When you want to make a website for your company, for a hobby, a blog… You want it to actually be online all the time. And the only way that’s going to happen is when you choose a good web hosting provider. If you choose a bad one, well good luck then. Now when choosing a provider, it’s important to know what to look for. But before we look at what’s important, we’ll discuss the disadvantages when choosing a bad (and usually cheap) provider. Disadvantages of having bad web hosting: Loss of revenue and audience: When your site is down and you’re running a business then you will lose potential customers. When people find your website down most of the time, they’ll also likely think that your company is unreliable. When your site is about your hobby, then you have made it so that people can visit your site and view what you’re doing. You’ll likely want to build an audience, but that’s not going to happen when the place they want to visit online, isn’t up. Bad effect on your ranking: Your goal with a website usually is to attract a lot of people. So you will want to be ranked higher in the search results. If your site isn’t up when search engines are trying to visit, then your ranking will be affected in a negative way. And slow websites can also hurt your ranking. People don’t like it if they must wait long for your webpage to load, especially when surfing on the web. Security breaches and attacks: Websites get attacked everyday by people who want to steal information, scam or just do damage. Although it’s impossible to have a perfect secure website, a good and reliable host will be harder to attack and will also have your data backed up. You really don’t want to lose all your data and the trust of your visitors (or customers). Now that we’ve covered several disadvantages of a bad host let’s get to the next topic, how to choose a good web hosting provider. Choosing a good provider: Before you read any further, you must first know that there are a lot of different types of hosting. Such as VPS, Dedicated and Managed web hosting. So the first and most important factor when choosing a good provider is the customer support. You may have a good host, but if there’s a problem and they aren’t responding then what are you going to do? Most providers offer 24/7 support, but this doesn’t say you’ll get an immediate response. So be sure to do your research. Coming second would be the up-time track record. As I’ve mentioned before, this is very important. While it would be difficult to have a 100% up-time, if the host has one between 95% and 99% then I would find it good enough to choose them. But then comes the cost, while a lot of providers are cheap. They aren’t really that reliable. Since you usually get what you pay for, it’s better to choose a web hosting provider that costs a little bit more. The last factor I would look at when choosing would be the ability to upgrade. When you’re getting increasingly more traffic, you want your website to be able to handle it smoothly. Having a good amount of ram, hard drive space can do wonders. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9609672

No matter whether you have a start-up or a medium business unit or a big enterprise system, you must have realized the need of opting for a cloud hosting service. With the advancement of technology, the cloud offerings have become all the more attractive and most importantly, it makes your business way easier. However, if you don’t have a very clear idea about what is cloud server hosting, you must know the features of this service. Basically, it refers to the hosting services that are provided through multiple servers that are inter-connected and form a cloud. With a reliable cloud hosting provider, you can enjoy improved accessibility, cost efficiency and seamless scalability. One of the greatest benefits of cloud hosting is that you can utilize the service according to your requirement and pay only for what you use. Cloud hosting is considered as an extension of clustered hosting. This is a system in which websites are hosted on multiple servers. As far as cloud hosting is concerned, the network of servers is quite vast. Most often, the network is pulled from different data centers that are situated in different locations. Difference between IaaS and PaaS If you are concerned about the practical examples of cloud hosting, you can notice these both under Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as Platform as a Service (PaaS). Under IaaS, you are provided with a virtualized hardware resource, which you can use for installing a software environment of your choice, before you build a web application. On the contrary, when you opt for PaaS, you are provided with the same software environment, as a solution stack. This can be a database support, a web server software, an operating system or a programming support. With the help of this software environment, you can directly install and develop a web application. If your business has multiple complex IT infrastructures and you have a group of experienced IT professionals, you may consider opting for an IaaS model that can be customized based on your own requirements. If you don’t need to tackle an extremely complicated business process, you can also opt for a PaaS, and enjoy the ease of operation. As an enterprise customer, you can consider opting for a Virtual Data Center or VDC, which is a developed version of cloud hosting. This employs a virtualized network of servers in the cloud. This can be used to host the entire IT operations of a business, including the websites. Public cloud model is another example of cloud hosting that is quite relevant for business owners. This refers to the process of hosting websites on virtual servers that draw resources from a common source. This source is also used for other virtual servers that are publicly available. There are certain security measures in public clouds. This ensures the data is absolutely secure and kept private. It also ensures that the data will be sufficient for most of the website installations. So, if you want to ensure a secure and reliable business environment, you should opt for a reliable cloud hosting service. Sandy John has over more than six year experience writing on Cloud hosting, data centers, web hosting related topics. Now he is writing for Ricoh’s Data Center Services. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9080180

Choosing the right Web Host matters Whether you’re putting up a personal website or a commercial one, you should choose your web hosting provider wisely. The reason is that you will most definitely want your website to be seen by the largest number of people. To do that it is essential to take a little time to go over certain basic but very important factors that will ensure more visibility for your site. Points to consider when choosing web hosting There are so many web hosting providers and packages on offer today. Each one of them have their own unique advantages and weaknesses. So how would one decide which one to choose? Even after you zone in on a particular provider, you still need to choose the hosting package that will suit you. Every web hosting site offer many different types of packages to choose from. The most popular type is the ‘Unlimited Bandwidth’ package. The following points should make your task of choosing web hosting simpler for you. 1. Server Uptime & Customer Support: The most basic thing for a website to be found on the internet depends on whether the server where the files are stored is online i.e. up and running at any given time. This is called Server Uptime.You will find that most of the web hosting providers will claim a 99.99% server uptime. Some even claimed 100%. If you have time, search for comments by users of the provider on internet forums or elsewhere online. Or go for the larger more established hosting companies who have built a trusted reputation. Most good hosting companies have multiple server data and power backups. A few also promised 100% and they do that by guaranteeing refund of fees in the eventuality that any downtime might happen. Another very important feature of a good web hosting is Customer Support. They should provide customers with 24/7 phone and internet support. They should have a good collection of tutorials and FAQs readily on their site in case you might need help. Make no mistake, you will contact your hosting support more often than you think, especially if you are serious about your website. 2. Pricing & included features The range of pricing and features included in web hosting packages are pretty wide. You will want a fair balance of features and quality that will suit your needs. As with any other product, cheap usually gets less quality. On the other hand some pricing can be exorbitant without any special value. The prices of hosting packages are usually dependent on the set of features included. These includes data storage and bandwidth limits, number of allowed addon domains and subdomains, number of email and ftp accounts hosted, shared or virtual or dedicated server plans, programming languages and databases, site tools, shopping cart etc, and the list goes on. One can be easily confused with these numerous choices more so if you are not familiar with them. Don’t worry, we will cover the essential ones in the next paras. Pricing for a fair value shared hosting packages usually starts around 6-8 US$ per month. Virtual Private/Dedicated Server around US$ 30-50 pm and Dedicated Servers at US$ 60-80 pm. Pricing tip: If you have not acquired a domain name or want to add another, then some packages include free domain with hosting. They can be a good bargain. 3. Data Storage and Bandwidth limits If you are new to putting up websites, you might have very little idea about how much data storage space and bandwidth your site will need. First off, don’t worry too much about this. Even the most professional people will tell you that themselves. Because your needs will grow as the number of visitors to your website increases, you will know all about it as you go along. Data Storage Space: Unless you intend to host lots of video/movie clips or a gigantic amount of big resolution pictures, most hosting packages will do. Normal websites rarely occupy beyond 40-50 MB (megabytes of storage space). The basic shared hosting package for the top registrar costing $4.99 pm includes 10 GB(1000 MB) of storage space. Bandwidth Limits: Bandwidth limit is the amount of data transfers your hosting permits per month. This depends on how much visitors your site has and the type of files you serve i.e. basic web pages, pictures or video clips etc. Here too, not that much to worry about for normal websites. Most hosting providers will offer “Unlimited Bandwidth” even on their value shared hosting packages. One word of caution though for those intending to host video/movie clips or high resolution pictures. Do not be fooled by Unlimited Bandwidth Shared Hosting packages. If you go through the “Terms of Use” and “Common Usage Policy” for most shared hosting packages, they will undoubtedly have a section where it says that you are not permitted or will be charged extra for “abnormally high data bandwidth usage”. Advice is you will probably be better off choosing VPS or dedicated server or Cloud hosting or high bandwidth packages. 4. Shared Hosting vs Virtual Private Server vs Dedicated Server vs Cloud Hosting How to choose between these types of hosting? Putting it simply, you should choose by how busy or popular you think your site will be viz Shared – VPS – Dedicated – Cloud, in that order. Shared Hosting: Majority of websites on the internet are on Shared hosting. It is good for personal and small websites. They are the most economical of hosting packages. In shared hosting, a number of hosting accounts usually 10-100 are hosted on a single physical server. They share the same server storage and broadband connection. Shared hosting is particularly recommended for starters and small to medium personal and commercial websites that do not host picture/movie/video downloads.They can cost between $5-$15 per month. Virtual Private Servers: This type of hosting is usually used by medium websites with medium storage and bandwidth requirements. Virtual Private Servers are hosted

Many business owners will here hear the phrase ‘search engine optimisation’ (or SEO) from friends in the business community or even competitors and may consider it as a route to increasing sales, but what is SEO? Alternatively, a business owner may have tried ‘SEO services’ in the past and found it either didn’t work as well as expected or was working, but no longer as effective – this article explains what SEO is, and why ‘new’ SEO is working better than ever. I have been working in search engine optimisation and ranking website market, before it was even called SEO. Here are the changes in SEO since the start of the new millennium and what you should be looking for in the SEO services that your SEO Agency offers or provides. We take a look back at SEO through the years and explain what SEO is today and how best to utilise it for our website. SEO in 2000 Back at the start of the Millennium the ‘big’ search engines that most people were using were Lycos and Excite. Of course, back then a very small percentage of the UK population had access to the internet and those that did had a slow ‘dial-up’ system. Websites were one or two pages with basic information to allow them to load quickly (within 20 seconds). SEO practices back then were to ‘hide’ as many keywords on a page as possible, so the website was found for those searches without making the page look to spammy for visitors. In 2002 Google launched something called ‘AdWords’ and it was predicted to be the death of SEO, as people could pay for prominence, on the now the number 1 website for starting internet searches. In 2003, Yahoo purchased Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST, which was basically the end of all of the ‘smaller’ search engines. Google started to stamp down on ‘spam’ practices and websites. At the same time Google realised that ‘AdWords’ were not going to kill off SEO and that in fact the ‘natural listings’ encouraged visitors back to their search engine platform. Google started to recognise ‘professional SEO’ experts and promoted good SEO rather than spamming SEO. 2004 saw the first website ‘banned’ from the internet as Google took action against websites that were spamming them. They also took legal action against the “SEO Company” responsible. To rank a website in 2006 you just needed links back to your website and so buying links / link exchange was all the rage and most websites had a web page where they would list companies and links to their website (I am still amazed how many websites continue this practice). Between 2004 and 2008 Google, now was the only real “player” in the search engine world, started taking action against poor linking practices and companies and started tightening up on spam and buying links. The ‘Noughties” ended with all “naughty” SEO practices being practically stamped out, as Google concentrated on ranking websites based on their content and it’s relevance to the search being carried out. SEO in 2010 Between 2010 and 2015 we started to see the search engines take notice of ‘Social Media’ sites and soon the results were filled with Twitter ‘tweets’ in the results. (I can still see the face of one of my customers when searching Google for his business, and the whole first page of the search results were compiled of tweets of a Twitter conversation that two members of staff had been having about how terrible the company was!) Videos and images were also brought in to the search results with the Google ‘Caffeine’ update. Google introduced “personal search results” with the websites shown in the search results based on your previous searches and websites you had visited before. This caused a ‘bit of a stir’ in the SEO world as customers claimed their websites were “top of Google” for any search they did related to their industry, just because they had visited their own website many times before, so Google of course fed them back the website for all relevant searches. This can still be a bit of an issue until you show them the new ‘Google Incognito search’. The focus on ranking websites was on being found for BIG keywords. A ‘Plumber’ in Bristol would want to rank for that search, and so that was the focus. Google ‘Panda’ and ‘Penguin’ updates figuratively killed off ‘link exchanges’ with huge penalties for websites who had irrelevant links pointing towards them. At the same time Google introduced “no follow links” to allow websites to provide relevant links to other websites and information without penalising either party. It was the start of “safe linking”. Quality and relevant content was now the key to ranking in the search engines. A report by the ‘Office For National Statistics’ in 2014 stated: 38 million adults (76%) in Great Britain accessed the Internet every day, 21 million more than in 2006, when directly comparable records began. Access to the Internet using a mobile phone more than doubled between 2010 and 2014, from 24% to 58%. 74% of all adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008. Clothes (49%) were the most popular online purchase in 2014. Of all adults in Great Britain, 67% are aware of Internet storage space services, but the take up of these services to store data is much lower at 35%. In Great Britain, 22 million households (84%) had Internet access in 2014, up from 57% in 2006. Fixed broadband Internet connections were used by 91% of households. The UK was now (almost) internet savvy and usage of mobile phones to visit websites was huge. SEO 2015 and Onwards The biggest change to the search engines in 2015 was the ‘penalisation’ of websites that were not “mobile friendly” – a mobile friendly website has different information for the smaller screen to make it easier for the user to read and understand. In ensuring that users got the

Creation of content can be considered from different points of view. Some of the web content developers create content for audience’s sake while others create content for the sake of search engines. The need for content cannot be emphasized enough in the online sector. Content attracts a large number of visitors to your website, builds trust towards your audience, answers questions, and so forth. When it comes to content marketing, quality should be prioritized rather than quantity. Content is mainly produced for the user’s benefit. When producing your content, consider keeping it original, useful, and fresh. Your content should also be relevant to attract more shares and links. Before creating content, understand your users and what they need to keep them intact. Maintain a high level of originality of your content by letting it have a flow. The following 5 tips, provided by Ryan Johnson, the Senior Sales Manager of Semalt Digital Services, will help you analyze and take control of your content marketing. 1. Top Content Being a top web content developer comes with a bit of experience and taking control of content marketing as a general. To keep the users interested, you have to create content on pages that has high exit rates or the bounce rates. The bounce rates help to measure the number of users or visitors that visited a certain page and left without checking any other page. The Exit rates help to measure the number of users who visited the given page, then left your website but had a chance of browsing other pages before the given page. Optimization of the content contained in pages that have low average times per page and high in visits always keeps the users interested. Always look for the trend of content in the top pages to get ideas on what to develop content, mostly the topic to focus on a given time. Before creating content, consider checking on the top pages to have an idea of what’s trending at a given time frame. 2. Landing Pages The visitors play a key role in conversion after visiting the landing pages. Landing pages are where your users start their adventure of your site. However, the top content should not be ignored. Report about the landing pages is contained under the Landing Pages, an icon that is under the Behaviour. The landing page helps web content developers learn the principles contained in the top performing pages and to apply the practices learned in the bottom performing pages. Visit the pages with low conversion rates or high bounce rates and fix the issues that you may find in those pages. Also, evaluate the sidebars with unrelated content and the content contained in pages with high bounce rates. To be safe, break the traffic down by the source before you start evaluating the top and the bottom pages. Increase the conversion rates on pages already creating traffic, and you will have attained quick wins in your SEO campaign. 3. Exit Pages Creation of content around diverse topics may not be that valuable for your site. For instance, a visitor may visit your site, like content from a specific keyword, go through the next product, click it, and leave the site. That will outrank your site, even if it had been top-ranked for a certain keyword. Exit Pages report helps a developer to find the pages driving away traffic. Creating a closely related content helps one to track down attractive content to the users and the one that drives them away. If by any chance your top exit pages and the top landing pages are the same, you are in a good position to increase conversions on your site. 4. The Visitors Flow The visitors flow is very categorical and contains some columns. The first column of the visitor’s flow indicates where a user entered the site. The second column shows the landing page. Different blocks of the visitor’s flow are connected by blue lines, where the thickness of the blue line depicts the number of visitors following that path. The visitor’s flow also contains a red line that indicates a point where the user dropped off. To increase conversions, identify the point where the visitors are dropping off and produce content that can replicate with the visitor’s flow. Also, consider linking your prominent pages with other pages to build up the user experience and a better flow. Always spend some time to monitor how your users interact with the pages on your site and the content to have an effective SEO campaign. 5. The Penguin Tool The Penguin Tool is widely used in the comparison of Google algorithm updates and Google Analytics data. The overlay of Penguin tool with other updates helps to indicate the cause of potential fluctuation of traffic in your site. The Panda updates targets duplicate and low-quality content. In addition, the Panda update will you measure the level of progress of your site. Web content developers should create content for the users and visitors benefit, rather than for Google’s sake. Generate content that will add value to your target audience, clients, and readers. The above-discussed points will help you have an effective SEO campaign and take control of your content marketing. Semalt – Automated Promotion Platform for Your Business Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9967055

With increasing Internet penetration and the explosion of social media, small businesses are no longer at a disadvantage. They are able to sell their products and services to customers from all over the globe, target audiences in any segment and region and position themselves for growth. While on-ground infrastructure needs to match to achieve success, the Internet has ensured that small businesses have a new avenue of reliable and affordable marketing. They are able to explain their offerings and are assured of an upward trajectory, provided their strategies are right. However, the lynchpin for the entire operations is a website and all factors revolve around the same. When visitors come to the website of a small business, they should be able to get an intuitive feel and easily obtain what they are looking for. Further, visitors are looking more from a perspective of data security whenever they engage with any one on the Internet. Hence, the security of a website is a very important factor and visitors must be assured of the same, to retain trust and build a bond. This is where the role of SSL certificates comes in. The term SSL is expanded to Secured Socket Layer and this certificate is a small data file that digitally binds a cryptographic key to the details of the organization. Organizations need an SSL certificate, in order to initiate a secure session with browsers. After installation, the application protocol changes from HTTP to HTTPS and depending on the browser a padlock or a green bar is displayed. The key advantages for a small business are 1) SSL is important to drive home business credibility By proactively installing an SSL certificate, businesses indicate that they care about data security. Installation of an SSL certificate is not an off-the shelf operation. A governing authority performs several checks to authenticate a business before the certificate is issued. 2) Data Integrity With SSL certification, there is encryption of data, files are prevented from being corrupted when they are being transferred and there is protection from malicious attacks. It is thus assured that information only reaches the intended recipients and that it is not intercepted by any third party. 3) Google supports SSL SSL certification is one of the parameters considered for Google SEO. About close to 40% of organic listings on the first page of Google are HTTPS. HTTPS is also a signal in Google’s algorithm since 2014. All of the above will mean increased customer confidence and conversions, which is the sole aim of a business having a website. It is thus a no-brainer that SSL certificates are vital for any small business website. Nikitha (www.niktha.in) is a leading web development, online marketing and website auditing company in Chennai offering cutting edge services. With deep experience, a passionate team and technology strength, they deliver powerfully transformative solutions and add tangible value to any business. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10065800

Choosing A Domain Name In the business of building a large number of Niche sites, domain names are going to likely be your single largest cost, or at least near the top if you are outsourcing most of your work. Domain names are important for many reasons, not the least of which is that you don’t want to be wasting money on poor choice domain names. In this tutorial, I’m going to provide you with the information you need to ensure you are choosing the most appropriate domain name for your sites. First, for those who don’t know what a domain name is, it’s simply the web address of your site – espn.com is a domain name, for example. A domain name is an key step in getting set up and online. It’s the first thing your customers will see. You need to make a great first impression. Your potential customers will see your name in many different places: Natural Search results such as on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search Video Marketing Pay Per Click Advertisements that you run Ezines / Newsletters that you publish or run ads in Email and Forum Signatures Off line advertising such as newspapers, direct mail, business cards or magazines. There are a number of things to consider when purchasing a domain name(s). Here are the key considerations you’ll want to run through prior to making your purchase: Top Domain Name Don’ts: Don’t use excessive dashes in the domain name. Don’t use unrelated phrases in the domain name. Don’t use too many keywords in the domain name. Don’t repeat the primary keyword in the domain name. Top Domain Dos: Do use the primary keyword phrase in your domain name. Be as specific as possible for your keyword phrase (long tail keyword phrases) Place the primary keyword phrase at the beginning of the domain name. Include commonly used related phrases in the name like “news”, “tips”, etc Use action keywords like “cheap”, “discount”, “buy”, “deals”, “get”, etc. Use top level domains like.com,.net,.info,, or.org, Some additional tips: 1. Use a specific keyword – or better yet, a long tail keyword phrase – in your domain name. I don’t recommend using multiple keywords and definitely DO NOT repeat the same keyword in the domain name. 2. Put your primary keyword at the beginning of the domain name. Let’s use an example to illustrate: Suppose you are selling garden tools. Not just any garden tools; you sell low-cost, high-quality garden tools. The name of your company is Garden Tool World. Using the tips above, you will purchase the domain names for your company. But what about your product? The key here is to look for names for your product domain that people will be searching for. When a potential customer goes to a search engine, will he or she look for “low-cost high-quality garden tools”? Or the customer look for “Cheap Garden Tools”? From our earlier research, you can find out what people are looking for. So if people are looking for “Cheap Garden Tools,” then your domain name might be cheapgardentools dot com. Choosing a domain name is an important part of the overall marketing process and should not be taken lightly. Make sure your domain name represents your company, product, and image, and you’ll be setting a great foundation for future sales. 3. If you run into difficulty in getting the domain name that you want,, try using action words at the end of your domain name. Examples of this would include for sale, discount, on eBay, deals, etc. You could also use tips, blog or info., for example. If you had a site using videos to train roofers, you could go with roofervideos.com. Another idea would be to put a number behind your keyword. For example, cheapgardentools442.com would work just as well as cheapgardentools.com because your keyword phrase is at the beginning of the domain name. 4. Don’t be afraid to use keywords that reach out and grab attention. Words like warning, alert, cure and warning are all such terms. 5. By all means, DO NOT use words in your domain name that have nothing to do with what it is your site is about. 6 Use only well known top level domains such as.com,.net,.info,.org &.us. Stay away from domains like.tv and.biz. Credibility is key – sticking with top level domain names will help you in that department. Of course, if you can get.com, that’s the way to go, but if the name you want isn’t available in.com, one of the other top level names will be just fine. If you find you are having trouble coming up with a domain name for your venture, you can visit Nameboy.com. That site will generate plenty of domain name suggestions for you based on the keywords you enter. Another site I like to use is Instant Domain Search. This particular site “helps you find a domain name as fast as you can type.” 7. Stay away from domain names with hyphens in them. While this used to be a good idea, it no longer is. Using domain names with hyphens in them can have an adverse impact on your ability to rank highly in the search engines. 8. Keep it as short as possible. Although some places allow you to register a name with up to 63 characters, you have to keep in mind that people need to be able to remember it and easily type it into their browser. Try to register the shortest name that your customers and other site visitors will associate with your web site. The general rule of thumb is, keep it under seven characters if possible (not including the suffix). While the vast majority of your potential customers will be clicking on a link, there are those who will type in your domain name. 9. Go with.com when at all possible. Dot what? There are many suffixes available now. For businesses, we recommend a.com suffix. It is the first extension that