“Content is king.”
“You need to create killer content to be visible on the web.”

How many times you have heard these or similar to these sentences before? So many times, right? Marketers and entrepreneurs from all around the planet have been telling us the same every day. Tells us why content is important. We already know this. We don’t need convincing. But how do you know the content you are creating is engaging?

Think about this. A great movie or a good novel you like, has great story in it right? Successful stories are stories which are able to capture the imagination of large audience and convey message across. How would you know that your story has engaging plot in it?

Let me give you two different scenarios.
First scenario,
Boy meets Girl
They fall in love
They got married

Second scenario,
Boy meets Girl
They fall in love
Boy loses girl for some reason or vice versa. Some twist here how and why they got separated or break up? What did they do to get back together?
What and how they got back together
They got married

Among these two which one interests you? Second one. Because in the first scenario there is no story to tell so it becomes boring or has no excitement. While in the second scenario; a classic story example which has twist inside which makes story more appealing to audience. This story has emotions in it. It connected through our sentiments which touch our heart.

You must hear all marketers or business writers say every day: ‘we are great.’ ‘Here are our products.’ ‘Our customers’ says that we are the great.’ Now, buy our products. Sadly, this story doesn’t sales. Learn how to engage your audience. Introduce storytelling in your website, blog, videos and other marketing campaign strategy and make content more interesting like a great movie or a novel.

Lately I have been listening to this word Innovation all over. I became very curious to find out what is the actual meaning of Innovation.

As per Merriam-Webster Innovation means ‘introduction of something new’. Let me state my perspective. Innovation is an introduction of new product, or new service, or new idea, or new culture shift, and so on. Innovation is how you influence community in a positive way where everyone accepts and starts using that development. Let’s take Apple’s example. Apple has introduced products such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc in recent years. Apple has made changes in existing products and wows the world with the Introduction of all these ground-breaking products. Wow-factor features such as touch screen, Facetime, photo slideshow, etc are widely become popular. It is not that no one has thought about these technologies before. Apple did not introduce the ‘screen-touch’ thought nor implemented first. Same way, Apple was not the first one who has introduced the world that you can take photos from your mobile device and photos can be stored on your mobile devices. These technologies were here from years. But the combination of sliding photos; the way it was moving left from right with the touch of your finger was unique. People loved the concept; loved the finger touching a phone display and they can play with the photos. No one has thought about implementing these technologies in mobile device before; now that modification in existing product is Innovation.

I call Innovation when you take an idea from concept to launch and become ubiquitous. That’s when you know that you become successful. Innovation creates new trend, new standards, or new processes which becomes wide in practice by community. What you guys think what Innovation means?

No matter how good the business is it can be transformed from good to great. The core purpose of any business is to drive traffic; to stay in the public eye, and gain their customers’ trust. To achieve desired outcome, one need to make sure that they employ the right tools in their marketing campaign. There are many tools available out there such as Website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogs, Social Networking sites, Podcasting, Video, Viral Marketing, and Article Marketing. With well thought-out strategy, each of these components will begin to turn and work as Web Wheel.

The Web Wheel
So what is the Web Wheel? It is an essential component of marketing strategy. Any vehicle run smoothly if it has wheel attached right? Same concept works for your marketing campaign – it works smoothly with the help of this Web Wheel and turn out to be more successful campaign. These components go hand-in-hand. If one wheel turns, it causes another wheel to turn like interconnected set of gears. Close association of these components becomes extremely essential while planning your strategy. Each of these online marketing components is vital and extremely powerful at the same time. If you know how to balance few or all these components of Web Wheel, you can produce a winning campaign. Find out the right combination to get recognized in the market by start operating this Web Wheel.

Foremost, Let us examine each Web Wheel components in detail to understand how this online piece can be beneficial if one implement in their campaign strategy.

Website is the center of action; is where all pieces of puzzle come together. For some Website is the internet. It is the face of you or your business’ web presence. It is an essential; must-have instrument for marketing where all information resides about you or your company.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to draw traffic to your website. It is a technique to attain higher rank in the search engines. No one knows that you are ‘exist’ if you or your corporation’s website does not appear while searching on the search engine. Search engines are the key driver; it is number-one way internet users’ searches for information online. End result, everyone is struggling to maintain at the top of search.

Viral marketing – acquire attention immediately by integrating Viral Video in your marketing campaign which makes you famous overnight as it spreads like the virus. It is not the new technique; been here from a while but it works as magic. Became extremely popular as internet users are growing every single minute and it is now became an essential part of our life. An additional benefit is that it cost next to nothing.

Blogs helps you engage in conversation. You can easily start communication with your users. It became extremely popular as it provides interactivity; it gives chance to provide your opinion and result, it became well-liked by everyone. It is part of the website which maintain by individual or group of people.

Video is an extreme emotional engaging medium; no wonder it is one of many popular marketing components. It is a human mentality that they tend to watch videos of product or personal video than reading a blog. We have seen proven campaigns of small companies which became famous overnight by using videos. Video is both friendly and believable therefore you gain trust easily; which help connecting with your audience easily instead of let them read full page of content.

Podcast positions you as a thought leader. It is a spoken-word audio created by person or a group of people. Mainly it is for your audience who wants to find out more about your product; about your company or it can be for other reasons. It does not matter your corporation is small or large; it can be beneficial to everyone. Good thing about Podcast is that you can listen to them whenever and wherever they want and at the same time you can increase customer satisfaction.

Social networking site is where people connect. It is one of the powerful trends of 21st century. Everyone is now on social networking site; it is for everyone not only for young. It is a great way to stay in touch, share and obtain news with a large group of people. It can be with friends, family, business, or any level.

Article Marketing is a very powerful but often forgotten internet marketing component. This is another way you can establish you as an online thought leader. Each article is your agent, living long after you have distributed it.

Now that you have acquainted with each component, what would be next? What if one is the proud owner of a website but are not getting any traffic because it’s not optimized – one has wasted a good chunk of change and a lot of valuable time. What we have to do? How do we use this Web Wheel? Do we have to use them all? Do we have to use few? How do we decide? First of all, let us take each component and understand in a one word how to use this Web Wheel.

Next step is to understand how to use the Web Wheel. Identify various combinations of components on the Web Wheel which will deliver the desired response. Put together a plan what are you trying to achieve. Create a fresh agenda which has one phase or several phases, depending on your requirements and budget.

Be Creative! Carefully design the marketing strategy and understand the core before you start utilizing this Web Wheel. However, keep in mind that any components are worthless if you don’t employ them without the right combination of sensibility and strategy.

Let’s take a simple test.

When was the last time you have emailed someone an article or an interesting link?
When was the last time your friend emailed you a funny video?
When was the last time you read a review of the restaurant you want to try for the first time?
Recently, correct? And that is through ‘word-of-mouse’ not ‘word-of-mouth’ – isn’t it?

Internet is now became an essential part of our life. A powerful medium we cannot imagine to live without. Its ability to spreads the message much faster than word-of-mouth is one of the reasons it became extremely popular from any other medium. It is like spreading a virus from one person to another. The term for this type of advertising is called Viral Marketing.

We all have experienced these types of marketing campaigns but may not be acquainted with the term. Let me give you few examples so you get an idea before I tell you what it is.

Most classy example to Viral Marketing is Hotmail and Youtube. Hotmail started giving away free email accounts to everyone and that web-based campaign spread into online communities like the virus. Before we knew, most of us had a hotmail account. Such Brilliance.

You must have seen ‘Will it blend?’ Viral videos on Youtube – a marketing campaign demonstrating the blender which blends all kinds of gadgets such as iPad, iPhone, golf balls to marbles. Who blends the iPad? About 23.5 million people have watched this only on YouTube. Pure Genius.

So now you know what I am talking about, see below diagram so you get the picture how Viral Marketing message spreads:

One person tells two; two tells four; four tells eight and so on… Its ability to spread faster than anything else made Viral Marketing extremely popular in online communities.

Another way to look at it is as advertising without being broke. Marketers try different way to get attention; to stay in the market to motivate people to pass it on and stay popular among their competitors. No wonder marketers love this baby.

It is an amazing way to generate huge amount of buzz wheather you carried out online or offline. So, how do you do it? Create such genius content such as – funny video, brilliant ad on Television or cool email campaign where success is defined as positive ROI. If done it well, it’s not hard to get global fame in days. Therefore, stop shouting for selling your artifact; acquire attention by integrating counterintuitive Viral Marketing campaign in your strategy so buyers will automatically walk toward you.

Click here if interested to learn more in detail and look at an excellent list of Viral Marketing campaign list.

Web evolves quickly. Many of today’s websites and web application does not work in aged; outdated browsers. There was a time you had very few choices but now you have many options to choose from.

So why it is time to update to newer generation of browser?
1.) Pages on the website look better; be easier to use
2.) Outdated browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 don’t follow the web standards
3.) Old-fashioned browsers are full of bugs and have many security issues as virus and malware
4.) Web designers/developers waste their time fixing and finding workarounds of outdated browser bugs
5.) Lack support from modern technology such as HTML5, CSS3, AJAX, etc.
6.) Affects the quality of website rendering.

Old browsers are vulnerable to attacks; they are not updated version with the latest security and features. Which leads to stolen password, bank account information, etc however, updated version guard securities. Consequently, I recommend to switch to proficient; updated; newer generation of browser such as Google Chrome with added layer of protection known as ‘sandbox’, which prevents infecting your computer.

Alas, I don’t see older version of browsers such as IE6 is going away just yet. The majority of remaining users are probably those who locked into corporate setup and have to wait until next stable release of windows to be out.

Lately I am frustrated as everyone I work with is using different terminology between website landing page and website home page. Landing page is different than home page. So what is the difference between them? It is a great question; hopefully, it will clear up any confusion you might have as well.

Home page
Home page is an essential component of your website. It is the entry to your website—first page of your website—when user types in web URL. In a nutshell, it is the main page which holds the rest of your website together. With elegant navigational links, you are guiding the visitors to take the next step, give them the information they came for.

Landing page
Landing page is the page where your website visitor arrives or land on it to accomplish specific purpose. Any page on a website where web traffic is being sent to promote marketing campaign or promotion; which requires an action or result. In a nutshell, it is generated to sell something or get you to take a very specific action. Landing page is often linked to from any social media, email campaign, or advertisement campaign etc.

Therefore, it is a mistake to assume that users will always or most of the time accesses your website via its homepage.

I was sitting in the book store and thought…wow!!…regurgitating how fast the year has flown! A new year is great time for a fresh start; which explains why so many of us make resolutions—commitment that an individual makes to reforming of a habit.

Consequently I have decided to simply write a good old fashioned list of New Year’s resolutions as well.

• Think and work smarter
• Keep my workstation clean
• Read more…and more
• Get more exercise
• Spend no more than 10 hours at my workstation
• Work outside my comfort zone
• Take more risk
• Make some time for personal design projects
• Network and connect with people
• Get business card made
• Try to read at list one book a month or read blogs I like online
• Write at least one blog a week
• Organize my time well and be more efficient

What are your new year’s resolutions?

If your business or personal website has more than twenty pages, do not forget to implement Breadcrumb navigation in your web pages. So, what is Breadcrumb? Breadcrumb or Breadcrumb Trail is a navigation link used in web user interface. It typically appears horizontally across the top of the page, usually below headers/title bars/navigation links. Basically, it is the hierarchical link that tells your visitor where they are currently on your site.

A typical Breadcrumb looks like following:
Home page > Section page > Subsection home page > Section page > subsection page.
Many websites replaces ‘>’ with so many other symbols.

Let’s accept the fact that as a user we don’t read the entire page, we scan the page. That’s when helpful Breadcrumb navigation comes into play. Following are few more reasons why implementing Breadcrumbs is extremely beneficial to users:
• It is a great way to make your website user friendly
• It improves your website’s visibility among the search engines
• It is easier to find specific information
• It significantly reduces your website’s bounce rate
• It is very simple and easy way to implement in your web pages
• It improves functionality
• It generates larger percentage of repeat visitor

In a nutshell, Breadcrumb interface does not replace your website navigation, yet it is very useful addition to your website. It does not promise to increase search engine ranking, however, it definitely adds value.

Everybody is integrating interactive elements in their web pages rather than boring static page. Video/audio has become an integral part online presence. Lately, on my work, I am seeing lot of request to integrate video/audio files on web pages as well. Flash is the easiest and popular method of encoding videos in the web pages. You never have to worry about whether it will play or not as it is truly a cross-platform compatible—Mac, PC or Linux—any platform that support flash will play the video. As a user probably you won’t see what is the delivery method being used since this happens behind the scene; end result may look the same. There are two distinct delivery methods – Progressive Download and Streaming Delivery.

Having said that, let’s look at the completely distinct methods of delivery:

Wrapping up, both options Progressive Download and Streaming Delivery has their own benefits and limitations. It’s really depends on project requirements and what you are trying to achieve. Regardless you choose any options we have compared above, you still have one more choice of embedding videos in your webpage – which I have not discussed here.

I would really love to hear your experience; please feel free to share your experience here.

Click following links to read more:
ADOBE – Video Learning Guide for Flash
mydeo.com – Understanding the difference

I love that I have entitled this blog title! Titles like this sell books; drive user attention and this is what all website owners wants. There is no shortage of companies out there who claims that they can get you on the top but really can they deliver what they have promised? If your content is not relevant, no amount of clever Search Engine Optimization will get you on number 1 – the bottom line!

There are ways to trick Google which helps you rank on top, but few of them tricks break Google’s guidelines. Google comes down hard on websites who does not follow the guidelines. So, how can you distinguished legitimate techniques and those black-hat techniques?

Following are few practices to bear in mind being black listed:
1.) Beware of companies that guarantee a particular rank
Ask for more information. First question to ask the provider is to describe clearly how/what they use to get us to that rank? You can judge whether you’re in danger being black-listed or not.

2.) Hidden text and links or search-engine only content
These text or links are intentionally hidden in the page to improve ranking. Means, users cannot see it but search engines can.

3.) Automatically submitting to Google
This is specifically prohibited in Google guidelines. Avoid using software packages to automatically submit your website to Google.

4.) Duplicating content or keyword stuffing
Google understand the difference if there is a legitimate reason of duplicating content such as if you have specified separate version for print. But, it break the rules if websites which deliberately dump the content or stuff keywords repeatedly to manipulate the ranking.

5.) Doorway pages
Sole purpose of creating these types of pages is to rank well in search engines. By using certain keywords or poor content which no relates at all to the actual website does no good.

By using above techniques creates a negative user experience and may ultimately cause Google to take actions. So how you can improve your ranking? Following are number of techniques you can use.

1.) Improving your website’s build
• Avoid using content types such as flash which search engines cannot access. Also, it’s a good practice to stay away from flash intro which doesn’t have SKIP button anyway.
• Mark up your content and use appropriate attributes such as ALT and TITLE to ensure accessibility for search engines.
• Add a site map. Create a clear hierarchy of your web pages which is easily accessible.
• Deliberately use text links instead of using an image, flash or other interactive element to get to the other pages on your website.
• Use short URLs
• Submit your website. For Google, you can submit at http://www.google.com/addurl.html or using Google’s webmaster tools page. Doing so helps Google learn the structure of your site and increases the number of pages indexed.

2.) Improving your content.
No brainer, correct? Additionally, it is a good practice to incorporate search terms in your content; naturally into the copy/content, headings or in the image ALT attributes. Be careful not to use too many search words; preserve the value of the content. Two or may be three words is adequate. Don’t dump all words you can think of, because you may get penalized for doing so.

3.) Encouraging quality links
If you’re website owner, it’s not so hard to understand. You may be getting lot of emails from somebody wanting to exchange your links with them. It is truth that Google may rank you high if your WebPages are linked to other websites. But keep in mind that quality matters than quantity. It’s worthwhile responding to a link request unless it comes from high-profile website with appropriate content.

Although these techniques which I’ve explained here will help improve your ranking, but shouldn’t be your sole focus. In almost all cases, the benefit is temporary, because Google constantly works to close such loopholes. It might take months for your site to become listed on top and all these techniques to work to take an effect. It means that site with short span may or may not appear on top at all. Despite all these frustration, search engines can’t be ignored.