“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factors now determine SERP, which makes the conventional ones such as keyword density, linking, and various other norms outdated.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.
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So which ones are outdated; how do you know which ones to stay away from and if there’s a diamond in the haystack, should you embrace them?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. 3rd 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.”
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.
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.
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
Differentiation: For brands, the SLT ZeroOne Awards helps in verifying the differentness and quality of its achievements from the others.
Visibility: The awards help digital personnel to make their brand or title more visible which can help them in attracting new customers and investors.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Image Credits: Readme.lk
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.
Image Credits: Readme.lk
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.
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.
