The 25-Point SEO Checklist You Need to Drive More Traffic

More Traffic

You’re comfortable with the idea that SEO is an ever-changing industry. One that is largely dictated by great user experiences and search engines aiming to return highly relevant results.

A good SEO Checklist is the key to keeping your organic presence in tip-top shape.

That’s why we’ve created this 25-point SEO Checklist (plus, an awesome infographic). It’s the list of all the essentials you need for an optimized website, and your ticket to driving more traffic and delivering higher conversions.

PART 1: ONSITE SEO CHECKLIST

Title Tags:

Title tags are the main indicator and headline for what a page is about. Search engines use title tags to understand if and how content on a page would be useful to a user. When a search engine displays multiple search results, a concise and descriptive title helps the user know your link is the best to click on.

☐ Duplicate Tags

Duplicate title tags confuse search engines that are trying to determine the relevancy of each page on your site. If you can’t create unique title tags for certain pages, you should consider whether or not the content should exist in the first place.

☐ Missing Title Tags

Because users and search engines use title tags to understand what a link is about, missing title tags compromise a page’s ability to rank for that content in SERPs.

☐ Long Title Tags

If a title tag is longer than 65 characters, it may be cut off when it is displayed on a search results page. A fully visible title helps the user know exactly what the link is about. If they can’t parse what the link is about quickly, they may abandon your link for another.

☐ Multiple Title Tags 

In the event that a page returns multiple title tags, it’s important to either get rid of the least relevant, or specify which you would like search engines to show in results.

Redirects:

Redirects forward one URL to another. Setting up redirects is a way to have visitors to a particular web page sent automatically to a different page.

However, redirecting too many of your site’s pages to other pages may cause search engines to cover less of your site when they come crawl its content. Direct links should replace redirects where possible because redirects waste crawler resources. The more efficiently a search engine crawler can cover your site, the more likely you are to have all your pages indexed.

There are a couple types of redirects.

☐ 301 – Moved Permanently

This redirect is an HTTP status code for when a page has been moved to a new location or URL. The major benefit of a 301 redirect is that all the value or clout of all the inbound links to the first URL will carry over to the new URL. You might use a 301 redirect when a website changes domain names.

☐ 307 – Moved Temporarily (formerly 302 – Found)

This type of redirect is much less common, but allows a temporary movement of one link to another. Unlike the 301, the value or clout of the link does not carry over to the new, temporary URL. A case of a temporary redirect would be during website/page maintenance. ☐ Hostname

Many sites allow users to visit them through different hostnames (http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com). It’s important that all of your hostnames direct to the same site. If they don’t, search engines may mistake your hostnames for two smaller sites instead of one big site.

☐ Reachability

Reachability refers to the ability to access the most important pages on your site in a small number of clicks. Good reachability makes for a better user experience. It also helps search engines crawl more pages, faster. If search engines can’t access, and therefore can’t read, pages on your site then they cannot be indexed or ranked.

☐ Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink that leads to another page on a website. Like title tags, users and search engines use anchor text to help decide what the destination page is about. This makes for more efficient indexing and more relevant user browsing. Descriptive anchor text also contributes to link relevancy – a big factor in SERP rankings.

☐ Broken Links 

Broken links are links that return an error instead of going to the destination page, file, or image. They can occur for a variety of reasons, like linked content being deleted or a URL being moved.

Broken links can negatively affect search engine rankings because they stop crawlers from indexing your site completely. This means less coverage and poor rankings. Broken links are also a poor experience for the user. If a user encounters a broken link, they may be discouraged from visiting other pages on your site.

☐ Long URLs

Generally, the shorter URLs are the better. Since search engines display URLs as part of search results, long URLs may be cut off and deter users from clicking. Shorter URLs are easier to share socially and are more readable. There are several recommended practices for structuring URLs. This is just one.   

☐ Dead End Pages

Dead end pages have no outgoing links on them. If a user or web crawler hits a dead end page, they are unable to navigate anywhere else on your site. Dead end pages are a poor experience and can negatively affect SEO.

☐ Page Not Found

Otherwise known as a HTTP 404 code, Page Not Found errors appear when a visitor tried to access a page on your site that does not exist (has been deleted) or moved. If moved, a 301 redirect would be the appropriate solution.

Customized Page Not Found pages can create a better experience for visitors, and tells search engines not to send traffic to a non-existent page. Here are some great examples of creative Page Not Found pages.

☐ Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to content that appears at more than one URL. As a result, search engines are forced to prioritize the relevance and originality of each piece of content. Often this means only one piece of content will be ranked in SERPs, which may lead to poor placement for your URL.  Canonicalization or 301 redirect can be used to address duplicate content.

☐ Duplicate Meta Description

A meta description is the descriptive text that sits underneath the title tag on the SERP. Duplicate metas for multiple pages on your website can reduce traffic from search engines if users aren’t able to differentiate between pieces of content on your site.

☐ Too Many Links

Too many links can negatively impact how search engines assess the quality of the page, and make your site harder to navigate. Google’s Matt Cutts recommended that less than 100 links on a page is a good rule of thumb. While you won’t be penalized for going over a certain threshold of links, it comes down to the authority of your site. In short, the more links you have, the less authority (PageRank) will be allocated to each one.

☐ Server Errors

Server errors indicate there is a problem that keeps your web server from returning a requested page. There are numerous server error codes, but common ones include:

Error 500 – Internal Server Error

Error 503 – Service Unavailable

Error 504 – Gateway Timeout

☐ Robots.txt

Robots.txt files can be used to restrict search engines’ access to all or part of your site. They can also be used to save bandwidth on your site, which can contribute to faster page speed and load times.   

☐ Session IDs

Session IDs are snippets of data that are used to track visitor activity. They are sometimes included at the end of a URL. Unfortunately, search engine crawlers have trouble understanding these IDs, as they aren’t concise or descriptive of the content the link represents. They aren’t intelligible to humans either. Parsing URLs that included session IDs or other parameters also consumes unnecessary crawler bandwidth that may result in fewer pages indexed on your site.

☐ On-site Links

On-site links (also known as internal links) refers to the way pages on your site lead to one another. Onsite links help visitors navigate the content you provide. They are also the building blocks for the structure (or hierarchy) of your site. Finally, on-site links help distribute page authority throughout your site. Better internal linking means increased and better quality visitor engagement. It also makes it possible for crawlers to navigate and index your site – hence, better rankings.

☐ Low Word Count

The amount of text on your website indicates to crawlers the depth and quality of the content you can provide users. Pages with low word counts may receive poor placement in SERPs (see Google’s Panda update) because crawlers can’t determine the viability of the content. The number of words you have on a page will vary. But as long as your content is relevant and targets a specific keyword(s) that addresses customer need, great. Low word count aims to address poor user experience more than anything.

☐ Image Descriptions

Image descriptions assist search engines with indexing your site’s non-text content. Incorporating appropriate keywords into your image descriptions or titles will allow those images to show up in search engine results, potentially driving additional traffic to your site. Image descriptions also benefit those using text browsers, screen readers, or other assistive technologies for the vision-impaired.

Part 2: PERFORMANCE CHECKLIST

☐ Speed Analysis

How fast your web pages load has a tremendous impact on user experience, conversion rates, and the number of pages that search engines can index. Introducing unnecessary friction into the user’s journey may cause them to abandon your site for another, reducing your conversion rates. Crawlers have designated crawl budgets, so the longer your pages take to load the fewer pages may get indexed.

Part 3: SECURITY CHECKLIST

☐ Insecure Forms

When forms aren’t accessed through a secure connection (https), it can compromise the security of information visitors submit in forms on your site. Secure forms protect emails, passwords, and more from being intercepted by malicious individuals.

☐ Meta Information

Insecure meta tags on your site provide information about the underlying software that could help someone attack or compromise your website.

Part 4: REPUTATION CHECKLIST

☐ Links from Top Sites

Your site’s reputation and search engine placement can be influenced by the number of sites that link to it. The more sites that link to your pages, the more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant search engines will interpret your site to be. If the sites that link to your pages are very authoritative, this is an even stronger signal to search engines that your pages are authentic.

An important rule of thumb for any linking strategy is to always prioritize quality over quantity. Because in the end, search engines use a number of variables for link analysis:

• The number of links to your pages
• The popularity of the sites linking to you
• The relevance of links to your pages – Does the anchor text include target phrases on your site?
• The linking history of the site linking to you (Spammy websites tend to link to each other)
• The freshness of the links to your pages
• Social shares – Are your pages linked to on social media platforms?

Conclusion

Following this SEO Checklist will help you navigate the “must do’s” for an optimized website. We’ve even included a handy infographic below to keep your to-do list organized. Print it out, share it with teammates, and devise a plan. In the end, you’ll have built a tremendously solid foundation for future audits.

THE STORY OF ANDROID: How a flailing startup became the world’s biggest computing platform

 

In 2004, Andy Rubin made an urgent call to his friend, Steve Perlman.Rubin’s startup, Android, was in trouble, he explained. Rubin didn’t like asking for money again, but the situation was dire.

Android, which was creating mobile software for phones, was out of cash, and other investors weren’t biting.

Perlman agreed to wire some funds as soon as possible.

“Maybe a little sooner would be better,” Rubin said nervously. Rubin had already missed payments on Android’s office space, and the landlord was threatening to evict him.

Perlman went to the bank and withdrew $10,000 in $100 bills and handed them to Rubin. The next day, he wired over an undisclosed amount of money to provide the seed funding for Android.

“I did it because I believed in the thing, and I wanted to help Andy,” Perlman told Business Insider.

With the new cash, Rubin got Android back on track. He secured more funding and moved the team into a larger office in Palo Alto, California, a technology hub on the West Coast.

Today, Android powers about 85% of all smartphones globally, while the iPhone accounts for only 11%. It’s making a push into wristwatches, cars, and TVs. It’s not hard to envision a time when Android will be in every single device from stove and thermostats to toothbrushes.

To grab 85% of the smartphone market, Rubin had to beat the two most valuable, and profitable, technology companies of their era: Microsoft and Apple. He had to fight entrenched wireless carriers. He had to get phone makers to buy into its radical vision.

Rubin didn’t do it alone. He got help from investors such as Perlman and big support from Google.

Based on interviews that Business Insider conducted with several sources who were there at the beginning, the following is the story of how Android came to be.

An impossible idea

Over the course of his 29-year career in Silicon Valley, Andy Rubin has become known as a technical genius, a skillful businessman, and a dynamic leader.

Above all, Rubin is an entrepreneur who loves to create things, whether it’s writing code or building robots.

His knack for engineering was evident in Building 44, where Android lives on Google’s campus. There, Rubin spent his spare time programming a gigantic robotic arm to make him coffee each time he sent it a text message. The machine was on the second floor of Building 44, and it was large enough to lift cars, a former Googler says.

Another one of Rubin’s projects involved flying a massive remote-controlled helicopter on Google’s lawn.

“It’s this huge $5,000 helicopter – he’s trying to pilot it and it takes off and flips over upside down,” said Sumit Agarwal, a former head of mobile product management at Google. “And it doesn’t explode, but you’ve got this helicopter that’s literally ripped itself apart out on the lawn in front of Building 44.”

Long before Rubin had the luxury of tinkering with enormous robots at Google, he had to prove he could execute his crazy ideas. One of his wildest was building an open operating system for phones in the early 2000s.

In the early 2000s, carriers controlled everything from the way a phone was marketed to how much it would cost. Carriers called the shots back then, and they were determined to keep it that way. They didn’t want any company – large or small – infringing on their profits, which is why most of the tech industry thought an idea like Rubin’s was impossible, say sources who worked at Google in Android’s early days.

While the carrier system was closed and siloed, Android is open. The term “open source” means anyone can take the original source code that makes up Android and use it on their gadgets free. Anyone can build on that code or modify it.

Rubin initially tried to design Android for cameras but couldn’t get traction from investors. So he teamed up with Chris White, who previously designed the interface for WebTV, and Nick Sears, a former T-Mobile marketing executive Rubin had worked with when launching the Danger Hiptop, or T-Mobile Sidekick as it was widely known. Rubin explained his idea to create an open-source operating system for phones. Rich Miner, another Android cofounder who leads the East Coast investment team at Google Ventures, joined the group in February 2004.

T-Mobile

The first T-Mobile Sidekick

When the Android team pitched their idea to venture capitalists, their original business plan was to give away the software free to phone manufacturers. The carriers would then order phones from the manufacturers running Android’s open software, and they could brand or modify it as they saw fit. Android would then sell “value-added services” to the carriers to go on top of that software, a source said.It was a business model designed to attract carriers. The problem, however, was that it was difficult to make any mobile product successful because the carriers didn’t want to give up control of the industry. For example, Rubin’s first phone, the T-Mobile Sidekick, came to fruition only because T-Mobile agreed to sell it and re-brand it. Most teens who owned the Sidekick probably didn’t even know what Rubin’s company, Danger, was. They just knew they could only get the phone through T-Mobile. It was T-Mobile’s product more than Danger’s to any customer looking to buy the phone.

Sure, Rubin’s plan would allow carriers to openly advertise their products and services, but it would also require that they share some of their handle on the mobile market with Android. And they weren’t willing to agree to an idea like that very easily.

The impenetrable environment could rattle any CEO – but not Rubin.

“Even when things get really bad, you never really give up,” one source said of Rubin’s reaction to the difficult carriers. “It’s just the way these people who build these kinds of things are built to work.”

Most people thought Rubin was crazy for trying. Perlman, who met Rubin when they both worked for Apple in the early 1990s, remembers running into a venture capitalist at a Whole Foods in 2003 and asking what he thought about Rubin’s open-source project.

“He said, ‘Steve, come on. He’d have to sell at least a million of those things for it to break even,'” Perlman recalled. “‘He’s trying to boil the ocean.'”

In 2014, analysts estimate that more than 1 billion Android phones were shipped.

The man behind the idea

AP

Andy Rubin

Rubin graduated from Utica College in upstate New York. Prior to Android, he had a long career in tech, which started at Carl Zeiss Microscopy, where he worked as a development engineer for about a year between 1986 and 1987.After leaving his job at Carl Zeiss, Rubin moved to Switzerland to work for a robotics company, according to The New York Times. During a vacation in the Cayman Islands in 1989, Rubin met an Apple engineer named Bill Caswell.

Rubin barely knew Caswell, but did him a favor – he offered Caswell a place to stay after he had been evicted from his beach cottage following a fight with his girlfriend, according to the Times.

This is how Rubin got his job at Apple, where he worked as a software engineer between 1989 and 1992 after Caswell offered him a job. Rubin’s love of robots was apparent at Apple too – he even earned himself the nickname Android while working at the company, according to The Verge.

But he was also quite the prankster back then. Rubin once got in trouble for programming Apple’s internal phone system to make it look like then-CEO John Sculley was calling to offer Rubin’s engineering colleagues special stock grants, The New York Times reported.

Rubin and Perlman, now the CEO of a company called Artemis Networks that’s working on an alternative to traditional wireless carrier networks, eventually left Apple to work for General Magic – a company that spun out of Apple in the early 1990s. The company was credited with creating a personal handheld computer some have called the precursor to the modern smartphone.

Rubin worked at General Magic between 1995 and 1997, until he left to join WebTV, which eventually was acquired by Microsoft and became MSN TV. Perlman worked at WebTV and went with Rubin to Microsoft, too. After leaving Microsoft in 1999, Rubin started his own company Danger, the startup that invented the T-Mobile Sidekick.

Rubin didn’t know it at the time, but this was his first big break, and it would eventually lead to his next startup getting acquired by Google.

Google comes knocking

REUTERS/Chip East

Google co-founder Larry Page speaks with people at his lunch table during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 27, 2007.

While many saw Rubin’s idea for Android as crazy, he did find one other early supporter: Larry Page.The Google co-founder was the company’s president of products when he learned about Rubin’s Android project. He asked a Google executive to reach out to Rubin, and it may have been the most important call of Rubin’s life.

Google told Rubin it heard about Android and wanted to offer “help.” Page previously met Rubin during a panel at Stanford University.

Rubin and Sears drove to Google’s Mountain View headquarters the first week of January in 2005. They sat down with Page and his Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as well as Georges Harik, a Google Ventures advisor and one of the company’s first 10 employees.

Page was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. Brin wore no shoes but had a plastic Disney watch on his wrist. He sat near two candy jars and popped handfuls into his mouth.

Page wasted no time and praised Rubin’s previous work. He called the T-Mobile Sidekick one of the best phones he had ever seen.

Getty Images / Justin Sullivan

Google’s Sergey Brin

Brin jumped in with a few jokes. He also talked with Rubin in meticulous detail about the technology that powered the Sidekick.The meeting wasn’t all about praising Rubin; Brin wanted to test him too. He kept pressing Rubin about what he could have done differently to make the Sidekick even better, and why he chose to create the phone the way he did.

It wasn’t an aggressive conversation but a collaborative exercise in problem solving.

When Rubin and Sears walked out of that meeting, one thing was clear: Google was interested in Android. But it wasn’t clear why.

Was Google their friend or foe? Was it developing its own mobile software and learning from the competition?

Forty-five days later, when Google called Rubin back for a second meeting, Page’s intentions became clear. This time all four Android co-founders attended, and they brought a prototype of the software to show Google.

Harik got straight to the point: Google wanted to buy Android.

The founders were torn. Android desperately needed funding. Rubin, Android co-founder Chris White, and Sears were on board. But Rich Miner, the fourth founder who now works at Google Ventures, wanted the company to stay small.

Ultimately, Android accepted Google’s offer for a reported $50 million. About six months after their first meeting with Google in January, the Android team moved into the Googleplex on July 11, 2005.

‘The new model’

Android’s headquarters in Building 44, which is where the team moved in April 2006 after living in Building 41, wasn’t like the rest of Google. A cylon from Battlestar Galactica guarded the entrance to the secluded office. Gizmos, gadgets, and robots filled the workspace.

“[Android] was a little resistant to becoming part of the bigger Google,” one early employee said. “It was kept pretty separate.”

Google typically reviews every single piece of code before it’s put into a product to improve code quality. Android, however, resisted that idea. A year or two passed before the team allowed Google to review its code.

Another former Googler described Android as an “island” inside Google in its early days that ran as its own secretive group with its own culture.

“I didn’t realize he was running a startup inside Google,” one source that worked with Rubin told us. “That’s what it was.”

Google+/Sundar Pichai

The Android building at Google

The Android team’s strategy when it came to mobile was foreign to other Googlers at the time, too. If one were to explain the idea behind Android to other Google employees around 2005 or 2006, the reaction probably would have been, “good luck with that.”

Before Android, Google focused its mobile efforts on getting its apps onto other phones – like those made by Nokia or Blackberry devices. The idea with Android, however, was to create Google’s own system for distributing its services in addition to making Google apps for other platforms.

“Call it the old model,” one source said. “We were the new model.”

But in order to distribute Android at all, the team at Google would need to develop a phone that would run on the software. Then, they would have to find a carrier that would sell the phone.

“If you said just go out and build a phone, that’s one thing,” a source who previously worked with Rubin said. “That’s what Apple did. We went out and built the phone and then we had to build this infrastructure, this alliance, and partnerships.”

That meant, partnering with chipmakers, smartphone makers, and wireless carriers. All to build a phone that was seen as radically disruptive at the time.

“He [Rubin] maneuvered the waters between the OEMs very skillfully, and often times you don’t find that,” one source that worked with Rubin said. “Often times, people that speak the engineers’ language can’t really sit in a boardroom and listen to CEOS. But he had both”

Google and the Android team basically built its first phone, the G1, as a proof-of-concept. They wanted to show potential partners what Android could do so that they would want to use it on their own phones.

Amazon

The G1, or HTC Dream

No carrier wanted to partner with Google to launch the first Android phone in 2007. Verizon had turned them down, Sprint wasn’t interested, and AT&T didn’t give them a straight answer. Even T-Mobile, which eventually agreed to release the G1, initially refused.”It was not a good time in Android history,” the source said.

Carriers wanted to sell content on phones and keep all of the profits for themselves, so they were reluctant to work with any company. They were essentially the gatekeepers between the companies that make the phones and the customers who buy them, and they weren’t willing to compromise.

The Android team knew T-Mobile was their best bet at the time.

After trying to negotiate with T-Mobile for about six months, the carrier came back and said they didn’t want to do a deal with Google, according to our source.

Rubin was one of the few people in Google that knew the T-Mobile deal had balked.

“He was disappointed, but Andy’s not the kind of guy that’s going to wear disappointment on his sleeve,” one source said. “We still had people that hadn’t told us no. He certainly didn’t like it and he knew that was our best prospect and we spent a lot of time on it.”

But T-Mobile eventually came around to the deal – largely because Android co-founder Nick Sears previously worked as a marketing executive for the carrier and was able to convince then-CEO Robert Dodson to take the deal, one source said.

The ‘game changer’ comes along

Google had finally overcome one of its biggest hurdles. It had found a carrier that would launch its first Android phone. But just as Google was putting the final touches on the G1, something happened: Apple unveiled its smartphone.

“Rubin was so astonished by what Jobs was unveiling that, on his way to a meeting, he had his driver pull over so that he could finish watching the webcast,” Fed Vogelstein writes in his book “Dogfight: How Apple And Google Went To War And Started A Revolution.”

“Holy crap,” Rubin said to one of his colleagues in the car, according to Vogelstein’s book. “I guess we’re not going to ship that phone.”

Rubin and his team modified their original plans and eventually shipped a phone that was much different than their original vision. The first version of the G1 had no touch screen and a slide-out keyboard and was thought to appeal more to the BlackBerry-loving crowd. Apple was the first company to wholly bet that touchs creens would be the preferred means of interacting with computers for the foreseeable future.

“It was a game changer,” one source said in explaining what Apple’s launch had felt like inside Google. “It made us go back to the drawing board and reevaluate: Do we want to launch this product without touch? We had to go back and make that decision.”

AP

Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone

Another former Googler describes it differently. According to Sumit Agarwal, a former head of product management at Google, the company had been developing features like pinch-to-zoom for touch-screen devices long before the iPhone was unveiled.

“Everyone thinks it was this epochal moment,” Agarwal said. “The one thing that I would say might have been directly influenced by Apple was the likelihood that people would want to leap all the way to a full touch screen. Everybody knew that would be the future. I think Apple caused Android to go that direction more quickly.”

The ‘crusade against the iPhone’

Although the Android team had to backtrack a bit, the iPhone contributed to Android’s success in a strange way.

The iPhone was released as an exclusive to AT&T, and the buzz around its launch alone was enough to convince the world that this was going to be big.

By 2009 the growing success of the iPhone had become a problem for Verizon, one former Google employee on the Android team said. The company had no real smartphone option that could compete with the iPhone just yet.

The iPhone pushed phone manufacturers and carriers to side with Android.

Carriers viewed the iPhone as the biggest threat to their business models. With the iPhone, Apple owned the relationship with the customer – not AT&T. And customers were switching from other carriers to AT&T to get their hands on the iPhone.

So when the iPhone was announced, it was much easier for Android to sign on with carrier partners.

Compared to the iPhone, Android was a much more appealing opportunity for carriers. Rubin and his team pitched it as a platform for developers, not consumers, which made carriers and phone manufacturers feel more comfortable.

“At the time, the strategy was to counter,” one source who previously worked in Google’s Android division said. “Look at what Android brings as a way for them to actually fight the iPhone from kicking [carriers] out of relevance … Let’s find terms that carriers would be happy with that will help them in their crusade against the iPhone.”

Carriers could modify the phones and add their branding, which gave them some control over the product.

Android’s first big win

Tech-Ex

The original Motorola Droid

Although BlackBerry has fallen to the bottom of the smartphone market, it was the dominant player in the early 2000s. The iPhone came on strong after its launch, in 2007, but Android was nowhere.Verizon saw the threat clearly, but it didn’t have an answer. Motorola did, however.

Motorola had developed an Android-based phone. It wasn’t as sleek as the iPhone. It was somewhat bulky and had a slideout keyboard. But it was the best non-iPhone on the market when it was released in 2009.

Verizon spent $100 million marketing Motorola’s phone, known as the Droid, a name it had licensed from George Lucas. It wasn’t as big as the iPhone in sheer numbers, but it was successful enough to make the world start paying attention to Android.

Rubin’s platform broke through to the mainstream and ultimately marginalized the iPhone.

“I remember the toasting and cheering as the team huddled around the war room, intently watching the dashboards and seeing the massive spike building fup on the first day of sales,” Jonathan Matus, a former Google employee who worked as the product marketing lead for Android between 2007 and 2010, told Business Insider.

The ‘magic of Andy Rubin’

If you were to ask exactly what made Android the smash hit it is today, you wouldn’t get a clear-cut answer. It’s a mix of things – one being that Rubin knew how to approach carriers in the early 2000s. He knew they wouldn’t want to give up their power, and he, along with the rest of Google’s Android team, convinced them that his software wouldn’t force them to. At the same time, carriers weren’t calling all the shots, either. The first Droid, for instance, was a combined effort on the part of Motorola, Google, and Verizon. That became clear in the final product.

“Open source was important because it gave carriers and manufacturers confidence that Google wouldn’t have absolute power over the Android platform,” one source said.Rubin doesn’t have any say in what happens to Android anymore – Google’s Sundar Pichai oversees Android, Chrome, and most of Google’s other major products now. Pichai has been in charge of Android for nearly two years – in March 2013, Rubin left the Android department at Google to return to his first love: robotics. He oversaw the robotics department at Google until he left the company in 2014 to focus on his own startup incubator, which is listed as being called Playground.global on Rubin’s LinkedIn profile.

Rubin is an entrepreneur at heart; he knows exactly how to build a company, and he expects all the hurdles that come with it. Android is the strongest testament to that.

Rubin was the one who made Google and the rest of the wireless industry believe he could do the impossible with Android.

“And that’s the magic of Andy Rubin,” said a source who worked closely with him. “When he attracts talent, everybody kind of contributes. And he still has a vision, and it’s very smart, and he kind of puts it together. It’s his ability to attract, this coolness factor he has, to attract talent and to make people believe in this path he’s going down.”

ANDROID MARSHMALLOW VS. IOS 9 VS. WINDOWS 10 MOBILE

You’re in the market for a new smartphone (maybe your first smartphone), but which digital horse should you put your money behind? Choosing a smartphone OS is a bigger choice than you realize. Thankfully, if you can’t decide whether to pick iPhone, one of the many Android phones, or Windows Mobile, we’re here to help. We’ll break the battle down into categories and find a winner for each. Just pick what matters most to you, count up the wins in those categories, and you have a recommendation.

Affordability

Winner: Android

Apple doesn’t make budget devices, and the latest iPhone is always among the most expensive handsets on the market, costing $200 with a two-year contract and $650 without. Last year’s iPhone 6 comes in at $100 less. The two year-old iPhone 5S is as close as Apple gets to budget at about $200 cheaper, but it’s still pricey.

Microsoft’s main hardware partner Nokia (which it now owns) was always good at producing quality hardware at relatively low prices. There are a wide range of older Windows Phones at varying price points, and finally a few that push the limit and rival Android and iOS on specs. Hardware manufacturers like Samsung, ZTE, LG, Lenovo, and Huawei were Windows Phone 8.1 partners, but it’s unclear who’ll be making Windows 10 Mobile handsets. We expect to see some cheap handsets in the near future, but Microsoft’s Lumia is likely to be the only flagship.

For sheer scale and variety nothing competes with Android. There’s a huge choice of low-cost handsets from a wide variety of different manufacturers and the platform has been deliberately optimized to run on low-end hardware. The fact that Android also leads the field in free apps makes it the natural choice for the budget-conscious. Chances are, if it’s a smartphone by HTC, Samsung, Sony, ZTE, Huawei, or LG, it’s running Android.

Interface

Winner: Tie

Led by Windows Phone, all three platforms have gravitated toward a minimalist, flat, fast, colorful user interface. The big difference is that many Android manufacturers have added their own user interfaces on top of stock Android, and so your mileage will vary. The basic structure with customizable home screens, an app drawer, and pull down notifications is standard, but there’s much more variation on Android than you’ll find on the other two platforms.

The Android Lollipop roll-out ushered in Google’s “Material Design,” which is a minimalist look with simple animations that’s intended to create a new continuity across the platform and in Google’s apps. It’s stylish and slick, and it runs on around 30 percent of Android devices, at the time of writing. The aesthetic hasn’t changed much in the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow release, which brings a few subtle refinements, but you’ll need a new device or a Nexus right now to see it. App developers are still adjusting, and it will be a while before Android 6.0 Marshmallow represents a big share of Android users.

After a major redesign in iOS 7, Apple’s platform is bright and modern-feeling. The slick animations as you navigate around give a sense of depth, and it’s easy to understand. Under the new paint job, this is still the same iOS that came out in 2007. Still, many have complained that the new version of iOS is hard on the eyes. There are settings to turn off its offending animations. Apple has made further refinements in iOS 9, but the aesthetic remains largely unchanged.

Windows 10 Mobile is based on a grid of “Live Tiles,” which can be arranged and resized to suit the owner. It looks and acts much like Windows 10 PCs and tablets, and there’s a consistency here that Microsoft’s desktop and Xbox users will find familiar. Windows Mobile can still sometimes feel overly stylish and sluggish compared to iOS and Android. It is very customizable, though, and Windows 10 Mobile definitely feels slicker than previous versions. The latest Windows 10 Mobile hardware also supports Continuum, an intriguing feature that allows you to dock your phone, and switch to a desktop interface. You can throw it up on a big screen and use a mouse and keyboard with it, effectively making your phone a PC. 

Apps

Winner: Tie

We can bump Windows Mobile straight out of the running here, because it trails way behind Android and iOS when it comes to overall app numbers and app quality.

• Android apps: 1.6 million
• iOS apps: 1.5 million
• Windows Mobile apps: ???

Traditionally, iOS has been a more lucrative platform for developers and easier to develop for, so there has been a tendency for new apps to appear there first, but that is changing as Android’s market share continues to grow. In the United States, iOS still leads the way, but developers elsewhere are increasingly targeting Android first. The Play Store still has a higher percentage of free apps than the App Store.

Android also benefits from the latest and greatest versions of Google’s apps, which are sorely missed on Windows Mobile. Microsoft has a “Universal Apps” plan for apps to run on multiple device types with common code, and it’s supposed to be easy to port Android or iOS apps over, but we’ll have to wait and see how developers respond. In terms of variety and quality, we have to give this one to iOS, but it’s a narrow win.

App store usability

Winner: iOS

None of the app stores offer an excellent user experience, and it can be tough to sift through the thousands of apps on offer to find what you really want. In terms of recommendations and curated charts, the Apple App Store maintains a slender lead over Google’s Play Store. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile store definitely lags behind in terms of usability and aesthetic

Alternative app stores and sideloading

Winner: Android

It’s relatively easy to sideload apps (install them from your PC using a USB cable or alternate download method) on Android and there are a lot of alternative app stores beyond the Play Store, although sideloading can open you up to the risk of malware. Both Apple and Microsoft are opposed to third-party app stores and expect users to stick to their app stores. If you want a wider choice of apps and easy sideloading then your choice is obvious. Android is more open than its competitors and is more geek friendly.

The Ultimate Gudie to Startup, Marketing through Social Media

It is the goal of every business to make the best of their marketing investment. Not exactly breaking news. When it comes to launching a new product, having a solid marketing strategy will not only effectively engage your current customers, but also make an attractive appeal to potential customers.

 

However, promoting a new product is never easy.

 

Because how you market or promote your product launch is going to affect its sales, marketers must employ a variety of marketing techniques to ensure that the right message is communicated through the right medium, and to the right audience.

 

For those CMOs that want to maximize their product launch promotional efforts with the least dollar spent, here are a few creative but powerful ways that will steer you to a strong product launch promotional campaign:

 

1. Host a Giveaway on Online-Sweepstakes.com

 

Giveaways can be an easy marketing strategy to promote your product launch, and in a relatively short amount of time too. Everyone loves to receive free gifts; as a result, giveaways tend to generate quite a large amount of responses. Margarita Hakobyan, CEO of MoversCorp points out, “While giveaways have their drawback of attracting people with little interest in your company besides the free goodies, the strategy itself is one with immense potential especially if you create your sweepstakes with clear objectives and requirements.”For example, you can give people bonus entries for sharing the sweepstakes on social media. You can tell people to go like your Facebook page, view a video, or subscribe to your newsletters. Whatever parameters you wish to establish, keep the instructions simple and make sure that you can establish some levels of communication with your sweepstakes participants.

 

2. Utilize Crowdfunding Platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Tilt

 

The crowdfunding industry has grown to be an over $5.1 billion industry in 2013. The practice of funding a project, a venture, or a cause has become increasingly popular that it creates a win-win situation for you to not only promote your product, but also receive some generous financial supports to further your product development. When embarking on a crowdfunding campaign, it is important for you to understand the mindset of your potential supporters.

 

“In the new world of crowdfunding, to succeed you need to first interview or survey customers extensively to ensure they believe in and understand crowdfunding.” Even if crowdfunding is a viable or even widely-accepted option in your market, the way you explain and promote your product can decide the success of your crowdfunding campaign.

 

3. Create a Teaser Campaign on Facebook

 

Create a teaser campaign on Facebook even before the actual conception of your product. A teaser campaign sends a message to the social media world that something exciting is about to happen. Even if you do not end up creating the exact product you have originally hoped for, you have probably developed relationships across social channels, giving you a great opportunity to take the launch process to an entirely new level.

 

Update your teaser campaign with interesting, creative, and informative updates/posts. Behind the scenes videos are also popular for its effective audience engagement.

 

4. Use Fiverr.com to Create Inexpensive Ads

 

Visually appealing ads attract attention. Instead of spending hundreds on ad creation itself, you could order quality ads for as low as $5! As a global online marketplace, many websites offers services and products that range from graphics and design to online marketing. The freelancing marketing services include ad creation, infographic design, video animation, and much more. The transparency of buyer’s reviews will also help you to choose the right seller and receive quality service that begins at the low price of $5.

 

5. Find Influencers to Talk about your Product

 

There are authoritative figures or influencers who are well-respected in your target market. Influencers have lots of followers, subscribers, and fans who quickly answer to any endorsement and recommendations. As Penny Baldwin, CMO at McAfee, says, “80% of the Internet’s impressions are driven by just 6% of its users.”

 

The article published on Forbes.com continues to explain that using influencers to talk about your product is a trust-based campaign, and “those chosen as brand influencers must have the ability to deliver meaningful content that drives brand sentiment within their community upwards.”

 

While asking your influencers to talk about your products on their blogs/websites as well as their social media is a smart first step, using services will enable your influencers to outreach a morediverse audience. Because both of the services feature influence campaign and rates online content producers with scores, people tend to view the content promoted on those sites as more authoritative. Your product launch effort will experience a generous boost because the people who promote your product are talking about your product in a credible online community.

 

 

 

“Your business,Your rules” . Really?

Hello readers ! So here we meet again.Recently i was doing a research on some traits or the lifestyle of the successful entrepreneurs. And what i observed was that being an entreprenuer is not everyone’s cup of tea.Its not for the faint hearts , but it does depend upon the amzing opportunities  to run with your ideas and see if they will actually work. It is a way to bring your passion to life as you help make people’s lives better.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intutions.They somehow know what you truly want to become.

Launching your own business can be the most exhilarating, mind-boggling, mind-blowing, happy, frustrating and profitable adventure of you life.It does not always go as you want it be. But as we know all roads that lead to success have to pass through a hard work boulevard at some point, because dreams do not work until you do.

Hence there are some heart-throbbing , hard-to-swallow facts that most entrepreneurs experience throughout their incredible journeys-:

• “i will learn from my mistakes ” becomes your mantra.
•  You are in constant jeopardy of losing it all.
• There are times when you forget when the last time was you actually paid yourself.
•  Your first try at launching your product or service will most likely fall short or even fail completely.
• You have to learn quickly to surround yourself with supportive people–not negative–and in some cases this means firing a friend or family member.
• You have to quickly acquire the skill of asking for what you want
• Those friends who remain in their 9-to-5 jobs will never really understand that you really are working.
•  If things go well, you will one day come to the realization that you can’t do it all yourself and you have to let go of some control.
•  Every day there are more decisions to be made than you possibly have time for.
• You have to quickly acquire the skill of asking for what you want.
•  You become the jack-of-all-trades in your business.

 

Most of you having an startup might agree with me. But friends this is how gems are built.Its the things we work hardest , rewards the most.

So keep learning, keep working and remember ,the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

 

Student Startup: Why College Is the Perfect Time to Launch a Business

With college students stressing about
exams, scrapping pennies to buy their
weekly supply of Maggi noodles and
pulling all-nighters at the library, (while
also trying to squeeze in a social life),
starting a company may be the last
thing on their minds. But it shouldn’t
be

So You Want to Be Your Own Boss…

If you want to start a business but
don’t know where to start, don’t
worry–you are not alone. In fact, given
the new economic reality of our time,
more people than ever before have
found the “job” they thought was
waiting for them doesn’t exist. Others
have come to the conclusion that they
would rather create work they love,
constructed to fit with their own life
goals. No matter what the motivation
is to be your own boss, you can start
today.

Here are tips to Get You Started:
Take a Stand for Yourself
If you are dissatisfied with
your current
circumstances, admit that
no one can fix them
except for you. It doesn’t
do any good to blame the
economy, your boss, your
spouse or your family.
Change can only occur
when you make a
conscious decision to
make it happen.

Rookie Entrepreneur:Common mistakes and how to overcome them

There are new entrepreneurs every
year, and a lot of them are making the
same mistakes. Running a new
business is a daunting challenge, but if
you’ve already taken it on you should
want to do it right. Here are common
errors a rookie entrepreneur makes in
the beginning, when mistakes hurt the
most.
Don’t Sink All Your Savings
Into Your New Business
Rookie entrepreneurs shouldn’t think
that they have to spend big to make it
big. The $100 Startup by Chris
Guillebeau is a great book that
documents entrepreneurs who
invested a hundred bucks or less to
launch their business. Heed its advice
by not assuming that you need a huge
influx of cash in order to make your
business a success. For example, a
retail store is a huge risk, costing
thousands of dollars just to open. It’s a
much safer better to sell online at first
and work your way up.

Think you are ready to launch? Answer these questions first

There’s nothing quite like
the feeling of creating a product and
getting it ready to be launched. After
countless hours of work, all of that
effort is about to pay off in a big way.
Or so you think.
Before you get too carried away with
excitement, it’s important to slow
down, take a deep breath and make
sure that you’re actually ready to
launch. One way to do that is to ask
yourself the following questions
that should be a part of every tech-
entrepreneur’s launch checklist.

Need for entrepreneurship

 

Growth of any economy is majorly a function of the amount of innovation and entrepreneurial ventures put in together. The world has seen the rising of the European countries and the US towards development solely as a result of innovators during the industrial revolution. The recovery of Germany and Japan post the World-War, and most recently China’s status of developed economy, are all driven by entrepreneurship and innovation.

India has been an entrepreneurship driven country in its recent past (around 300 years back) with major innovations in fields of astronomy, mathematics, physics, philosophy etc.  Owing to colonisation and missing industrial revolution, the country suffered heavy losses in the GDP.

These values are of greater significance to Indian scenario as the complete potential of the unutilized enormous human resources can be exploited only when they are properly employed. The IT and telecom sector provides shining examples of the miracles and the amount of growth and development brought about by entrepreneurs and their innovation to the economy of India.

Entrepreneurship and innovation have following contributions to the Indian economy:

• Increase the rate of growth in GDP
• Increase the employment opportunities
• Optimum utilization of available resources (human resources and others)
• Increase economic diversification
• Continued innovation in techno-managerial practices
• Prevents drainage of wealth to foreign economies else needed for solving those problems
• Improvement in international competitiveness
• Reduce the need of imports
• Promotes balanced development of nation.

 

Thus entrepreneurship offers employment to others and also leads to emergence of other economic activities. This creates unending employment opportunities.
Entrepreneurship acts as an encouragement for innovation- a driving force for real life problem solving and technological innovations.

Thus, a developing economy like India, can attain a developed status only when supported by entrepreneurship , innovation and technology.