How to Migrate from HTTP to HTTPS

Google has not specified the penalty to give more to 301 redirects .. and that's good news!

When you're developing a new shop, but want to move along many of your old web pages, often changing the URLs of those old pages. When live your new shop, but also, for example when switching from your shop to HTTPS, you will need to implement "301 redirects" to avoid problems.

A 301 redirect indicates that a page of permanent location changed. This ensures on the one hand that visitors still go to the old address will be forwarded to the correct page. On the other search engines can therefore understand that an existing page has a new address. Despite careful often referring lost some old pages about 15% of the PageRank. This caused a surge in the results after every major change to the page addresses.

Google HTTPS

A common security measure for websites and webshops is an SSL certificate. SSL certificate ensures that encrypted information is sent from your site to the visitor and that you address begins with "https://". In this way, the information that is sent may not be read, even if someone would halfway tap off the signal.

Google announced in August 2014 that websites using an SSL certificate would get a small boost in the search results. This made Google also boost security of websites besides relevance. And to show safe sites for each query.

However, this created a dilemma for websites and web shops that could not run on HTTPS, or just the pages where personal data were transmitted had run over HTTPS. As in Magento first standard was done by setting up a secure URL. You could choose to transfer your shop on HTTPS, which you accepted that you could lose some of your PageRank and there would be a surge in your position and revenue. Alternatively, you could also choose not to meet the needs of Google and thus accept that you would rank lower in the long term.

Our advice herein was always to take the switch to HTTPS when there are already changes to the URL structure were to arrive. For example, in the development of a new shop or to adjust the categorization within the shop.

Easily migrate to HTTPS

Google recently indicated no PageRank penalty to give more to 301 redirects. This does not mean that you will never lose more positions by referring to other pages. When you refer an optimized page with relevant text to a page about a completely different topic, then the value will flow quickly.

However, when a page is directed to a page with identical content, there would be virtually no swings or loss should be more. Let this is exactly the case for a migration from HTTP to HTTPS! Because there are no changes to the content of the page, therefore, there would be no more loss by switching to HTTPS.

Make the transition to a full HTTPS website, even if no other changes are made to addresses. Obviously, a good preparation is essential in this process; you always want to make this change in accordance with your online marketing agency.

Migrate from HTTP to HTTPS Step by Step

Step 1: Preparation

Check absolute versus relative URLs

Map out whether all internal links on your site are relative URLs. Navigation links, this can often be adjusted at once by means of a setting. The most likely where it does not always go well, are manually placed links to product descriptions, category texts or information pages. Edit each URL to a relative URL. Unlike absolute URLs are relative URLs directly right after the migration. The correct way is: <a href="/website-development"> Website Development </a> instead of the entire URL.

Also check immediately whether all images with relative URLs are in the code. The correct way is: <img src = "image.jpg"> instead of the entire URL.

See also http links in JavaScripts and CSS files.

Excel with inbound links

Create an excel with all incoming links and the corresponding addresses. After https going live then you website owners as much as possible sending an email with the request to modify the URL. All URLs will naturally after migration neatly redirect to the correct URL. Therefore, the link continues to work well, but it you have in any case whatsoever https inbound links.

Prepare in advance a mail that you can send directly after the migration of your shop to all webmasters.

Changing Destination URLs for advertising

Immediately after the switch, all AdWords destination URLs must be converted to https. This includes destination URLs in all other deployed advertising channels such as retargeting, banners, social media and affiliate marketing campaigns.

Data Feeds

Make sure that on the day of migration all data feeds for comparison, affiliates, Google Shopping, and other parties which data feeds are delivered to destination URLs contain https. Caution: do not convert yet that comes after migration.

Redirects HTTP to HTTPS

The easiest way to ensure that all redirects going over https is to set it in the web server. On an Apache server, you'll need to do this for example in the .htaccess file. This is for the search engines is very important in order to maintain the popularity of the pages. A 301 is a permanent redirect from one URL to another.

It is therefore wise to adjust the .htaccess (Apache server) so that all URLs automatically go over the https protocol with a 301. That looks like:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on

RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

</IfModule>

</IfModule>

Please note that when you turn on the redirects on that you do not redirect to the root, but the exact new URL. For example http://subimage.fr/fr/32-sublimation to https://subimage.fr/fr/32-sublimation.

The web server must be compatible with HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), these forces to load the host https. Nowadays, almost every server suitable. An SSL certificate must be installed on the server. This can best be carried out by the hosting party.

Further, the Web server must be compatible with SNI. SNI (Server Name Indication) is an extension of the TLS protocol (Transport Layer Security, rather SSL). This indicates the hostname the client attempting to connect. The SNI extension is supported by all modern browsers, only Android 2.x (default browser) Internet Explorer in Windows XP and Java versions 1.7 are not supported.

Certificates

Talk with your hosting provider what kind of certificate you need:

• Single domain single scure origin (example.com)
• Multi-domain (example.com, example.co.uk)
• Wildcard certificate (a.example.com, b.example.com)

If you have a weaker key certificates (1024 bit), upgrading it to a high level of security with a 2048-bit key.

TLS (Transport Layer Security) Libraries should be updated with the latest version available. At this time, TLS 1.2 is the latest version.

Step 2: Migration

Start request to the migration through the hosting provider to trigger the switch. All preparations can now trigger. So converting the URLs in data feeds, Adwords, retargeting, affiliate campaigns, etc., and accessing all mapped sites that link to the http link. Send them the mail that you've already put in the preparation.

Webmaster Tools

Then get started with Google Webmaster Tools:

1. Add and verify the new https version of the Webmaster Tools.
2. Duplicate and upload the robots.txt file for the new https version on your Web server. Edit via robots.txt tester (within Webmaster Tools Crawl under) and check it for errors.
3. Upload the sitemap with all https URLs. This will help Google a hand for the re-indexing of all pages.
4. If the new version is online, you can help Google to index it faster. Using Webmaster Tools you can submit the website or individual pages via the tool - Fetch as Google.

Test your site

Working all site functionality yet? Test the filtering, sorting, searching, reviews, pictures, newsletter subscriptions, etc. Also place a test order, even though the check-out already in https.

Traffic monitoring

Keep your traffic well watched. This can be done the following ways:

1. Analytics should automatically go well. Still, it is wise to monitor your traffic. Do this via Webmaster Tools and (real) Google Analytics.
2. Also compare https and http in Webmaster Tools with each other. If all is well, fall displays the HTTP version and rise to the https version. It can take weeks or months to all https URLs are replaced and indexed in the Google index.
3. Monitor indexation. Be the first https URLs already indexed and you maintain the position.

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12 Rules for Building Strong Backlinks to your Website

When I started optimization of my own website, I did not know about how to get backlinks. I did not even know at the beginning what these damn backlinks really are. Why should I build backlinks? Why is everybody talking about it?

 

After some research I have found some blogs that have explained the meaning of backlinks.

Generating backlinks can be enormously important to get ahead of Google search. But I still did not know how to generate such backlinks! I've learned a lot about the topic of link building over the past few years and was able to test a lot.

That is why I present you today my great contribution on the subject of link building. In this blog post I have written about how you can generate backlinks to make your site more popular in the major search engines.

Since there are a lot of possibilities to generate backlinks, I have put together some well-known and successful link building strategies.

Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages, and ultimately everyone needs to know for themselves what strategy they prefer. Backlinks should not only push the ranking in the Google search, but also bring visitors to your website.

For a successful search engine optimization is now much more necessary and there are countless ranking factors which can lead to a good placement. Some of them can be read here:

According to the study and my own experience, I can say that good backlinks boost every website ranking in the Google search engine. This is why it is still important today to use good search engine optimization for good link building.

But What is Actually a Backlink?

Backlink refers to an incoming link to a web page that links to it from another web page. For instance, A link from page A to page B is therefore a backlink for page B. A link on the Internet can be viewed as a kind of recommendation. Page A sets a link on page B, thus recommending a page B.

The more "recommendations" a page gets from other websites, the better this is in the eyes of Google. It is important, however, from which website this "recommendation" comes from. If your parents recommend a good dentist, this recommendation is worth more than if a trustworthy money shark recommends a financing loan.

Google is similar and evaluates the quality of websites from which you get a backlink. In order to evaluate whether the link-giving website is a high-quality page, it is important to know how a good and natural backlink profile of a website looks like. Websites that have a heavily manipulated link profile run the risk of being punished by Google, and such links can be very harmful.

Of course, when evaluating the backlink profile of a web page, you can also use metrics, such as the domain authority of Moz.com.

In this post, however, I would like to show you how a possible natural backlink profile can look, so that you can even better evaluate web pages from which you can have a backlink.

12 Rules for Building Backlinks

When building backlinks, a lot can go wrong and some rules should be observed for a successful link building. I have summarized some of the most important suggestions.

1. An abrupt stop of the backlink construction is never recommended. If you have built up a lot of backlinks for a website in the last few months and will stop immediately from today to tomorrow, the page will probably fall back into the ranking!

2. Pay attention to the naturalness of the backlink structure. The backlink profile can be analyzed, for example, on ahrefs.com or majestic.com.

3. If you always place backlinks with the same text (anchor text), this is often interpreted by Google as manipulation. Therefore always vary the link names of the manually generated backlinks. Check your competitors anchors for your search term. With which anchor texts could these websites storm the front ranks at Google?

4. How many backlinks you put and how regular, also depends on your website itself. A small niche page should not get 100,000 new backlinks a month. Always try to avoid Link Spam. Too many backlinks in too short a time are also very suspicious.

5. Notice where the link to your site is placed. Links that are, for example, in the footer, are rather weighted by Google rather than backlinks from a topic-relevant contribution in the content area of ​​the website.

6. Do not just set DoFollow backlinks, but also some NoFollow backlinks. Each natural backlink profile also has NoFollow links.
What are DoFollow and NoFollow links? As already described, backlinks give their linkjuice to the linked website. If a link is now set to a web page with the "NoFollow" attribute, the linked page no longer receives a linkjuice.

A normal backlink without the "NoFollow" attribute is therefore always more valuable. NoFollow links are not generally bad. A NoFollow backlink on a well-visited website (eg Wikipedia) can give you increased traffic and is thus also a valuable link despite NoFollow attributes.

7. Backlink build-up is and remains a dangling sport. Do not expect great success immediately after a few days. It may take months to make the first successes visible.
 

8. Check the websites before placing a link there. Further up you already have already learned how to analyze a website. For example, websites that have many outgoing links pass very little on their linkjuice.
 

9. Always try to implement a topic-relevant backlink construction. It is particularly important that the link is surrounded by a content that fits into your target page.
 

10. Make sure that most of the links you receive come from websites that are written in the same language as your landing page.
 

11. Also be sure to link not only your main page, but also to place deep links, i.e links to subpages.
 

12. Do not be stingy with outgoing links on your own website. But always be sure to link to websites that offer added value to your readers!

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What is the best way to learn Programming and how long it takes?

How long does it take you to master a programming language? This depends on various factors. There is no general time. Clear - anyway, each person learns differently fast. Prerequisites also play a role. The first language is much heavier than a second or third. In addition, each programming language is differently complex. So it's supposed to be easier to master PHP than to understand how drivers are written for operating systems. The article still gives you answers.

When do you say "I can program"?

I can program - when do you say that? Or: How do you define this state? I may associate with the statement something else than you. I do not find it important to memorize all aspects, functions, methods, or classes of a programming language by heart. The knowledge you can memorize by heart. And that is not the point of programming.

In practice, you do not have much of factual knowledge. To apply this is much more difficult in practice than in theory. Read an entire book and then start with an empty editor. You already understand how that is meant. In addition, there is no reason for any programming language references. In which you can check. You need to know where to look.

I recommend to focus on the following levels:

1. Syntax

The first step is to familiarize yourself with the syntax of a language. It is important to "get warm" with the language through a lot of practice. Small test programs, the function of which is rather in the background, are the optimal start. At first it is not necessarily easy and pleasant. You will always look up things. This is why exercise is important. The foundations go "in flesh and blood". Knowledge moves into implicit memory. The same happens when binding the shoes, switching in the car or writing with the hand - you do not think about every step. You act easy. And so you do not think any more about where now e.g. A bracket must be set. You just know it.

2. The Basics

The second step is to learn the basics of language. These are mainly things that occur in any programming language. How do you write strings, arrays and so on? What control structures exist? How do you write loops? How do you write your own functions, classes, and methods? How do you create objects? Are there special data structures (such as tuples or dictionaries at Swift)? And so on. This is important in order not to have to ask documentation for constantly required functions. The more knowledge is available, the faster this step.

3. Getting to know features

Only in the third step you take a trip through the library. What features are included? A good overview of the standard library is important. So you know what the language itself, where external libraries are necessary and where solutions are required. The best thing is - who would have thought it - in which you simply write software. Use the features, experiment with it. In many libraries, for example, there are solutions for database access, input / output on file extensions and the like. This step is usually much more fun, as there is already a feeling for the language.

4. Software Architecture, Best Practices & Co

In the fourth step you familiarize yourself with best practices and design patterns. Good programming and clean code is created mainly because a good architecture is present. This is the actual cracking point separating the chaff from the wheat.

When one can speak precisely of mastering a programming language, every developer will probably answer differently. Personally, I find that at least one can claim to be able to deal with a programming language when it feels safe when working with it. I would speak of mastering, if you just have to read references and work with the given information independently (without sample code).

Programming - the felt duration

You want to learn programming. When do you start as a programmer? After other developers do that! If other programmers call you like that, you did it. This unfortunately only slightly changes your feeling. For your travel this is almost completely irrelevant. The key question is: When do you feel safe when programming? Because then you come into the so-called flow. Learning is to play. You are no longer practicing but playing. From my point of view, this starts at level 3.

Programming in 30 days?

You can learn how to use the product xyz in 30 days. These providers like to teach the abbreviation - read this book and save you many years of learning. That will not do. You're just going through a lot of practice an experienced programmer.

But what really works: You can reach the state of Flow with the appropriate program in 30 days. And as soon as that happens, the feeling does not change much. No matter if you develop a complete app or website.

Think about programming

There are of course some factors that influence your learning process. Here are some logical ideas that you can only partially influence:
What previous knowledge do you have?

The existing knowledge has a very decisive influence on the duration and learning sequence. If you are already familiar with other programming languages, you will learn a new language much faster. You can connect a lot with experiences and "get to know" more quickly with the knowledge. Especially the syntax and basics are no longer a challenge. You can then focus much more on the language features, the library, and things like architecture and design patterns. You learn not only faster. With time and more knowledge, you will automatically write better source code.

How much time do you invest?

Clearly, the main factor is the time spent invested. If you can invest 4 hours per day, this is always better than an hour. But also, whoever learns an hour or half an hour every day comes forward! This is very important. Just beginners often wait for the perfect circumstances. A cozy evening in bad weather. Read the book relaxing on the sofa. Sure great, but focused half an hour of learning is equally effective. More importantly, learn regularly!

How quickly do you understand individual aspects?

The success of the learner is also dependent on your abilities. Everything else would be a lie. Some people learn new things faster. Some slow down. This is not a question of intelligence. Not every brain works equally. Younger people need e.g. Usually less repetitions to store the same knowledge in long-term memory.
Your Mathematical / Logical Thinking

Whoever has never dealt with abstract thinking, mathematics or logic, unconsciously also builds up something in programming. This is positive! However, this also slows down the learning success somewhat.

Sure there are other factors. Someone who finds only evening time, since he is working during the day, needs more time than someone who can use the high-performance phases of the brain during the day. But, to pursue all possible factors so deeply explores the framework. A tip in any case:

Do not lose too much in the details. It is not so important to pick up all the lines and keywords that are written. You will not create that directly anyway. And: it comes automatically with time. It is much easier and more fun when you go relaxed. Everything else comes by itself.

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Four Ways To Help Small Budget PPC Accounts Succeed

Great plans and a small budget - not just startups know the difficulty, if the expected increase in sales and the existing marketing budget go far apart. Also, the planning of pay-per-click campaigns is not easy.

But: No reason for sweat breaks! With these tips, your PPC campaign will be a success despite a tight budget.

PPC - What is it?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a billing model in online marketing. Pay-Per-Click campaigns are not billed per advertising or sales, but per page i.e. click on ads.

A common vendor of this model is, for example, Google AdWords - advertising ads and sponsor links, which appear as search results with the yellow "Add" ad at the top as well as the margin are advertising ads calculated according to this model.

In order to appear high up here, you are bidding on keywords - and of course you can spend more money than you might like.

But even with a small budget, you can start sending successful PPC campaigns when you pay attention to a few things.

How your PPC campaign works despite a small budget?

1. Bring your resources to the point

• Put the customer gadgets on: What search terms would customers use possibly to find your products?
• Record the most important four to five keywords that are relevant to your business.

If you are planning to travel Andaman, your top keywords would be "Andaman honeymoon package", "honeymoon packages in Andaman with prices", "Andaman packages by cruise" and "Andaman Tour package by Ship".

Choose one or two keywords from this selection. The AdWords keyword planner can help you, because it shows you which search volumes show the individual search terms and how expensive the average click is (Cost per Click).

In order to achieve a higher search engine ranking, the strategy of keyword phrases, the so-called "long tail keywords", can be used. Keyword phrases are combinations of less used search terms, but in their combination generate the most clicks on your page. Therefore, quality-clicks at much lower prices than the top keywords.

2. Use your keywords profitably

Keywords are not self-purpose. You should catapult your company in the targeted search for the top and thus boost your sales.

In order to do this, I recommend you to go through the three following steps and repeat them on a regular basis:

• Invest and offer enough for your trump keywords; That is, so much that you appear on Google with it.
• Test ads with different keywords, and see which generates the highest click rate.
• Make sure that your landing page also contains relevant content for the search terms.

Your goal should be that your campaign with your chosen keywords appears at the top of the search results - most likely right under the search box at the top. Because that is what is seen by your target group as a search result first.

3. Save through target group

Personally, our PPC campaigns have shown that the more the ad is targeting the product, the more cost-effective and successful it is.

Of course, you can control this in detail, but the following three tips will help you to significantly improve this odds:

Geo-targeting for targeted customer interaction
The profitable use of keywords naturally also means that companies operating in a particular region or their clients from a particular region will limit their ads to that region as well.

If the travel company determines that mainly residents from the north and south of America book a trip to the Andaman, the company can align its ads precisely to these states or regions.

Build customer loyalty by retargeting
Another strategy to increase profitability is retargeting. People who have visited your site will see your ad as they continue to surf the web. This is an extremely effective way to recall visitors and move them to a purchase or contract conclusion.

Also in retargeting, your ad is very likely to reach the visitors who are interested in your products or services. And more affordable than a normal Adwords campaign is the retargeting as well.

How does retargeting look in practice? Back to our ship travel provider in the Andaman. The company could, for example, appeal to all visitors to the website who have already read the trip services but have not booked a trip yet. With this target group, it is extremely likely that they are planning to book a trip to this region and have already taken the company in the narrower selection of travel providers. Retargeting can be used to provide the missing incentive for booking.

4. Bing Ads
                                                              
Many marketers do not have Bing at all. Bing and Yahoo in Europe have a market share of 7 percent, in the US even 30 percent. The Bing market share is far behind that of Google, Bing Ads have quite their right and a lot of advantages. There is often less competition in the individual keywords, that is why the cost per click (CPC) is also significantly lower than in Adwords.

Bing Ads is built in the same way as Adwords, so you can transfer your campaign directly and uncomplicatedly. Try it out and see if the searchability in the Bing and Yahoo network is worthwhile for you.

The various campaign approaches presented here are fairly general, but can easily be transferred to companies in the various sectors. It does not always depend on the size of the budget, but depend on where and how efficiently it is used. Thus, PPC campaign succeeds on a small budget.

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