My 21 day experiment

As they say.. man is a creature of habit and we all have our quirk habits.. some good for us.. some good for others :) .. I recently checked my weight  and OMG... I am nearing 100 Kgs...and it was time for introspection.. !! .. the friendly 5 whys of questioning for RCA... the answer being .. good food makes me happy.. but thats not the root cause...  the real cause of the problem is not good food... but overeating and eating wrong kind of food at the wrong time of the day.. of late I have been dumping lot of junk food into my system and this has turned into a habit (probably a bad one)..

I enjoy the 2 minutes of eating time.. but misery and guilt strikes me for the other 23 hrs and 58 minutes.. I dont fit into any of my clothes and the excess baggage around my waist makes me look much older than I am... enough of the back ground story.. time for Action... I recently read that anything repeated over 21 days consistently gets ingrained into us and becomes a habit.. So its time to test this theory and look fwd to  some positive changes. 
The resolve now is to minimize/eliminate junk from my diet and replace it with healthy alternatives .. and see if it turns out to be a habit..
Start Date - 02 May 2013
End Date -  24 May 2013.

Do I have what it takes to form this new habit.. ??.. Lets check my tenacity quotient.
Jai Ganesh !

Found a new south indian recipe blog - tummythoughts.com !! awesome dishes

Nearing lunch time and stomach growling for some tasty food... its still 12:15 pm and some more time to go.. was exploring some nice recipes on the web and found a new site - ww.tummythoughts.com... aptly labelled site with some naturally nourishing south indian recipes.. feels great to see the pics.. I am feeling more hungrier by the minute.. How I wish I could download those dishes and enjoy them.. slurp slurp .. !!!.. great food makes me crazy !!. at times.. With tech advancements.. hope to see the day when this is a possibility !!! ..

Strategies for SEO success - Link Building

When it comes to achieving results out of your SEO efforts, link building is one of the most potent weapons in your armoury.The SEO effort split generally follows the 30/70 rule, with 30 % of results coming from On-Page optimization and the rest from quality (read genuine) backlinks and social media optimization. Most of the people are mislead into thinking that all that is required is to stuff a huge list of keywords in your HTML text and include some meta tags and voila.. your website is SEO friendly and deserves to be listed on the first page of SERPs. Though there are some sites which manage to appear on the first pages of SERP with just Onpage optimization, its seldom the case with increased competition. SEO ranking is all about beating your competition and how optimized your content is to win the game.

Links and Page Rank

As the purview of SEO expanded and online search market moved from traditional directory listings to more sophisticated search algoritms and robots(courtesy- google), the prominence of backlinks rose in ascertaining the credibility and ranking of pages.The number of external links pointing to the website (inbound links) and the quality of these link sources directly influenced SEO rankings. Google devised a ranking system for each of the webpages based on its patented ranking algorithm named Page Rank (named after one of its founders -Larry Page) and this rank had a direct correlation to content quality of the page.
The page rank was ideally an index ranging between 1-10, but was internally represented by a logarithmic index and the segmentation between 1 to 10 was done on a log scale.This naturally implies that it gets tougher to increase the page rank beyond a point since a page ranked at 6 cannot be considered to be twice better than a page ranked at 3. The actual differnce in quality between these pages internally may be a humungous number.

Why is link building such a vital part of the SEO strategy ?

Inbound Links from external pages in the real sense signifies the relevancy of content and highlights its read-worthiness. As a matter of fact, these links could be considered as a token of recommendation and hence more the number of inbound links, the merrier it is from the perspective of the credibility of the site and more credible the site, higher its ranking with respect to the search engines.
A quality inbound link is an effective qualifier for trustworthiness of the site, but as with any other mechanisms, people have found unethical ways to source inbound links, thus abusing the system in an effort to getting ranked high in SEO results. Some of such tactics that have been employed by webmasters and SEO practitioners are reciprocal linking, link exchanges, creation of multiple sites that ideally serve no real purpose and using these sites to create multiple inbound links to the main site. A  number of small businesses were built around the revenue model of buying and selling of such fraudulent links and were able to make a lot of money with the new found linking formula.

As search robots and engines get more intelligent by the day, they have been able to track non-conformances and penalize such sly practices. Google engineers have been working diligently over the past few years to detect and curtail these black hat tactics and recently came out with the Penguin update by which they have been able to downgrade the ranking of websites involved in unnatural linking schemes. Google has particularly been very critical of these violations and has also penalized many of such erring sites by de-indexing them from their search database. The old link building tricks have started to lose their sheen but the search engines have a long way to go as people devise new ways to acquire and provide "natural appearing" links.

Link building - Best Practices

Earning genuine and quality links involves a lot of hardwork and some of the below practices help enhance the effectiveness of these links.

1. Since the search engines consider the page ranking/credibility of the link source, links from educational, news and govt related sites are regarded highly and such inbound links invariably boost search rankings.
2. It is generally easier to get links from sites directly under your control. For example, you could request a backlink from your vendors, suppliers as they probably know more about your products/services and would be inclined to include a back link than somebody with whom you dont have an existing relationship.
3. Try to improve the quality of the page content and get genuine links instead of contrived ones. The hard work and money spent on securing these fabricated links dont serve the purpose and is not worth the effort.
4.When getting links from external sites, pay special attention to the position of the links in the site. A link from a text region is considered more valuable than one that originates from a list of links.
5. Search engines can easily identify reciprocal links and such links dont add any real value for SEO.
6. A textual link works better than an image link as the search engines can decipher text content with ease.
7. Always include relevant keywords as anchor text within your links.
8. When making use of image links, make use of the alt attribute to include keywords.
9. Static text links serve the purpose better than dynamically generated ones (created on the fly using client side scripting)
10. Make use of internal links within the individual pages of the site using long tail keywords as these enable linking between in-site pages and also help in robot navigation and indexing.
11. Stay away from buying links as these wont help in the long term and also you run a risk of being detected and penalized by search engines when tracked. Just remember that the search robots are real smart  and are on the job every day.

Undoubtedly, linking is one of the most effective strategies for improving your SEO ranking and a "right link" at the "right place" helps get the right SEO results.

Happy Link building !!

Digital Marketing - Its here to stay and grow

Gone are the days of traditional marketing and advertising where messages were broadcasted without an exact focus on the target audience..for example the ads on newspapers or the billboards/sign posts at traffic junctions. The whole funda was about capturing hordes of eyeballs, never bothering about how many of them would really be interested and get moved by what was being displayed. I agree that this form of advertisement did  have a certain impact on the buying behaviour of people, but there were two important missing ingredients .. 'focussed targetting' and 'ROAS' (return on ad spend) measurement.

The advent of Internet technology in the form of search engines and Social media platforms have opened up a new avenue and enabled these advertising messages to be precisely targetted to people residing in a specific geography, demography and also a user base with related interests. Its also amazing to see that the ad messages are being flashed based on the user's intent making the probablity of conversion very high. For example, a person reading a blog on fitness would probably see ads related to fitness equipment, personal trainers etc placed around the blog content. This idea is appealing and sensible since it is a topic of interest and the reader can easily relate to the ad being served.

It is even more impactful in the case of SERP (Search engine result pages) as the user is actually looking for a particular piece of information through a search phrase related to the search intent. This is intuitively remarkable since the user can be targeted at a particular stage of his buying cycle when the probability of conversion is very high. The whole concept has now been expanded further to include remarketing, enabling customer retention and loyalty.

Thanks to browser cookies and data mining tools, we now have data readily available about past purchases, customer orientation, spend patterns and related information that allows for unique ways to reach and trigger a prospect for further sales. The social media platform has added up to this tremendous opportunity to reach out to Gen-X with high spending potential and inclination.

We have seen the field of web analytics grow exponentially over the years and its now possible to slice and dice online data -  sources of traffic, online customer behaviour, click patterns and a host of other parameters to assess user interaction and web usability score using tools such as Google Analytics and  Omnitute Site Catalyst. These tools help fish out problem areas and improve user experience thus turning your web property into a striking marketing tool.

The 'intent based' messaging coupled with a powerful ad-serving technological backbone has changed the life of customers and marketeers alike for good. With newer technologies hitting the maket each year, imagination is the only stop to what is possible for customer acquisition, engagement and retention.

Digital marketing is a new domain of specialization and will only get better with time.

Procrastination - the "lets do it tomorrow" effect

Procrastination is something many of us have seen in ourselves time and again in our day to day life. It is generally associated with lack of time management, but its more of a habit of putting off than a want of time management. Most often, its not because of the lack of time, but because of the unwillingness to do something that needs to be done. We keep pushing the timeline just to avoid the discomfort of doing something we don't like to do until it turns catastrophic. The discomfort generally stems from  a variety of emotions such as anxiety, guilt or plain dread and this feeling is terminated (rather suppressed) by turning on to easier and more pleasurable distractions. We fail to realize that this discomfort builds over time and returns to haunt us over a missed deadline and we end up paying a much higher price for the consequences such as a car breakdown, late fees, ill health etc.

Goal setting is also seen as an antidote for procrastination, but there are examples where goals were set but the follow through actions did not happen as intended... its not about indecision, but a failure to execute actions to support the decision "within the planned time line". It is through the act of putting off for tomorrow that meaningful actions are delayed to avoid the soreness and discomfort of getting things done..its more of a chronic problem with many people. Putting off minor things once in a while is acceptable, but you need to keep a check to avoid the act turning habitual .

The self assessment questionnaire below should help you analyze your procrastination score.

1. Do you often find yourself performing tasks that were planned to be done days before ?
2. While planning an event, something important to you, do you fail to make arrangements well ahead of time ?
3. Do you take a lot of time for decision making ?
4. Are you off from bed the moment the alarm rings ? (This is a huge challenge for many of us)
5. Do you end up buying essential things at the 11th hour ?
6. Do you fail to complete all tasks planned before you settle down to relax for the evening ?
7. You continually say to yourself - I will do it tomorrow... naale maadadre aythu.. :) ?
8. Do you fail to return important phone calls promptly ?

If you find yourself answering YES to many of these, you are a procrastination hero and need to seriously consider disassociating yourself from this dreadful habit. Its all a case of mental conditioning and its easy to break off from this habit with a little effort.
Just make a personal choice to honor your decisions at all times and follow through with swift timely actions. Soon you will realize that its easier to get things done than keep them for tomorrow. The new formed habit of completing tasks ahead of time will boost your self confidence and there is nothing more gratifying than the satisfaction derived out of a task done on time.

What really stands in your way to your goals is procrastination. Make a personal resolve to rid yourself of it. Follow NIKE, Just do it !!

MOM - Mind over Matter !!

I remember reading a quote from an eminent personality, the essence of which is - "Whether you think you can do it or not, you are always right". I have tried this in my own life and each time you tell yourself that something is not possible, the mind comes up with a host of reasons to support your belief and the same is the case when you tell yourself that a particular thing is possible, though I have seen that the negative thought is generally more powerful and tough to banish.
I have tried using this principle while on the treadmill and I have seen great results through affirmatives added to the loud and motivating music in the gym. There have been instances when I have been able to run continously for 30 minutes telling myself that its possible. (It may not be a big feat for many.. but was definitely a big challenge for me as I was not even able to run for 5 mins earlier on) Its always mind over matter ! . Its amazing how mind can be programmed for success !. Success or failure has much to do with our mind conditioning and beliefs than any other factors. The only challenge is to keep training the mind consistently in your mental gym.. try it !! .. it becomes easy with time and really works !!