Babi a Fi

Marianna and I stayed at my parents most of this week, so Anthony could finish the painting. It was nice - on Wednesday we went to Tredegar House, and it was generally fun to catch up with everyone. But. (There is always a but.) Marianna was really hard work all week. If she and her partner in crime (Bracken the dog) weren't up to something, she was sticking her hand down the toilet or trying to get through the dog flap. I feel exhausted!

One cute thing happened on Thursday night. My mum and I were sorting through doll shoes for ebay and Marianna came over and started trying to put the shoes on her own feet. We're talking tiny little Barbie shoes here! It was so sweet.

Anyway, we came home yesterday morning and I was very pleased to see our new fridge/freezer had arrived. It has a working light, and unbroken shelves, and all sorts of fancy things the old fridge could only dream of.

Out and about at Tredegar House, read more at www.babiafi.co.uk

A photo posted by Jessica Powell (@plastigffantastig) on Apr 22, 2016 at 5:07pm PDT

Marianna at Tredegar House.

☆ READING: The Journey by Francesca Sanna. Check out our review HERE.

☆ WRITING: 10 Weird Welsh UFO Encounters.

☆ WATCHING: Lip Sync Battle.

☆ LISTENING: Daddy Cool by Boney M. I only found out really recently that Frank Farian (of Milli Vanilli fame) did pretty much all the recorded vocals for Boney M. I don't know why, I must have misread an interview or something, but I thought it was Bobby Farrell who had done it all. Anyway, it was a bit of a shock to see the man behind the voice!

☆ WEARING: Well, not me, but Marianna has been wearing some of the summer dresses my mum bought her. They're so cute!

☆ EATING: Fini Watermelon Bubblegum. When I started secondary school there used to be a guy with an ice cream van on the school playground at lunchtimes - this was before Jamie Oliver - who sold the most amazing watermelon bubblegum with sugar pips. I had no idea what they were actually called and have googled many times over the years. Then, a few weeks ago, I finally found out the name. I paid like £5 for a pack from Poland off ebay but it was totally worth it!

☆ REVIEWING: Sudocrem Care & Protect. Growing up, Sudocrem was held to have near magical properties in our house - no matter what was wrong, Sudocrem could help fix it! Now it can even prevent problems. This new cream is specially designed to prevent nappy rash, rather than being a general antiseptic cream, so you get all the usual Sudocrem goodness plus extra baby friendliness. E.g. It comes in a flip lidded tube instead of a pot, to make life easier for you - but more difficult for babies who desperately want to make a mess. This is great as Marianna has managed to get into the normal pot and cover herself in the stuff on more than one occasion.

It's designed to form a protective barrier between skin and, er, excretions, as well as conditioning the skin and working to prevent infection. It also smells really nice, and goes on easier than regular Sudocrem. I might be a bit biased as I was using Sudocrem on Marianna anyway, but this will definitely be a changing bag must have now!

I did the 30 Day Blogging Challenge this week, and a list of 50 Ways to Build Backlinks. I'm reading so many SEO and marketing blogs at the moment! I also hit some social media targets I've been working towards; 5,000 followers on Twitter, 1,000 on Facebook, and 1,000 on LinkedIn. :)

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Links to your blog are important for two reasons. First, they have the potential to drive traffic to your blog. Secondly, they help improve your domain authority and search engine ranking. Not all backlinks are made equal, of course. Follow links are worth more than non-follow links, and some can flag as spam. You just need to build your links sensibly.

#1. Have somewhere for people to link to! Well, duh. But it's not always obvious which option is best to go with, especially if you're making the move from a blogging platform (.wordpress, .blogger, etc) to your own top level domain (yourwebsite.com). Providers like Strikingly make website creation and hosting completely painless, and they even throw in a free domain name.

#2. Content is King. Yeah, yeah, I know. But if you do happen to write something which is really useful, or strikes a chord, you can sit back and let the natural backlinks build. If you're stuck for something to write about, check out my 101 Blog Post Ideas.

#3. Content Round-Ups. Sometimes you need to give your content a bit of a push, and submitting it to round-ups and 'best of' posts can be a great way of getting both exposure and links. One of my favourite resources for finding suitable opps is the Content and Round Up Requests Group on Facebook.

#4. Another option is to host the round-up yourself. This might sound counter intuitive, but many of the participants - and those who want to be participants - will link back to you to tell their own readers about it.

#5. Blog Linkys. Most link parties use InLinkz which is no-follow, as are the badges you put on your own blog for the hosts, but many will have a 'post of the week' or similar which tends to be a follow link. For more info, I have a guide called Connecting with Linkys.

#6. Host Competitions. You can make linking to your post an entry requirement, or just take advantage of linking it up in every competition listing going. For more on comping in general, I have a beginner's guide.

#7. Google Yourself. Seriously! Find mentions of yourself lacking a link, and see if the author will include one for you.

#8. Interlink. Make sure you're linking to your own content in every post you write - if people click through, this will also help to bring down your bounce rate.

#9. Follow the news related to your niche - and try to get your post on 'the next big thing' out before everyone else. You are then likely to get links from other bloggers who'll reference you in their own post on the subject.

#10. Build up your own domain authority. If people are after links from you, they're more likely to link to you.

#11. Guest Post. The amount of work involved in guest posting can often outweigh the value of the backlink, so think of it more in terms of putting your name in front of a relevant audience. Try searching on Twitter or asking in niche related Facebook groups for opportunities. You can check out all the guest posts I've written HERE.

#12. As that post suggests, hosting guest posts on your own blog can also be a good idea - the author will often link to the post for their own readers.

#13. Document Sharing. You can submit useful documents and printables to sharing websites, and get backlinks that way.

#14. You can do the same thing with infographics and slides.

#15. You can even take some pretty pictures and submit them to photo sharing websites like Flickr, with a Creative Commons Attribution License.

#16. Blogging Tags. You know those meme posts that go around, they can be a great source of reciprocal backlinks. I have a post dedicated to listing the tags, memes and challenges I've taken part in.

#17. Podcast. If you don't fancy speaking yourself, you can use a free online text-to-speech tool.

#18. Write testimonials and reviews - this can be off your own back to submit to a website or blog, or you can ask that a company links to your review post from their company website or blog as part of the deal.

#19. If you're good at that kind of thing, create an app, plugin, or piece of software, and submit it to directories.

#20. Create plenty of 'evergreen' content - i.e. content that remains current for a long time. You can link it up again and again.

#21. Keep tabs on annual awareness events and celebrations, which will allow you to dust off and reuse relevant posts. It also means you can submit to round-ups, etc, before the deadline which is usually before the actual event, without messing up your editorial calendar. You can find my guide to these HERE.

#22. Submit your blog to local business listings.

#23. Blog Comments. Mostly non-follow, but blog comments are essential to building a good network with other bloggers in your niche. You can even use the time to enter blog competitions which require comments, and perhaps win something into the bargain!

#24. Use OpenSiteExplorer to find out where other people in your niche are getting their backlinks from.

#25. Write an ebook with links to your site.

#26. Ask people to share your links and add backlinks. Or, in fancy blogger speak, 'create a call to action' which basically amounts to the exact same thing.

#27. Take advantage of trackbacks. Also known as pingbacks, some blog posts will have a list of who is linking back to them.

#28. Use resources like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to get yourself - and your blog name - in print.

#29. Tutorials are good for natural backlinks, but you can also submit them to lots of relevant places yourself.

#30. Submit your blog to blog directories. (These can be seen as spammy links, so do it responsibly!)

#31. Similarly, submit your RSS feed to directories.

#32. Use the broken link building method. (Basically, you find broken or outdated links on other websites, then offer your link up as an alternative.)

#33. Win a Blogging Award. Not quite as easy as that, I know, but if you can get shortlisted you're almost guaranteed mentions from everyone blogging about the awards.

#34. If you're big time enough for an award, you might be big time enough for a Wikipedia page.

#35. Even if you're not big time, seek out wikispaces and other wikis related to your niche.

#36. Submit your blog posts to bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon.

#37. If you're designing blog themes, widgets, etc, you can put a link to your blog in as credit. Try not to make it sitewide as it's seen as spammy.

#38. Get out and about! Attending events, conferences, etc, and introducing yourself gives you a chance of being mentioned by other people writing about the experience. Plus, it's just good fun.

#39. If you're doing something really exciting, put together a press release about it. If it gets picked up it's good exposure, plus backlinks.

#40. Social Media. Chances are, you're using social media for blog promotion anyway. Signing up to lesser known networks reserves your preferred username in case it does take off, gives you a presence in case someone goes searching, and provides you with a low effort link. For a full run down of my social media presence, click HERE.

#41. Some social media networks even give out follow links. Reddit, for example, and the links in Tumblr posts (though comments and reblogs are no-follow).

#42. Make your content super easy to share. The easier it is, the more likely you are to get all those social media links floating about in cyberspace. E.g. How to Grow Your Blog With Pinterest.

#43. Think outside the box as to what constitutes social media. If your blog is hosted on one platform, there's no reason why you shouldn't set up accounts on all the competitors for the sole purpose of pointing back to your main blog. It's kind of like the multiple websites pointing to each other advice you used to get in the old days, but kind of not because none of these will be top level domain. Examples include Bravesites, Dreamwidth, Joomla, and Livejournal.

#44. If you're feeling brave, get your blog peer reviewed on sites like criticue for critique and backlinks.

#45. Forums. Much the same as social media, links tend to be no-follow but linking up relevant posts can generate a fair amount of traffic. A lot of the traffic to my doll and miniature posts comes from related forums, for example. Codegena has a list of forums which give do-follow links to get you started.

#46. In fact, it feels like almost every website under the sun wants you to create an account with them these days. If you are doing it anyway, you might as well check if they have an opportunity for adding a link and put one in. You might even stumble across a follow link - like I did today at ancestry.co.uk.

#47. Answer Questions. Check out places like Yahoo Answers or Quora, and see if any of your existing blog posts could answer someone's query. This is an easy backlink, and has the ability to send a little traffic your way for a long time to come.

#48. Don't forget to ask questions too. Make them blog related, or link to a post to give more info, to justify putting a link in.

#49. Keep an eye on your backlink profile - there are plenty of online tools you can use to do this. If you don't want a particular link, you can disavow it using Google tools.

#50. Don't obsess over it. Backlinks aren't everything - don't miss out on doing stuff you enjoy to focus all your energy on putting out content you think might get more backlinks.