give a link back while mentioning a particular product/service in your posts.

And chances are that if you have been online for some time, there could be many other websites that might have mentioned you in a post or article and forgotten to give a link, there’s simply no reason why you shouldn’t have a link back.

You can always use tools like Google Alerts, Mention.com, and Moz to keep a track of such unaccredited mentions. You can reach out to the website or individual whenever you get an alert for your mentions and turn those mentions into links. If you keep doing this for a good period of time, these mentions can cumulate into a massive boost to your page.

 

4. Broken Link Building

There must be pages on your website which you’d have taken down or have shifted to a different URL. While you’re aware of this, it could be possible that there must be sites that’d be still linking to your older links; which are now 404 probably, if I’m not mistaken.

Since users are getting a 404 now, you’re losing them within clicks.  Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz to find those broken links on your website and, send the updated link to the webmasters.

Another technique you could also do is, find broken links of your competitors by scanning their websites in Ahrefs. Since those pages are long dead, you could probably rebuild similar pages on your website and reach out to people who are still linking to those old dead pages, with your fresh and updated pages on similar content.

You will be surprised to notice, how many people will happy to replace those old links with yours, and thank you for it.

 

5. Snatch Links from Lower Quality Content

This is one of the steps from the Skyscraper Technique, which I’ll tell you about later in the post. When you’re out there searching for ways to build links, it’s often right under the nose.

If you’re aware of the competitors in your field, go through the posts where they’ve been mentioned on the internet. When you go through the content, try to spot instances where you think you’ve got a better content on your blog/website.

Let’s say you’re browsing blog posts about how to make soap at home, and you end up on a super boring 400-word blog post about the soap industry and whatnot. If you already have a crazy insane post on this exact topic, ping the webmaster and pitch your content.

Since you have a better and thorough resource they’ll definitely link to your post, because they have clearly demonstrated a liking for such posts in the past, and you are only offering them something better.

 

6. Create Educational Resources

Backlinks from .edu domains are a serious ranking boost, right? Well, it’s not that hard to get them as it sounds.

Educational resources result in high-quality links all the time. Tutorials, extensive how-to guides, manuals or other contents that teach students something valuable instead of promoting your brand are very well appreciated and prove valuable to the users at the same time.

These days most universities have resource pages, with links to different sites, for their students and faculties.

Pretend you’re an event planner, for example. You could structure an insightful guide explaining the dos and don’ts while organizing a small-scale event/fest in the University.

Then pitch your content to the universities and spread the guide among students. If the university lists it in their resources, there you have earned yourself an .edu link, and most importantly you’ll end up getting tons of new audience and potential clients for your business – Thanks to your newfound glory!

 

7. Scholarship Opportunities

It must be clear by now how important Edu links are in terms of boosting your page rankings. Although it might not be clear how to get it, it is easier than the normal convention. If you can create something to which universities might like to link, you’re golden.

Here’s how it works: Build a page on your website describing the scholarship (like this one), with necessary information like where to apply, etc. When you’re ready with the scholarship page, it’s time to find the Universities that usually Link to Scholarships.

You can manually search or use inurl:.edu “scholarships” as well. When you come across a scholarship page that seems like a good fit, approach them with your requirement list for the scholarship. Do not forget to give them an estimate of the # of scholarships you have.

 

8. Visual Assets

Visual assets like images, diagrams, infographics, charts, and other visual-oriented pieces of content are proven ways to gain attention from your users. Mostly it is because visual content is easier to grasp as they produce quick info on the topic.

Visuals assets are really easy to link to. For example, when you publish a graph on your site, you get a link anytime someone shares that graph on their site. This powerful “share my infographic and link to me when you do” relationship simply doesn’t go well for text-based content.

 

9. List Posts

List posts, or listicals, are a numbered list of techniques, tips, reasons, myths…or just anything on a particular topic. Again, list posts are liked by users as well as bloggers.

List posts have come across as on the most valuable assets now. In fact, after analyzing 1 million articles, it was discovered that list posts generated more backlinks than any other content formats, and even outperformed quizzes, videos, and infographics.

 

10. In-Depth Ultimate Guides

These in-depth ultimate guides are comprehensive resources that cover everything one should know on a given topic and a little bit extra around it. Ultimate guides have an insane amount of information in one place. This is why it is loved by the readers who are out there in search of answers.

11. Email Outreach

Link building has now moved from the comments section to personal inbox now and this is why it’s getting easier and convenient day by day. The sooner you grasp that link building is not limited to just the internet anymore, the better for you.

The first step of any email outreach is targeting the right people. And for that, you need to use tools available on Ahrefs and Buzzstream, and other websites built for SEOs. Use hunter.io or anymailfinder.com for getting the emails of your webmasters from their posts/pages.

Find the people who’d probably like to link to your post and then comes the important task. If you don’t want to end up in the trash of your target webmasters, personalize your email as much as possible, but don’t forget to lose the corporate touch. Most importantly, build scripts for email but again, don’t forget to personalize.

 

12. Resource Page Link Building

Resource pages are like yellow pages on the internet. They exist solely for the purpose of putting all the web pages on one topic in a single place. This is why they make the perfect spots for link building.

One simple way to search for resource pages would be: “Keyword” + inurl:links

The audience you gain on resource pages are genuine, primarily because this is the audience that is trying really hard to grasp the topic, and secondary there is no “buy now” button on the resource pages which makes them completely trustworthy.

 

13. The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is the most awesome of all the techniques devised ever. In this technique, you can steal audience from right under the nose of your competitors. How?

 

Step 1: Find the outdated pages on your competitor’s website.

Step 2: Create updated and extensive content on these topics and outreach to the webmasters who’ve linked to the outdated posts from your competitor’s website.

Eventually, it’s content that matters, and if you’ve managed to create something better, people will link to it.

 

14. Give Testimonials

Everyone providing any kind of product/service on the web loves to display testimonials. So, if you happen to use a service/ product that you love, try sending the owners a testimonial.

Just add subtly that if they want to display the testimonial on their posts, they can do that as well. Most people would take the offer and probably boast about their new review to their Social Following as well, letting you leverage some of their followers who see your brand.

 

15. Blogger Reviews

If you’re someone dealing in a software product, consulting service, information product, or anything for that matter, you have a golden opportunity to turn that into high-quality backlinks.

There’s a simple trick here, offer your product to bloggers and in return ask them for reviews. If you’re charging a particular fee for the product, waive it off for the blogger and they’ll happily to the rest.

Keep a mild tone and talk about getting mentions on their blog, the rest is self-explanatory. Now, don’t ask them upfront about giving a link/review, which will then violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

 

16. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

There are a million reporters looking out for sources every day and by registering on HARO. When you register yourself as a source, wait until you receive queries from your field of expertise, I’m sure there must be developments in news from your industry often.

All you need to do is, sign up as a source at Helpareporter and thereafter follow the guidelines accordingly. Once your register, you will start receiving emails from HARO with requirements from reports who are actively looking for news sources.

While providing your response to reporters, you have the choice of staying anonymous but obviously, that’s not why you’re there. You will get mentions for your website once the news is published online.

It is one of the best ways to get rich backlinks from authority news sites.

 

17. Submit Your Site to Website Feedback Sites

This is totally off the board, but a source for getting links anyway. There are a lot of sites that are designed to give you feedback on everything that is there on your website.

The thing to note here is that most of these sites will give a link back to your site.

All you need to do now is send your site with a brief description of how you intend to improve it.

 

18. The Moving Man Method

As there is a number of websites growing every day on the web, there are also many websites shutting down every day. The moving man method is all about utilizing the opportunity created thereafter.

You can use Google to find out the shutdown websites by using keywords like these:

your niche + shut down

your niche + closed

your niche + not working

 

The next step would be to find the webmasters linking to these broken/closed links. Personally, I’d suggest you go for the webmasters with higher authority sites first.

When you outreach to the webmasters with an updated and possibly better replacement from your website, they should be glad about it. However, make sure that your content is really good.
Watch it in action in the video below  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVMaSvTVmGI

 

19. Guest Posting Gigs on Twitter

On Twitter, there are sites sharing guest posts on a daily basis. That’s your cue, you can reach out to them through tweets/DM and do a guest post.

Although it is a time taking process, then it is a new source of the untapped audience for you actually. If you succeed at getting few guest-post gigs, you can work around and there’s no end to possibilities.

You can always rely on Twitter to get a constant flow of such new gigs. Few examples for your Twitter hunt could be:

 “your niche” + guest post

“your niche” + guest article

“your niche” + write for us

“your niche” + guest author

 

20. Transcribe Videos

Video transcription is a very new source of building links as the video boom is still new on the web. Hence, this can be used as a flexible link building strategy. In every industry, there are experts who have established a major audience base with their video channels. On the internet today, you’ll find a good number of videos uploaded daily, varying from Webinars, Presentations, Tutorials, Q&A’s,Hangouts or Vlogs (video blogs). You can always associate with these video-makers and generate new traffic and audience for yourself.

Video transcription is another way to make link-worthy content because you are getting original content directly from experts in your field. You can also aquiret links by associating with them as they always provide transcription with their video.

Here’s how to do it: First, search on YouTube for key experts/bloggers, and find videos without transcriptions and ping them that you’d like to make transcriptions. Send them when you’ve it done.

It also helps you stand out from the rest of your competitors as you’re helping the influencers. Whatever relationships you build this way will last longer and give you a permanent audience. You get a targeted audience on your page when influencers share your transcripts.

 

21. Hacking Quora

In recent years, Quora has emerged as a last-end solution platform for everyone on the web. There is major traffic on Quora of people looking for answers to every sort of thing and this is the untapped audience you have right there in front of you.

Here’s how to get referral traffic from Quora:

Look for the threads getting maximum traffic on Quora, using Ahrefs. Put in keywords of your niche and find out relevant threads with good traffic and high rankings. Publish answers to these threads with traffic. You’ll find high-traffic questions with low-quality answers or even without any answers.

The most important factor here is that Quora lets you reference sources in the answers and hence it’s easier to link back to relevant websites. However, keep in mind that you do not go over the top and appear too self-promotional. There’s always the chance of getting blocked/banned from Quora if they ever suspect you constantly promoting any particular thing.

 

22. Build links with blog comments

In this technique, it’s all about utilizing the blog comments on your own blog and outline a list of prospective links.

In most of the blogging mainframes, you’ll find the name, website (if they’ve one) and email address of the commenters. Once these people have commented on your blog, it clearly indicates their liking for your stuff. So, now all you’ve to do is make a list of those commenters who own a blog themselves in the same field as you do.

Run a scrapper to collect the websites of all such prospects and check if you could find any content on their website that could relate to you. If so, start an outreach campaign to build links with their website/blog.

The key thing to keep in mind while outreaching is to personalize your outreach emails. Because always keep in mind, there is a human on the other end of your email.

 

23. “Ranking for Links” Technique

There are millions of blog posts getting published daily on the internet. Bloggers need to put references from different sources to back up their points.

How do they get these sources? On Google, right?

So there is a huge probability that your blog/website could be one of those reference pieces. All you need to do now is rank up your pages containing these pieces, “reference” terms.

Note down a list of topics/keywords from your industry with a high probability of getting cited.

You must probably have content built already on these keywords/topics. In general, these kinds of keywords/topics are usually queries or informational terms. So, first of all, make a list of such queries for your niche.

Next, run these keywords through SEO tools and find the terms with low Keyword Difficulty and high search volumes. Now, all you need to do is, just put together contents around these topics and rank up for them.

If you succeed in ranking for these kinds of “reference” terms, there are chances that you’ll get backlinks on a consistent basis from these bloggers seeking references for their own content.

 

Summing up!

The methods which I’ve mentioned above are tried and tested and are backed up with various case studies. However, in the field of SEO, keep in mind that there are a lot of factors contributing to your page rankings. Even while link building, it is important to have a positive approach and keep attempting unless you reach the top.

Link Building is getting personalized day by day, and I cannot stress more on this. Never lose hope, if you have confidence in your page content, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t outreach to even the top players in your field. As a cautionary step, be wary of spammy links and avoid links from sites with low-trust authority lest you could get reprimanded and lose ranking.

Great! Now you’re ready to hunt. All the best!

If you’ve any doubts or suggestions, feel free to mention those in the comments.

The first impression might be your only chance foray impression.

Almost every business boasts of a website that furthers its reach to the ever-increasing online community. However, not all of them truly prioritize the importance of website performance optimization, which undermines the capabilities of defining the reach of their franchise.

Adding to that, website visitors grow impatient and much more demanding especially with online competition growing by the day.

FEVAD (Federation of E-Commerce and Distance Selling) in 2015 says almost 57% of the internet users require the website to be loaded in 3 seconds or less.

It’s common sense actually, a website that takes a longer time to load will be given the least preference by any user, right?

Ask yourself that question.

Businesses rely heavily on customers, the building blocks of any enterprise and they need to know that the brand favours them. They don’t want to wait.

Unpleasant impressions generate unsatisfactory reviews that spread particularly fast, resulting in losing traffic and most importantly MONEY.

Amazon says a site being 1 second slower may lead to about a $1.6 billion loss a year in sales.

Tech giant Google paid for half a second delay in its loading time with a 20% downturn in traffic.

Time surely is money, isn’t it?

With the internet flooded with websites almost serving similar purposes, the need of the hour would be to strike the perfect balance within your site, which can please the audience, generate traffic as well as serve their purpose.

Everything in this world is subject to change and so, why not websites?

Statistically speaking, a 15.4% increase in download was recorded when Mozilla upped their page speed by almost 2 seconds.

Kinsta says “People prefer fast loading trivial pages rather than slow relevant ones.”

This doesn’t present itself as a huge conundrum at all since you simply need to outpace your competitors to stay on top.

Somebody call Usain Bolt!

HOWEVER! 

You certainly don’t need the Jamaican’s strategies to code a website for you whatsoever, because we have presented a few TIPS AND TRICKS for you to stay ahead of the competition and boost your page amongst the global audience.

You can thank us later.

Here we go:

Implementing all these in one go might be a cumbersome task, so it’s better you go by each step one by one and analyze the difference in loading time.

It’s essential that you do not blatantly copy them for its sake, understand first and then implement.

 

01. Go Minimal

Organize your webpage such that it stays soothing to the eye- as lean as possible. Extra lines, line breaks, images, and other unwanted paraphernalia go down the drain.

Draw inspiration from the homepages of multi-billion dollar companies like  Apple, Audi etc. and analyze their structuring methodology.

I’m sure you’d understand the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism.

 

02. Image Optimization

A picture is essentially worth more than a thousand words and it certainly weighs that much too.

An HTTP Report in 2016 reads “64% of the weight of a webpage lies solely on its images.” That certainly puts things into perspective.

You would’ve noticed too, images take more time. Now I didn’t have to tell you that right?

 So what can you do?!

• Choose to insert pictures only where it actually matters – in JPEG if you prioritize quality and PNG for lesser significant ones like logo etc. BMP’s and TIFF’S are a NO GO!

• Properly sizing the image based on the corresponding requirement inhibits unnecessary junk data formation that burdens the bandwidth.
• Tools like Smushit, JPEG/ PNG Stripper allows effortless optimization at the click of a button.

 

03. CSS Delivery Optimization

Not long ago, the optimum size of a web page was considered to be around 30KB, including all elements like images, text, and so on.

The advent of CSS and JavaScript modernized and broke this 30KB barrier and provided users with much more enriched experience.

By reducing the cycles of reading code by using “shorthand” method, the speed of delivery can be optimized. Basically, just leave redundancy out of the question.

Preferring an external style sheet, which can load before rendering the page to an internal style sheet helps too. It all depends on how the “coding specialist” works his way through.

Reduce complicated scripts and redundant lines of code. Seems fair enough, right?

 

04. Compression techniques

CSS and Javascript can be optimized in more than one way, actually. We discussed the delivery system before.

Now, let’s look at how we can compress them as such.

• Minify the CSS and JavaScript to compress them by subsequent combination of CSS and JavaScript removing blank spaces in between.
• Others include CSS Optimizer, Clean CSS and a lot more.( Hey don’t get lazy Google them and find out)
• GZip compression aids by finding elements of code similar and temporarily exchanges them with shorter characters.

Caution: Using Gzip to compress images, PDF etc may lead to the new file being larger than the previous version; also old browser support may not be guaranteed. (Who uses old stuff too, btw?)

 

05. The “404 Error”

This might be familiar among coders and something they dread as well. It pops up in the case of missing files or pages.

Although it may seem to be simple, a typical 404 error requires about 50-100 MB of memory to get delivered. Seems hard to digest? I said it’s something people dread.

 

Plugins offer numerous ways to check and debug errors of this kind but they stay in the server for too long, which wastes the resources of each corresponding server.

So it’s preferred to use tools like Screaming Frog to crawl, identify error pages and fix them so that they don’t waste too much bandwidth and reduce visitor wastage.

There’s Visual SEO Studio and WildShark SEO Spider Tool, which are freeware alternatives for Screaming Frog.

 

06. Offloading Assets

By this, we mean separating contents like CSS, images, etc from the main server and relying on other servers to load them.

This, in turn, reduces the reliance over a single main server, by offloading it to others thereby reducing the time take to load the page.

Sharing is indeed caring.

We also suggest a few offloading sides for your needs:

• Flikr, Smugmug, 5– Images
• Google Feedburner – RSS
• Surveys – SurveyMonkey, there are just to name a few.

You can also make use of dedicated hosting, which is a little pricier but offers way more speed than shared ones.

 

07. Server Optimizations

Choosing better servers with more RAM and cache sizes would necessarily improve the performance index.

Regular software updates and creating mirror serves helps balance the load between serves allowing faster access times.

 

08. Plugin Usage

Unnecessary plugins not only fall prey to multiple server crashes, and it takes longer time to load.

That “awesome” transition or element you saw in “that” website might not always be the right choice for you.

 Choose your elements wisely.

 

09 Debugging

Coders beware!  You guys would completely relate to this.

Even the smallest mistake, estimating to a semicolon may result in a memory dump problem that may crash both the site and server.

Render codes repeatedly until you’re positive that the lines would not cause issues and using debugging applications like Microsoft Visual Studio would help you in the long run.

 

10. Speed Tests

Multiple platforms offer speed tests that rate the loading speeds of websites and determine how fast your site loads, in comparison with others.

They also help provide necessary information as to where the problems exist and some may even offer advice to change aspects of the site.

Sites like Pingdom, GTmetrix and some to name a few.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just take a deep breath. The Developers at multibillion-dollar businesses like Dropbox, Apple, and Microsoft etc have gone through the same thing.

It’s true, like really!

They make amends even now, with optimizations occurring by the minute. They don’t want to replicate a success mantra, they want to create more.

Of course, for the non-tech savvy people, we introduce you to a platform where you can outsource work related to webpage optimization and a lot more too.

Our company Prime One Global will take care of this and in the end, you can boast of a website catering to the needs of the client as well as the customer.  To learn more, connect with us [email protected] or ping us on our Facebook Page.

 

Before You Go!

All these might sound complicated, but that’s how the websites work. You need to know the technicalities involved in enhanced optimization.

Rounding off with the important points, customers require loading speeds to be at optimum and for that, stick to a minimal design and select the image formats based on their use.

Just think from the perspective of a prospective visitor. Would you wait a long time for a website to load?

Of course not.

Patience still is a virtue these days, but then as we live in a world digitized in almost every aspect within it, to stay ahead we need to embrace change.

Video sharing websites provide users with the opportunity to host premium videos. If you are currently scouting for websites to distribute your content and share it with others, you are in for luck! There are multiple video sharing sites that provide interesting and engaging content for their audience. If you are into video sharing, you might have heard of MegaUpload, which was suddenly shut by the US authorities since it lost a lot of money on copyrighted material.

In your search for a good video sharing site you will realize that while some of the sites are highly popular, they often disappearing since they are either purchased by larger market players or infringe copyright laws and are declared illegal and shut down.

Given below is a comprehensively long list of the best video sharing sites available on the internet. Feel free to visit them all and choose the one that works best for you.

 

YouTube

YouTube has to be the leading video sharing site and deserves the top spot in this list. YouTube is the world’s largest video uploading site and was first developed by Jawed Karim and Steve Chen back in the February of 2005. The website was later bought by Google Inc in November 2006 for a whopping $1.64 billion. The video upload site now functions as a Google subsidiary with apps available for Android, iOS, Windows.

Google has integrated YouTube within the Google+ network and Chrome web browser. Users can now view videos from the site on these platforms as well. YouTube allows registered and unregistered users to watch the videos available on the platform. However, registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos, as long as they don’t violate copyright laws.

The application works on Adobe Flash Player and HTML5. It contains a variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. YouTube has such a wide reach that advertisers are now working on ads solely for the platform.

YouTube doesn’t charge anything for registration, but you can earn from the advertisers via pay-per-click. The amount of money you earn on the number of ads viewed depends on the location of the viewer and the nature of the ads.

 

Netflix

Netflix is slowly becoming a household name when it comes to video streaming. The application was developed by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph back in 1997. The two had worked together for the software company, Pure. The founders had started Netflix as a streaming and video-on-demand online and DVD sales. By the first year, Hastings decided to remove DVD sales and focus on DVD rentals via mail. By 2007, Netflix had expanded its business to include streaming media. With Netflix, you can stream your favorite television series and movies anytime. It has become the world’s leading television network with over 93.8 million members spanning over 190 countries.

Apart from streaming popular television shows and movies, Netflix entered the production industry in 2013 with its original series House of Cards. Netflix Original has now taken a new identity, and each of their original shows is highly popular. Statistics show that Netflix released around 126 original series and movies since 2016.

Netflix doesn’t allow viewers to upload their videos, but you can register on the application to enjoy uninterrupted streaming. Registration fees differ between countries and the nature of the content you want to access.

 

Dailymotion

Dailymotion is one of the most popular video submission sites. Olivier Poitrey and Benjamin Bejbaum started Dailymotion in March 2005. Although the application was originally a French video sharing and hosting service, it is now available in 34 different languages. When it first started, Dailymotion would allow the users to upload and share videos on their platform. With time, they diversified to include options to add friends, subscribe to different channels, and recommend videos for others.

Dailymotion allows registered users to upload videos and share it. The uploaded videos would get converted to the VP6 format, while the audio files would be encoded as MP3 files in 96 kbit/s. Dailymotion has expanded their business to include a kids channel called Dailymotion Kids that caters primarily to children. The channel includes a parental control option.

Recently Dailymotion had started the Dailymotion Mass Uploaded based on Adobe AIR technology that allows the users to upload multiple videos simultaneously.

Dailymotion doesn’t charge for registration.

 

Yahoo! View

Yahoo! View is a video on demand application started by Yahoo! the application works with Hulu and allows the users to view contents from ABC, NBC and Fox networks in the US. Yahoo! View was initially started as Yahoo! Video where users could upload and share videos, but later this feature was scrapped off.

Yahoo! View was re-launched in 2011 as Yahoo! Screen with special emphasis on original content. Following much criticism of the original content, Yahoo! Screen was stopped, and they passed on their subscription to Hulu.

 

Vine

Vine was launched by Dom Hofmann, Colin Kroll, and Rus Yusupov in 2012 and was immediately bought by Twitter. The application allowed the users to upload six second long videos and this content could be viewed on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Users could also browse through the videos uploaded by other users. Following the footsteps of Dailymotion, Vine came up Vine Kids that was designed for children.

Vine was discontinued by Twitter and was renamed to Vine Camera in 2016, which allowed users to take six-second-long videos and upload them on Twitter or the application. The application didn’t see many takers on the Android and iOS store. Users can now only view the existing videos, but there have been some technical problems in accessing some of the archive servers.

 

Ustream

Ustream is a video sharing site founded in 2007. The video sharing site was taken over by IBM in 2016 and forms a part of their Cloud Video Service. Ustream powers internal meetings, press conferences, and on-demand videos for all its users. Ustream has over 80 million users. Apart from video submission, Ustream includes Ustream Align that helps secure internal video communications for the employees. The secure platform allows the employees to carry out broadcasting and marketing strategies without any fear of them being leaked to outsiders.

Ustream counts Facebook, NASA, Nike, Discovery Communications and Samsung.

 

Vube

Vube is a video sharing site that enables budding artists to share their videos. It helped artists build a community and garner likes and followers. Vube organized monthly contests where videos with a high number of likes and comments would be rewarded. However, Vube went out of business since they had copyright issues. They had frozen use accounts and videos on their portal since they had recorded covers of popular bands, which went against Vube’s copyright laws.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video sharing site, but what makes it different from the other free video upload sites is that it was the first one to introduce high-definition videos. Vimeo was launched in 2004 by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick. Video enjoyed good traffic, following YouTube and Facebook.

Vimeo has free registration where users would initially get a free space of 20MB disk space. The users could pay a nominal fee and access additional space. Space was increased to 30 MB and by 2007, it had increased to 500 MB. As of today, users can pay a fee of $60 and get additional space of at least 5GB along with 2.5 hours of 720p video play.

 

Live Leak

Live Leak was founded by Hayden Hewitt in 2006. The London-based company has a section where users can post their videos about different topics. Among all the video upload sites, Live Leak is one site that allowed users to upload videos on politics, clips from war and political debates, and different world events. The app tries to combine the power of citizen journalism to give importance to crucial incidents around the world. The video sharing site is known for starting many a controversy. Rumor has it that it was Live Leak that had released footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution.

Live Leak content can be graphic in nature since they deal with war footages and other political clashes. The members can readily share and comment on the videos uploaded on the site, and the site is known for heated debates pertaining to the different contents.

 

Flickr

Flickr is a video and image hosting website that was founded in 2004 by Ludicrop. The same was purchased by Yahoo! in 2005. Flickr allows users to share and embed photos and videos and create an online community. Flickr is also widely used by photo researchers and bloggers for their posts.

Individuals do not need an account to access the videos and photos uploaded to Flickr, but one needs to register on Flickr to upload content on Flickr.

Flickr offers three types of user accounts, one of which is free and includes 1TB space with a limit of 250MB per photo and a maximum of 3 minutes for each video. The Ad-Free option allows subscribers to avoid ads by paying an annual fee. The Double account includes the benefits of Ad-Free account along with a 2 TB space.

 

TinyPic

TinyPic is a photo and video sharing site started by Photobucket.com. The application allows users to upload, share and link photos and videos on the internet. TinyPic decides which photos and videos have better reach on the internet and delete the ones that aren’t accessed frequently from their servers. TinyPic has seen much criticism because of its tendency to delete images and photos without prior warnings.

One doesn’t need to register on the site to start accessing the service for accessing or uploading the files.

 

Break

Break is a video and photo sharing site that is known for its hilarious videos and images. The application was founded in 1998 and was later bought by TMFT Enterprises. In 2007, the application started a video streaming series that was available on their website. Break purchased the PC-game hosting company, Filefront.

One doesn’t have to be a registered member to share and enjoy Break videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

 

Twitch

Twitch was first developed by Justin.tv in 2011 and then purchased by Amazon. Twitch is a video sharing site that focuses on games. You can get real time videos from new games. Video shows from the gaming world are also available on the Twitch platform. It also offers real-time coverage of different gaming tournaments.

You can access Twitch from gaming consoles like PlayStations 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

Vidivodo

Vidivod is a Turkish video sharing application that now has an English version. You can click on to their different categories and access a large number of videos uploaded to them. Vidivodo deals with different categories and hence some of the video content is explicit and not suitable for children.

The site seems to enjoy a great number of visitors and is slowly gathering users from around the world.

 

Smugmug

Smugmug is a photo and video sharing site founded by the father-son duo Chris and Don MacAskill in 2002. The application supports social media posting so that users can share content from Smugmug.com to different social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The MacAskill wanted to create a service that would cater to budding photographers. They allow photographers to add watermarks to their photos to prevent copyright issues and also help them sell their photos and videos online with their pricing through the Smugmug interface.

 

TV

TV.com is a website that shows TV shows online. Users can submit their choice of television shows for the site to review. The application also developed relay functionality for their television shows. Since CBS Interface owns it, the site covers shows broadcasted by CBS in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland and Canada.

The website offers information on the television shows, including cast and crew listing and description of the different episodes. There are guides like actor bios and trivia. Users can participate to add to the available information and earn points.

All information on the platform is user generated, and they can edit and change the information as and when they feel like it.

 

Viewster

Viewster.com founded by Kia Henniges and Jorg Boksberger is an on-demand internet streaming sites. Viewster users can watch television series and movies on the website. The website has licensed over 12,000 movie titles and a broad range of series. The number of these differs from country to country.

Viewester can be accessed on the internet, via mobile app and is also available in gaming consoles like Xbox 360, where users can download it from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

 

Wistia

Wistia is an online video hosting and sharing site that was founded in 2006 by Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage. The aim of the website was to help budding filmmakers collaborate.

Wistia offers video hosting to different businesses apart from personal use. The Wistia interface also allowed the users to customize the videos.

 

Sproutvideo

Sproutvideo is a video hosting company that works for the corporate world. They offer secure handling of videos. They offer a different level of securities for each video and the users can choose with whom they want to share the information uploaded on their profile.

Sproutvideo offers free 14 days trial, following which the users will have to subscribe to their service in order to continue enjoying the benefits for the same.

 

Myspace

Myspace isn’t just a video sharing site. It is a social media site that allows you to make friends and then share your blog posts, videos, and images with them. Myspace had enjoyed a lot of popularity before Facebook picked up. It surpassed Google as the most visited website.

With time Myspace might have seen a drop in registration, but it still holds a strong influence on popular culture and went on to create gaming platforms like RockYou and Zynga.

Developers had promised a new design for Myspace to make it more accessible on mobile, but there hasn’t been any further update on this.

 

Metacafe

Metacafe is a video-sharing company that focuses on short video clips relating to television, movies, games, sports, and music. Metacafe doesn’t function at present, but it resembled YouTube and Dailymotion when it was live on the internet. Metacafe had enjoyed a large number of users before it ceased to exist.

Users could register for free on the website and upload and share their videos.

 

Wrapping Up!

You are sure to find a video sharing site that meets your need and budget from the long and extensive list provided. Each of them is similar and unique in its ways. See for yourself which one suits your purpose best and go for it!

Feel free to add your suggestions in the comment below!

To be successful and stay in the forefront of your industry, delivering an exceptional service is not enough.

Meeting and networking with like-minded people, sharing your ideas, learning from giants in the industry and stepping outside your world is essential if you are planning on expanding and growing. What better place is there to accomplish these objectives than an ‘event’.

Recently, ExtremeSEO had the opportunity to attend to a startup event- one of the biggest event in the region, ECHELON Asia Summit 2017.

 Why ECHELON?

Empowering the entrepreneurs in the Asian region the summit is a real business opportunity amplifier for newborn businesses who have big dreams to grow. Powered by E 27(https://e27.co ), Asia’ latest tech media platform which was born in 2007, partnering up with the biggest brands in the world including Google and IBM the event is one of the biggest in Asia’s tech ecosystem. The Summit which held annually is a perfect place for tech and digital startups to grow, learn, share ideas, build beneficiary contacts and look into trends. (This year the summit was held from 28th to 30th of June in Singapore)

 

Featuring an array of events the three-day summit provides a variety of golden opportunities for startups. Whether you are looking for more business, fundraising or knowledge, the ECHELON Asia summit will not disappoint you. The summit comprised of an exhibition, speaking events and a startup fight club where the best 100 tech masterminds in the region is chosen.

 

Benefits of attending the next ECHELON Asia Summit

Giving you the access to a wealth of resources, the summit helps businesses step up their game.

• Up to date knowledge

Giving you the best speaking events to attend to, for entire three days the summit offers access to the latest industry insights and expertise of the leaders of your industry while enabling you to share and learn from like-minded people.

• Beneficial connections

Networking with like-minded and beneficiary people pays off in the long run in a way you can’t imagine if you know to approach the right guy at the right time. Facilitating you a world of opportunities to connect and partner up with, the summit provides a perfect ground for like-minded people to meet and connect on an international level.

• More exposure

Go fight in the top 100 startup fight club or participate in the Exhibition…They exposure you can receive by attending the summit is something you can’t ever achieve with 100 marketing campaigns. With the attendance of a highly targeted crowd at the summit, entering into new potential customers and investors radar has never been easier.

• Funding opportunities.

Every year the event gets concentrated with investors of all kinds looking for new profitable investments. If you have a great business plan written and printed on your hand and perfect elevated pitch, the summit won’t let you walk away without you succeeding.

 

 Who attends ECHELON Asia Summit 2017?

A range of personnel connected to the tech industry attends the summit from all over the world. From government ministries and agencies who help the Asian tech ecosystem to thrive, investors looking for places to invest, business from all sizes who seek new ways to expand their reach, industry professionals who are keen to share their knowledge to media who looking for features attend the summit every year, making it a perfect little ecosystem within the tech ecosystem of the.

We attended ECHELON.

Returning back from the summit with the wisdom of new knowledge and insight, ExtremeSEO is ready to amp up the quality of our services even more and deliver a result-focused experience for our clients driving their business towards success.

 

The ECHELON Asia Summit gives you access to some of the latest findings and thoughts in the industry while providing you with ample opportunities to expand, is definitely worth considering attending next time, if you seeking new opportunities to improve and grow as an entrepreneur.

SLT ZeroOne Digital Awards

The First-Ever Digital Excellence Award Ceremony

No matter the size or the years of experience you have in the industry, an award can help you take a leap of success allowing you to access the front line of your industry -which means more high-paying clients and better industry authority. Now, businesses and individuals in the digital sphere in Sri Lanka also have the opportunity to get recognized for their excellence making an instant impact in their business success. This golden opportunity is the SLT ZeroOne Awards. Identifying the necessity of an award ceremony in the digital industry in Sri Lanka, SLT launched the countries’ first-ever digital excellence award ceremony as SLT ZeroOne Awards in 2016 filling the gap of the industry.

 

 

Image Credit: Sundayobserver.lk

As a country with surging digital and online practices, such gestures encourage individuals and businesses to push themselves to a more competitive ground -which will gradually enhance the quality of the digital arena even more. Honouring the digital projects, campaigns and innovative solutions, the award ceremony which was held in the Grand Ballroom in the Hilton Colombo on 22nd of June 2017 provided the visibility and the reputations brands deserve for the first time in Sri Lanka.

The Award ceremony is a great encouragement and appreciation from the government for the sweat and tears businesses and individuals shed in introducing and strengthening a new industry in Sri Lanka while opening doors to receive the benefits of this new technology to Sri Lankan’s. It is a substantial admiration for the existing businesses to hold on to for a longer time in reaching new heights.  And it is a significant inspiration for the future generation who has hope in joining the digital and online world for their carrier.

The importance of the SLT ZeroOne Awards

1. Differentiation: For brands, the SLT ZeroOne Awards helps in verifying the differentness and quality of its achievements from the others.
2. Visibility: The awards help digital personnel to make their brand or title more visible which can help them in attracting new customers and investors.
3. Validate: All the awards categories of SLT ZeroOne Awards speak volumes about the quality provided by the brands placing the award winners, nominees, and shortlisted brands at the forefront of the Sri Lankan digital arena.
4. Competition: SLT ZeroOne Awards offers a new benchmark for the quest for excellence in the field increasing the competitiveness of the industry resulting in an increase in the quality of the services even more.
5. Hope: For those who are looking forward to entering this new world, such ceremonies provide, strengthen and validate the possibility of in succeeding their ambitions, hope, and goals for the future.

Dedicated to recognizing, honouring, and encouraging excellence in digital initiatives the ceremony presents awards for mainly under three categories as follows,

• Industrial Awards
• Individual Awards
• Lifetime Awards

The ceremony provided recognition opportunities for 154 brands, shedding a spotlight on 47 award winners in the industry in a range of categories including,

• Financial Industry
• Information Industry
• Travel and Leisure
• Media and Publishing
• Health Care and Personal Services
• Professional Services
• Retail
• Manufacturing, Transportation, Storage, and Logistics
• Government Institutions and NGOs

We Won the best Digital Media Agency Award As Well

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With the exceptional quality of our service which is mainly focused on data and results, we at Prime One Global were awarded for the ‘Best Digital Media Agency’ under the ‘Media and Publishing’ category. Providing an array of services from SEO, social media marketing, conversion optimization, and reputation management services for a  local and global client base, Prime One Global was able to conquer this significant achievement competing with more than 400 best brands in the industry.

The constant investment in imagination, creativity, and innovation, challenging the common and accepted practices and methods, and delivering a higher ROI along with the maximum outcome for our clients, have paid off once again for Prime One Global with this newly added SLT ZeroOne Award to our award collection.

Our Sincere Thankfulness To The SLT

Ensuring only the best work is recognized, we are honoured and grateful to the distinguished panel of jury for recognizing our achievements and would like to thank SLT for taking the time to give the recognition and appreciation for brands and individuals deserve uplifting the local talent in the digital media world.

Final thoughts on SLT ZeroOne Awards

Fulfilling the timely need in the digital industry on the island, SLT’s organization of the SLT ZeroOne Awards is an absolute encouragement for businesses, brands, and individuals in the industry. We hope this thoughtful event will continue for many years improving and expanding, honouring more and more brands and individuals who deserve it the most

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With everyone turning to blogs for promoting their brand, its time you think ahead. In order to make your brand stand out from the crowd, you have to think of interesting and unique ways to promote your brand and posts. Guest posting is one such marketing tactic that’s starting to become popular. Guest post is about posting your content on different websites apart from inviting guests to post on your website.

When you invite guests to come over and post on your website, you get the unique opportunity to promote without actually spending any time or money on it. While inviting individuals to blog with your website, you ensure that they share their content among their friends and family and increase the visitors immediately.

This type of free marketing also ensures that you have more social media coverage without actually spending your resources on it. Reports suggest that guest posts guarantees a five time increase in the traffic, ensures that there is more links to your website on social media.

While guest posts are a great way to promote your brand, you need to put some effort on it, in the initial stage.

 

Work Out Your Goal

You know for a fact that your will increase the traffic on your website when you start accepting guest posts. When you are looking for more traffic, you would want the same for a distinctive reason. It is crucial to figure that out. There are a large number of reasons for wanting to increase the traffic to your website. You might want new visitors to your website to sign up for email, or do you want more social media coverage and viewers. It is never right to considering reaping all the benefits. Zero down on your selected goal and make provisions to ensure that the visitors can follow through. Make sure that you prepare your website to fulfill your goal before you start accepting guest posts.

Create Guidelines

Remember that you are opening up your website to strangers and this could compromise the content to a certain extent. This is where you should work out a set of guidelines for guests when you open your website for guest postings. You will see a host of queries when guests are invited for posting, so save yourself the trouble and already put up a page of guidelines for them to refer to you. You can include information on what kind of posts you are looking for and how long you want each piece to be, state if you prefer any particular style of writing apart from information on incentives if you are providing any.

Experts suggest that new websites should offer some incentives like gift cards, and free passes in order to attract guests for posting.

 

Thoroughly Check Before Posting

Remember that just like good content can increase web traffic, bad content can effective the flow of traffic. When you invite guests to post on your website, remember that the content posted by them reflect the ideas of your brand and you can greatly harm your brand image by posting a terribly written content. Before allowing a guest to post on your website, carry out a background check of the person, check out their blogs and writing style. Even after the individual is done submitting his post, make sure that you go through the content to ensure that it isn’t offensive to any section of society and primarily that the content is original and hasn’t been plagiarized. Make sure that the content adheres to the standard of your blog and brand and that it follows the same style as the other posts or else it will look like an eye soar amidst all the other posts.

Pay Attention to Backlinks and Anchor Texts

The guest will only provide you with the content to the blog post, you have to add the relevant anchor text and inbound links that are related to the post. Make sure that the links do not look forced in the article. Use links only from reputable sources. When you work on anchor texts be selective since they will be used multiple times and will go a long way in ensuring a good SEO for your website. While anchor texts can do wonder with your website, make sure that they aren’t spammy and you don’t end up using them everywhere on the website. It helps to remember that the guest post will be published on your behalf and you will have to take responsibility for it.

Create A Plan For Promotion

Your work doesn’t end with getting guests to post and ensuring the quality of the content. You have to also inform the guest posters your plan of promoting their content. You have to realize that the bloggers writing for you want to improve their presence as well and you have to keep their interests in mind. If you want promote primarily through social media, mention that to the guests and specify how many times you would share or tweet about the new posts. If you are going to promote the content through email or newsletter, make that clear as well. Place as much importance in promoting guest posts as you would on any new content on your website. Remember not to slack off in this avenue.

Work On Your Social Media Presence

If you are starting to accept guest posts, you can advertise the same on your Facebook and Twitter page. Make sure that the link to your website is clearly visible on the social media pages. Also include your contact details and ensure that they are the same everywhere.

Wrapping Up!

Guest posting is a great way to get new content for your website and blog, but you need to prepare your website to handle the same. Make sure that the guest isn’t left wanting. Pay attention to these accepts before you start accepting guest posts.

For how many years are you telling yourself that you are going to start your own business and quit your job one day?

For how many more years are you going to live with the job that you don’t like at all, as you don’t have the gut to put your bright business idea ( If you are actionable ) out there? Whether it’s fear of failure, lack of confidence or resources or not being able to go against your loving parents to give up on your safe job, you are pushing your freedom of money, life’s happiness and entrepreneurial dream further away.

Today is that ‘one day’ you stop procrastinating and start working on the next step to bring your startup dream closer. Because in this post I’ll show you why ‘Today’ is the best day and ‘Now’ is the best time to nurture your startup seed..

After 2015, Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem started to burgeon steadily with newly emerged opportunities for young tech freaks to take their innovative ideas to the commercial level.

With a growth index of 7.4 aspiring startup ecosystem of Sri Lanka(Source- Startup Sri Lanka Report | SLASSCOM) rise year by year prospering the island with more and more startup seeds while generating new career opportunities and contributing to the economy of Sri Lanka

For the determined individuals with innovative ideas and zero interest for typical day jobs, Sri Lanka provides you with everything a startup needs to thrive at your figure tip. It will only cost a strong will power to hustle off until you succeed and a wise strategy in place.

While many complain the government about the policies, financial matters and other challenges, Sri Lankan startup environment has grown immensely. Today, Sri Lanka proudly owns 150-300 tech startups in the ecosystem and 65% of these entrepreneurs exceed 150 million revenue (Source- which is indeed a considerable growth compared to the past years.

With the attention of the government, other organizations, new emerging investors and young successful entrepreneurs with hearts willing to give a hand to the new startups, the startup ecosystem keeps expanding and evolving creating more and more space for ambitious Sri Lankan techies.

Here are 5 things that testify that ‘Now’ is the best time to start your Sri Lanka startup’.
For those who are still waiting for everything to become perfect to put your business idea to action.

 

1.Government support

By witnessing the success, job opportunities created and the economic support startups can add in strengthening the island’s economy, Sri Lankan government has started to pay their attention to help the thriving youngster techies around the island with new policies, law enforcement, banking facilities and more. Though the reliefs are not even close to what they can amend to help young entrepreneurs, it’s safe to say that it’s a good start. Here are some of the best examples that provide testaments that government encourage startups to thrive.

• Government’s announcement of 200% Capital Allowances for business making investments in the Northern Province and 100% Capital Allowance for Eastern Province Investors.(Source-National Budget Proposal 2017 )

 

 

• “Sri Lanka Export Development Board (SLEDB) has implemented a budget proposal on Start-up funding in 2016, where 26 Startups had been recommended by a committee appointed by the EDB for concessionary loans provided by State Banks”(Source -EDB)

• Dedicating segment name ‘Start-Up Pavilion’ for startups and innovators to showcase their products and solutions in ‘INFOTEL,’ one of the biggest tech exhibition in Sri Lanka organize by EDB, providing more exposure for startups and innovators.

2.More funding opportunities

Apart from, investing your personal money, applying for a bank loan and asking money from your rich parents and friends, there are several ways to fund your business idea. These are few of them.

• Startup programs
• Crowdfunding
• Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists
• Grants
• Zero Interest MSME Loans
• Catalyst support

Enriched with investors of Sri Lanka and from around the world, Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem now offers you better funding opportunities than ever. With the immense growth and significant achievements and success of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs, the ecosystem is grabbing more and more attention of local investors while other international investors are realizing that Sri Lanka is a safe place to invest with favourable geopolitics and healthy economic growth and stability. This has increased funding opportunities for determined tech-stars out there.

3.Supportive organizations and events

Today, if you have the courage to daydream your startup dream, commit to spend weeks of sleepless nights and dare to get burned and rise from the ashes, figuring out the ‘How to‘ part is not that hard with all the newly born supportive organization and events available in Sri Lanka. BOV Capital and  SLASSCOM are some of the organizations that help startups to grow and ‘Startup Weekend’ and ‘Startup boot camps’ are some of the startup events out there waiting to support young people who are looking forward to taking their business idea to the next level.

4.Better Mentoring

No matter how great your business idea or product is, lack of knowledge on doing business and management and experience in managing a business take no time to take you down the hill. Which makes getting mentored and receiving guidance extremely important for a startup success.

With the collaborative and supportive community of startup founders and co-founders, experienced industry professionals and successful entrepreneurs who once were individuals with doubt and a business plan, finding mentoring and guidance are not extremely hard in Sri Lankan startup ecosystem as it used to be. In addition, there are many programs that provide guidance and insight in implementing and executing strategies and expanding.

5.More incubation opportunities

This is something many startups find tricky with their tight budgets. As the startup current is still immerging in Sri Lanka, every factor isn’t fully completed yet. And incubation is one of them. From finding a working space to accessing resources 0from developing their prototype to taking it to the market, finding facilities and resources are definitely a great challenge for Sri Lankan startups. But, thanks to few of the industry giants in Sri Lanka and some international companies, Sri Lankan startup ecosystem is receiving more incubation opportunities now. Slingshot , a startup incubator/ seed accelerator developed by Hemas PLC, John Keels X and Yarl IT Hub are few good example for this.

Here is a list of people and organizations who are willing to nourish your seed in various ways including, funding, market reach, resources, mentoring, business skills, strategy and more.

Startup incubators

• Lankan Angel Network
• Venture Engine
• BOV Capital
• Startup X Foundry
• Yarl IT Hub
• Crowdisland
• Youth Business Sri Lanka
• East West Capital Group
• Spiralation
• John Keells
• Lanka Ventures PLC

Conclusion

Without no argument, Sri Lanka is still not a healthy place for startups comparing what we have in Sri Lanka with Silicon Valley or other regional startup hubs. Yet, Sri Lanka offers enough resources and facilities to ensure successful startup seed growth.

When considering all the market opportunities and flourishing funding, mentoring and other essential startup opportunities and most importantly all the inspiring startup successes born in Sri Lanka it’s clear that startups culture will grow faster and faster year by year.

So, it’s crystal clear that ’Now’ is the best time to do the research it takes, makes a solid business plan, practices your pitch and launch a mission to bring your business idea to life before the ecosystem gets too competitive.

Social Bookmarking sites have become a favourite with bloggers these days. If you are thinking that social media doesn’t have the same reach it had previously, think again. Social Bookmarking drives the traffic to the blogs when users on different social media sites share interesting videos and posts with their friends.

Before we get into the advantages and disadvantages of Social Bookmarking, we need to understand what Social Bookmarking is.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social Bookmarking is nothing but an online portal that enables users to share, add, and edit different web documents. Every individual spends a large portion of their day online and when you read something interesting that you want to share with your friends and family, you bookmark it and save it online. It’s as simple as adding a bookmark to a book. Social Bookmarking allows the user to return to the page later and access it from different sources since it is available online.

With Social Bookmarking, you save the webpage online instead of copying the URL in a notepad or document. Social Bookmarking also helps the user to organize the best content that they come across on the web in one particular area, so that it is easily accessible.

After the know-how on Social Bookmarking, we need to understand the different advantages of the same. Social Bookmarking is highly popular these days.

 

Advantages of Social Bookmarking

 

Helps You Go Viral

You might have used a lot of codes to increase the SEO of your blog. While some may find success in this technique, there is a lot that you often lose out on. This is where Social Bookmarking comes in. When you make post a link of your blog post as a bookmark on different Social Bookmarking sites, the users will automatically be redirected to your blog when they view the same. Once you interest the new visitors with your blog, they will automatically bookmark your posts on different social media sites. Thanks to a large number of backlinks, you will get more traffic. However, make sure that your content is interesting and unique or else you will not be able to attract new visitors.

 

Increase Traffic

Once your blog goes viral on social media thanks to Social Bookmarking, you will see an increase in traffic. Make sure that you don’t stop at posting your bookmarks on one site. Post on multiple sites to increase the inflow of traffic. Post on Social Bookmarking sites like Google+, Reddit, Technorati, Delicious and Digg. Posting on these sites are free, so you don’t have to spend any money. Once these Social Bookmarking sites contribute to your blog traffic, view the analytics of your page and determine which of these sites contribute more than the others. You can tweak your bookmarking accordingly.

 

Build Your Brand

With Social Bookmarking, you get targeted traffic. When you get the targeted customers, you automatically help your brand grow. Once the new users find your blog appealing, they will subscribe to it. Social Bookmarking sites often allow users to review the different sites. Depending on user preference, some posts are buried while some get more coverage. When you are one of the most preferred sites, you automatically build trust and new users show interest in getting a better idea about your brand.

 

Improve SERPs

 Social Bookmarking is a convenient way to build one-way links. Bookmarking sites have a positive impact on the ranking of the bookmarked sites. They eventually improve the PageRank and SERPs of the sites. Since Google is planning to make SEO social, Social Bookmarking is a convenient way to improve search engine ranking.

Like everything in life, all good things come with their own disadvantages and problems and similar is the case with Social Bookmarking.

Disadvantages of Social Bookmarking

 

 

SEO

While bookmarking can help you with your SEO and SERPs, it can also create a lot of subsequent problems. There are multiple sites that will use your bookmarks to create backlinks for their website, without generating any new content. These bogus websites will simply add junk and hope your bookmarks help them to improve their ranking.

 

Tag Structure

Since Social Bookmarking is still a new concept, there isn’t a lot of information on the same. There isn’t any formal way to regulate how the different Social Bookmarking sites tag the different links. This gives rise to discrepancies that might often create problems. Since it’s individuals who tag these bookmarks, there’s the possibility of human error as well. Such errors create problem inconsistency and organization.

 

Collusion

Scammers are everywhere on social media. There can be scammers who get a large group of people to submit bookmarks and control their votes. They can trick other users into thinking that this highly bookmarked content is worth seeing and trick them to visit pages that might set free a virus or force them to make a payment.

 

Spamming

Since individuals have the freedom to create their own tags and bookmark contents, there is a high risk of spamming. This is the problem has further increased since individuals view bookmarked content from people they aren’t connected to. Spamming can also prevent the user from finding the actual website or page.

 

Conclusion

Social Bookmarking has both its advantages and disadvantages. There are two sides to a coin and like everything, if you are using Social Bookmarking, you have to weigh the odds and go ahead. If you keep aside the disadvantages, you will realize that the advantages are crucial and they can help you to a great extent. The competition to improve page ranking is getting tougher with every passing day. It is easy to make blog posts online and there are over millions of such blogs. If you want to stand apart and expand the number of visitors, you have to do something unique and since Social Bookmarking is still a new concept, it is the best option.

How does social bookmarking help you? Do let us know in the comments below. 

Image optimization is the building block of SEO. It’s no longer a secret that if you want to drive organic search traffic to your website, your SEO game needs to be above the fold. With more competing websites emerging every day, it is important for you to get higher search rankings and improve your traffic. However, majority of the people overlook one crucial resource for raking in all of that organic traffic: Google Image Search. And, to get that traffic, you need to know about the basics of image optimization. Here are few ideas for image optimization.

The relevance of an image on a website is the most basic factor for SEO.

Images must be pertinent to the content of the webpage. If your page is about Panasonic TV, use images of that TV from different angles. Users are likely to get interested if they are provided with ins and outs of the product through images.

An Alt tag or alternate tag is a fundamental part of image optimization.

Alt tags become indispensable because a large number of search engines are text based i.e. they are incapable of reading our images. . An Alt text will be displayed when the image uploading failed. It contains a concise description of the image.

Example:  A description about a Persian cat can be,

Tip: If it’s an image of a product, include the model number in the alt tag.

Read:  Google’s image publishing guidelines.

Images must be compressed or otherwise, the page will take time to load and netizens will not wait for a slow site to load.

A research says that users will not wait for more than 3 seconds for a webpage to load. Try to compress your image to low bytes. The following sites will help you to squeeze extra bytes out of your images.

1. smush.it!
2. compressor.io (can reduce size up to 90% while retaining image quality)
3. WP Smush
4. CompressJPEG (for JPEG images)
5. TinyPNG (for PNG images)
6. EWWW Image Optimizer

Note: Use images with the same dimension as it will be displayed on your site.

If you do not have time for uploading your unique image, there are thousands of sites from where you can get free images.

While in some cases you have to credit the source of image, other sites have no such requirements! The following sites will come handy for choosing images.

1. Pixabay
2. 500px
3. Flickr
4. Pinterest
5. Unsplash
6. And more 20+ websites to download Free Stock Royalty Free Photos

Image name plays a key role in gaining search visibility and relevance.

Therefore image name has to descriptive and should have succinct information about the image.

For example An image about the Smoky Mountains during the fall season could be

Smoky-mountains-fall-season.jpg and not IMG_0076.jpg

Selecting the right file type is another important factor for image optimization.

Source: June mango Design Boutique

 

Commonly used file types are JPEG ( Joint Photographic Experts Group), GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics).

You can make the best use of each type and here is how:

1. Use GIF format for creating amazing GIFs
2. Use JPEG format for high-color and still photographs.
3. Use PNG format for images with few colors and logos (which involve fading and transparency)

Including images in XML sitemaps further increase the chances of your image being found during Google search.

You can use <image:image> or <image:loc> tags in your XML sitemap.

Tip: Yoast SEO Plugin is one of the best plugins. It automatically adds images to the XML sitemap. You can check the best SEO WordPress plugins here.

If hundreds of other sites use your unique image without giving you credit, your relevance will be reduced and that can be detrimental to your site.

You can use Image Raider for reverse image search. All you need to do is upload your image on the catalogue and whenever a site uses your image, you will be notified.  If you are not given credit, you can always ask the creator of the site for it.

 Image captions will help you to reduce your bounce rates.

Bounce rates are now considered by ranking algorithms, particularly after Panda update.

• What is a bounce rate?

When a user, while looking for a particular thing clicks on your page and quickly goes back to the search page, it increases your bounce rate which is not desirable at all. It means the user found the content of your page unsatisfactory.

So if you include a crisp caption next to your headline, it arrests the attention of viewers as they get to know about your page at a glance. It invokes further reading.

Backlinks are one of the leading factors for improving your visibility and organic ranking.

They help search engine bots efficaciously crawl your site.

• What do I mean by backlinks?

When a webpage links to another page, it creates a backlink.

For example, a photographer took pictures of Coldplay at a concert and uploaded them on his website. If the official website of Coldplay links to that site, it creates a backlink. Now search engines will consider these two sites to be connected which in turn will improve the visibility of the photographer’s page in all searches related to Coldplay.

You need not to worry if you do not have Photoshop, there are several editing tools available online.

You can choose from below.

1. Pixlr (I find it most useful)
2. Photopea
3. Freephototool
4. Freephotoeditor

Thumbnails are very convenient because they reduce cramming and a lot of images can be displayed at once. But beware!

So the best option for you is to reduce the size of thumbnails, even though the quality could decline.

To compress your thumbnail, use the code:

add_filter( ‘jpeg_quality’, create_function(”, ‘return 60;’ ) );  with your functions.php file.

While WordPress uses 90 as default settings, you can safely set any value from 60 to 80 as there won’t be any noticeable slide in image quality.

In a nutshell,

Image optimization can be time-consuming but not difficult. If you inculcate the ideas covered in the article, you’ll be able to see for yourself that your website’s visibility has improved.

Have any more tips for image optimization? Share with us by commenting below! I’d love to know your thoughts!

Good Day!