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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How to Boost your Website Ranking with Google Plus

After the start of Google Plus about ten years ago, the social platform of Internet, Google has done a lot. In December 2012, Google Plus has already reported 500 million users and is growing as fast as Facebook. 

 

But why should you become an account with Google Plus if you are already represented in various other social media platforms? This is exactly the question I asked myself and I was looking for the advantages and disadvantages of Google Plus for business owners.

An advantage of social media platforms is the possibility of customer retention and the exchange with colleagues and experts from the industry. Google Plus is nothing new, but it has made it very easy for users to implement this concept successfully. The organization of his contacts in circles is basically nothing else than creating groups in Facebook, but with much less effort. You should know about how to use your circles effectively to reach the right people with your messages.

Another nice feature, which finds more and more followers are so-called "Hangouts". These video conferences include a huge potential: webinars, worldwide exchanges with other artists, personal customer discussions and much more. Through this personal exchange interesting contacts can be made and a very close customer relationship can be established.

The one advantage of this social network is to rank on the first page of the search results leads to the fact that you get more visitors on your own website and therefore even more customers is well aware of everyone.

So the question is how you can improve ranking through Google Plus? For instance, Alex has taken the affordable sublimation printing services at Subimage Sublimation and was very satisfied with it. That is why Alex gives a +1 for the Subimage Sublimation. Emily is looking for a sublimation services at Google. Since Emily is friends with Alex on Google Plus, the Subimage Sublimation is listed higher in the search results and gets the addition "Alex gives +1".

As you can see, your ranking is improved as you get +1, the more people you take into their circles, and the other increases the likelihood that more visitors will click on your search result.

With Google Plus, it is also possible to link Picasa, the Google Pictures service, with its Google Plus account so that your pictures in the public albums can also be found in search results. And what better for a photographer if his works, including the comments and + 1's, are displayed directly on Google? Clicking on the website is almost guaranteed.

Another advantage of Google Plus is the seamless integration into other Google services. This makes it possible to link your website or blog to the Google Plus profile to display the results of a search with a picture. If you link your Google AdWords ads with its Google Plus profile, the + 1's will be displayed as an extension in the Google Ads. These additions further increase the click rate.

Google Plus is currently on the right track with 500 million members, even if it will take a while for Facebook to be the number 1 social platform, if any. For business owners, however, Google Plus is already very interesting and I would recommend anyone to a Google Plus account to collect diligently + 1's. For Google will continue to play the advantage of being the most important search engine in the world, so that it can be expected that the number of personalized search results will increase even further in the future.

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How to optimize your images for websites

Why should you optimize images for the web? 

As all you know that optimized website makes it easy for search engines to index their content correctly. Optimized images reduce the loading time of website. Sometime website load at fast speed but non-optimized images takes long time to display. If images are not optimized, a crawler can not read or interpret any image.

There are some techniques of image optimization that you can use on your website. Let us discuss one by one: 

1. Give a meaningful title to your image
Yes, you can see what is shown in the picture. And yes, we still need a title that reflects exactly that. This is primarily not a plus point on your SEO, but an advantage for your visitor. If the mouse pointer moves over the image, this description becomes visible.
By the way, you can still include keywords in this description, which are important for your SEO.

2. Give an alt attribute tag to your image

The alt attribute is an absolutely indispensable service to your followers with visual impairment. Browsers read this description so that it is clear what is on the picture.

So if your website works as barrier-free, you do not get around this point. If this is not absolutely necessary, be a nice person and make it easy not to discriminate against anyone. It helps the visitor to know what the picture is about, if the image is not loaded.

3. Put a meaningful caption
Since images should support your article, it is good if your readers understand it. For most images this should not be a problem. For example, if an article is used to grind doors, the reference to the image of a ground door can be easily made. It is different when a person is presented with pictures that are not immediately recognizable to everyone. It is also possible to present a complex situation requiring explanation.

A caption explaining what is happening in the picture helps here. And since you do not know what is easy for the one and for the other difficult to understand, you should basically put a caption.

With most CMS it is quite easy to do that. Here in the example: WordPress. You can easily add title, caption, and alt attribute:

4. Use a relevant filename

The image file itself should have a file name that contains keywords that are relevant to your article. So if your image is called 20150510-DSC1316.jpg, change the name to something that represents the content. Always think about what keywords you would use to find the image. Why? If search queries and file names match, the chance is higher that your image appears in the Google Image Search.

5. Pay attention to the file size
This point is very important. If you use image files, which are very large, pass two things:
First, loading the page on which the image is located will be much slower than with a smaller file. Visitors to your site will often not have the patience to wait. It has a negative impact on your technical SEO.

Measure your image by size not by the dimensions of the image, but the file size, measured in kilobytes. The dimensions of an image may not exceed the maximum size in which they are used on the website. Thus, if an image is displayed on the desktop version of a site with 1,000 x 1,000 pixels, but with 320 x 320 pixels on a smartphone, it must be in the maximum size of 1,000 x 1,000 pixels. If it is larger, it wastes storage space and extends the charging time. If it is smaller, the maximum display results in unsightly quality losses.

This method always has a hook. Each image is loaded in full size, even with a smaller image. Responsive design, or not. With tools like imgix you can take help. This will allow your images to be hosted on a server and used as needed by the View port size. This saves space and makes your website faster.

6. Use the correct file format
There are only a small number of relevant formats for displaying images on websites: .gif, .jpg and .png. And so you use it optimally:

• .jpg for background graphics and photos
• .png or .gif for layout graphics

7. Reduce the quality
This sounds antithetical, but helps. Of course, it is not made so that it strikes. I'm talking about a reduction to 80%. This is standard for .jpg files in any reasonable image processing tool and is usually queried when saving. This saves space and ensures shorter loading times. A fact, which Google also appreciates.

Tools that do this work for you are e.g. PNGGauntlet.

8. EXIF and meta tags
Photos are usually provided with additional information like EXIF and meta tags. This information occupies space and does not provide any benefit when used on your site. What to do? Quite simply: away with it. You can use tinypng for this.

9. Use icons as fonts and not as graphics
Icons – used in the right place – contribute to the better usability of a website and to better understand their content. Unfortunately, they are still used as graphics in most cases. These graphics want to be loaded on the one hand and scaled on the other. The latter is not possible without loss of quality. How nice that there are Web fonts. They are vector-veiled so on the one hand require little memory and are, on the other hand, freely scalable.
So whenever you use icons, do it as a web font. It is also possible to use ready-made sets like Font-awesome or Icon-Font generators like Fontello.

10. Use the picture element wisely
The HTML5 picture element is not supported by all browsers. Older versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari are as problematic as Internet Explorer. It should therefore be carefully considered whether it makes sense. Otherwise, you may block important visitors / customers.
Would you like to use the picture element today, as we do on this website? Then the JavaScript plugin picturefill is your solution to allow older browsers to exchange image files.

My personal opinion:
For photos and graphics, a fire-and-forget mentality is counterproductive. The above example show that there is a lot of potential for optimizations. As with all rules, however, the standards should also quickly pass into flesh and blood. So do not be afraid and fresh to the work!

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What's New in Visual Studio 2017

Microsoft is celebrating the twenty-year anniversary of Visual Studio with a two-day launch event. Within the framework of this program, Visual Studio 2017 was finally released. What this means for developers, let's take a closer look. 

The wait is over:  

Visual Studio 2017 is now available for download. Between November 16, 2016 and February 7, 2017, Microsoft had released a total of six release aspirant for the development environment. Accordingly, there are no new functions in the RTM version, which are not already known from the previous RCs. Still, take a look at the highlights in Visual Studio 2017. 

Visual Studio 2017 - that's in it 

For example, Microsoft's IDE users can look forward to new real-time features that enable live testing of devices and immediate dependency testing. Visual Studio 2017, together with Xamarin, is dedicated to the development of mobile iOS, Android and Windows applications. The so-called Roaming Extensions Manager has an overview of all available extensions. 

In addition, there were a number of enhancements for .NET, including an optimization of the usability of the .NET core and ASP.NET core tooling and optimizations for NuGet. The project design process has also been simplified. 

In addition, there is an enormous productivity boost thanks to Intelligence, code navigation and debugging improvements. In addition, there are a number of new features that are designed to provide more productive JavaScript development in Visual Studio 2017. Developer Analytic tools have also been enhanced to better reflect the impact on users. In addition, the .NET core and docker workload has been optimized and the overall quality of the .NET Core Tools improved in Visual Studio 2017. 

Speaking of .NET Core Tools: 

There was an exciting new development. Although the core frameworks were released in version 1.0 in June 2016, the .NET Core Tools remained in the preview stage. But now the tools for .NET Core, ASP.NET and Entity Framework Core have reached RTM status with Visual Studio 2017 at the same time. 

In the course of the release, Microsoft also provides updates for Team Foundation Server 2017 and for the Visual Studio Mobile Center. The fourth preview of Visual Studio for Mac has also been released. More info can be found in the blog post. 

The Microsoft partners were also diligent and have developed more than 700 extensions for VS 2017, which can be downloaded via the Visual Studio volume. As before, there is also the free version of Visual Studio Community 2017 for developers as well as the commercial variants Visual Studio Professional 2017 and Visual Studio Enterprise 2017. 

You can find detailed information about all the changes and changes in Visual Studio 2017 in the corresponding blog post in the .NET blog.

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