Posts Tagged ‘services’

Introduction to Web Hosting

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Just about anybody can create a presence on the Internet. Building a web site can be as simple as using a word processor, but once you have the site you need a way to publish it on the World Wide Web. This is where web-hosting companies come in.

A web host rents you disk space and provides all the services necessary for others to see your web site on the Internet.  Barring technical problems, a web host operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that anybody in the world can access your web site at any time.

There are literally thousands of web hosts to choose from so choosing an appropriate host can be a difficult task. The prices range from free to hundreds of dollars a year. Hosting companies can offer a multitude of services that can be confusing to a newcomer. This series of articles will help you to sort out all the information available and give you the confidence to make the proper decision about choosing a web host.

Free or Paid?

There are plenty of hosting companies that provide free hosting, so why bother paying for it?  The old adage ‘You get what you pay for’ is just as valid in the electronic age as it was 100 years ago. In web hosting, when you pay nothing you sometimes end up with nothing.

Most free web hosts offer limited services. Even though they are not charging you to host your website, they still need to make money. They often do this by placing advertising on your site. You probably won’t have any control over what kind of ads show up – it’s a matter of take it or leave it.

In addition, free hosts may restrict the content you place on your site. You may not be allowed to sell things or have certain content such as videos or music. Finally, your web site could simply disappear overnight. New companies that offer free hosting pop up almost everyday, but they also vanish with astonishing regularity. When your hosting company vanishes, your web site goes with it.

If you are serious about having a web site you need to use a reliable web host. Prices range considerably – some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month while others charge $60 or more. Be careful, though. High rates don’t always translate as high service. Some of the lower priced hosts offer reliable, stable environments that allow your website to be accessed day in day out for years.

Generally speaking the more you pay the more you get. Higher rates should bring you more storage space, more bandwidth to handle Internet traffic, and more services such as databases, email accounts, mass mailers, and the ability to add custom scripts. Higher rates can also mean better technical service if you have problems with your website.

What is a Web Server?

Whichever hosting company you choose, it helps to understand some of the technical details about their service. Every host has dedicated computers called servers which connect to the Internet and ’serve’ pages when they are requested.  That is, whenever anyone wants to see a certain web page by clicking on a link the request is sent to the particular server where that web page is stored. The server responds by sending HTML data across the Internet. A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability try to find a host that has multiple high-speed connections as well as reliable back up power supplies in case of power outages.

How To Choose Effective SEO Services?

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Any person familiar with the internet and using it in day today life is aware of the effects of search engine optimization to an extent. The companies that are serious in marketing a product or service online can not neglect the importance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO services.
As the world is shrinking and is becoming a small place to live in, the consumers have an option to use products and services offered by the manufactures of other country. This has led to a situation where more number of consumers looks for the product and services on the internet.

More and more companies are using search engine optimization, as it is among the most effective tool online that can help them to boost their sales to higher extent. The common opinion of experts states that SEO will soon become a matter of survival for every company if practiced in the right manner.

SEO is an effective process by which superior amount traffic to your website can be generated by the way of improving your company’s ranking on the various search engines. The accurate return on investment of the SEO services is actually incalculable because SEO is very time-dependent. The methods of SEO are countless and SEO experts have the depth knowledge on the methods that would improve the search engine ranking as each website requires different work to receive triumphant ranking. These experts are able to help you to receive a superior sum of target web traffic at your site.

If you are left with the question as to how to choose SEO services that are effective, here is an answer.

• While choosing the company providing SEO services ensure that the experts who will work on your website have the expertise in using the latest tools that can help you to secure good ranking in all the major search engines not just one of them. As the internet world is advancing, so are the algorithms of the Search engine are getting more and more complex continually.

• Further, proper research work is pivotal for the receiving the desired results and you don’t need any SEO company, who will conduct the same work as they have done for others.

• To avail the desired rankings, it takes somewhere few weeks to a few months for search engines to index your site and for the change of ranking to take affect. So, if any optimizer who promise you to provide with immediate results, he is surely making false promises or else will use unethical ways to promote your website.

• Remember, unethical practices may help to achieve results in the shorter time frame however will definitely harm your website in the longer run, so think what you would want to attain.

SEO is Not an Advertising Model Like PPC

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Search Engine optimization is a technique and series of services that best helps when there are quality contents around. PPC is pay-per-click advertising, one of the marketing techniques. There is always a misconception among people of the online world where there is clashes of Search Engine Optimization with PPC campaigns. The scenario now is that pay -per-click advertisements and the prices starts to rise and shrinking is happening in the margins. This has demanded the corporations and the website owners to start the investments in organic SEO quite larger. But these investments may prove frustrating are what experienced people feels. The following article will emphasize on the subject.

SEO is known for the incapability in estimating the results and the time consumed to feel the success always leaves the SEO investments hard to pin down. This adds more to the elusiveness when the misconception about PPC and SEO arises. People do think that they are one and the same. The essential difference that the people have on these two concepts is the rapidity. But this is a myth. PPC is faster but different in the terms of results. SEO id slower indeed, but is different of PPC. To understand the SEO results, it is essential to know hoe SEO techniques were implemented. Profound impacts can be drawn with optimized SEO techniques.

With this background, let us understand that Pay Per Click is a campaign of marketing. This model in which advertisement is paid is obviously an advertising model. But it is to be noted that Search Engine Optimization is not advertising. Thus this small difference can essentially define the difference between PPC and SEO.

Now it becomes important to know how PPC and Search Engine Optimization are connected with each other. Consider the following argument and decide the relationship between Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising.

We all know how online world has influenced people around the world. The consumers all around the world have told that the information from the sites helps in choosing a product. People visit websites even before going for a movie. They visit a website before going for shopping. Thus the information in the web pages affects the customers greatly. Now you may understand how contents are important for online world. These contents are used only as a SEO tool and it is the integral part of Search Engine Optimization. But PPC is not.

10 Spring Cleaning Tips for your Web Site

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

1. Update Any Scripts and Plugins - Look at WordPress, Joomla and any other scripts or services you have installed and see if it is time to give them an upgrade. You should be doing this more often than every spring but now is a good time to check and make sure.

2. Do Your E-mail Addresses Work? - I recently got an e-mail from a friend who told me, “Sorry I didn’t get back to you I just figured out I had major problems with my e-mail account”. Send yourself a dummy message to make sure you don’t fall into the same boat.

3. Clean up Your Sidebars - This ‘bit of advice would be mainly for blogs. I have seen some people become really addicted to having sidebar widgets and gadgets. If you have more than five per sidebar, might be time to ditch some or at least make them look pretty again.

4. Review your Terms of Service - Make sure your terms of service and acceptable use policy are up to date and include everything you wish to include there. You may have made some changes to your web site and business since the last time you reviewed it so check it out now to make sure all your bases are still covered.

5. Check and Update your Sitemaps - If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, it might be a good time to login and check to make sure Google didn’t find any errors, which would keep them from indexing certain parts of your web site.

6. Is Your Contact Information Correct? - Check out your contact page and make sure that the numbers, e-mail addresses and postal addresses listed there are up to date and show the correct information.

7. Renew Your Domains - When does your domain name run out of date? Might need to check and also be sure that you have all your hosting bills paid up too. This also makes for a good time to upgrade your hosting account to one with a few more perks.

8. Test Your Web Site Links - Are all your web site links working? Check your error logs in your various stats packages to see where people are finding 404s and try to fix all the broken links or non-existent pages you can find.

9. How Out of Date is Your “About Us” Section? - Checking out my own about us page on one of my other web sites I see I pretty much haven’t updated it since the launch of the site. Always good to keep this up to date because well, this is how people lean more about you and what you do.

10. Spellcheck Your Web Site Content - How many grammar errors can you find on your web site? If you don’t want to read through everything you have posted - you might try just going through a few of the most popular ones and making sure they are correct. Bad spelling really peeves some people, so best not to get on anybody’s bad side.

Multiple Domain Web Hosting

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Thanks to the low cost of domain names and hosting fees it is possible to own several websites without breaking the bank. There are several ways to manage multiple domains so it is important to know what your options are and the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

The most basic choice when administering multiple domains is whether or not to do so with the same host. Most hosts offer packages which can be set up to allow several sites on one account, or allow individual sites to be operated under separate accounts.

You may have an existing website and are happy with the services your host provides. If you decide to start a new website using the same host, you will have the reassurance of dealing with a company you are familiar with and trust. You may also get a discount for each additional account you open with the same host. On the other hand, using a new host for a second (or third or fourth) website can allow you to compare the quality of hosting offered by different companies. In addition, separate hosts will provide each of your web sites with a different IP address.

Having different IP addresses can be an important factor if you plan to link the sites together to aid in search engine optimization. Incoming links are an important indicator of the importance of a website, so a site with a lot of incoming links can get a higher position in search engines like Google. If all the links are coming from the same IP address, however, their value may be discounted. Hosting your various sites with different hosting companies guarantees that each site has a different IP address. Individual IP addresses, however, are available as an extra from most web hosts. For a yearly fee each website can have its own unique IP address. This can help with search engine ranking and is also needed if you want to have a secure connection (https) on your site.

If you decide to host all your sites with the same company, there are three basic ways to go. Each site could have its own account; you could sign up for a re-seller account; or you could get a dedicated server account.

As a re-seller you are acting as an agent for the hosting company. You are allocated a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth and you are free to use them as you please. There may be a limit to the number of websites you can host with your re-seller account, but if there is space left over after using this account for your own sites you could earn some extra income by selling accounts to other people. The advantage of a re-seller account is that all the technical details are taken care of by the hosting company. Some will even provide gateways for billing your customers.

A dedicated server account gives you control of all the resources of an entire server. You are free to setup as many websites as you wish and allocate disk space and bandwidth as you see fit. The downside to this type of account is that you are responsible for maintaining the server. This can require a significant level of technical know-how so if you don’t have that knowledge or don’t feel like learning about it, dedicated servers are not for you. You can, of course, go with a managed dedicated server. The downside of this is the higher cost involved.

Hosting all your sites with one host can offer lots of advantages but there is one major disadvantage – if your server goes down, all your sites go down. If you are depending on your sites for income this can be a disastrous situation. For this reason, it is a good idea to have at least one of your sites with a different host. If your sites are essential for your livelihood and you can’t afford any down time whatsoever, you would be advised to host everything with (at least) two hosts.

Website Monitoring Services

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

If you have gone through the trouble of building a web site and hosting it with a reliable company you obviously want your website to be available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Downtime can result in lost sales and customer frustration.

Unfortunately, there are many technical problems beyond your control that can cause your web site to go down or become sluggish. Server hardware and software can fail and your host may schedule downtime for maintenance chores. Speedy recognition of failures is the best defence to getting things back on track, so many companies offer website monitoring services that automatically alert you if your site goes down.

There are hundreds of companies that provide monitoring services. Some are free while others charge anywhere from $5 to $60 per month. The paid services usually offer more features and allow you to use the same service with several different web sites. Web monitoring is not done continuously – time intervals range from every 3 minutes to every hour. The paid services usually offer the most comprehensive monitoring.

Monitoring works by sending an automatic request to your website and checking the response. These requests are the same as a web browser makes and the response to the request determines whether the site is up or down. Requests are usually sent from several different geographical locations to ensure that the site is available from various parts of the world.

If the response code is OK (200, 301, 302, 401, 403) nothing happens and the monitoring software waits for the next scheduled check. If the response code indicates that the web site is unreachable, there will be a second check a few seconds later from another location. There may be 3 or more of these checks before an alert is issued.

An alert can be sent to one or several email addresses or to a mobile device such as a pager or cell phone. This allows you to get in touch with your hosting company as soon as possible to ensure they are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it. As well as HTTP traffic, some website monitors can also check HTTPS, FTP, SMPT and POP3 so that all the functions of your website are covered.

Besides alerting you to downtime, these services can also provide useful statistics in the form of log files that indicate how often a site goes down. This third-party information can be used to demand better service from your web host or a refund in the case of severe amounts of downtime.

If you find that your site has an unacceptable amount of downtime, you should look for a more reliable hosting company.  The best way to find a good host is to ask for recommendations from other web site owners. If they are happy with their service they will usually be glad to direct more business to their host.

Introduction to Web Hosting

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Just about anybody can create a presence on the Internet. Building a web site can be as simple as using a word processor, but once you have the site you need a way to publish it on the World Wide Web. This is where web-hosting companies come in.

A web host rents you disk space and provides all the services necessary for others to see your web site on the Internet.  Barring technical problems, a web host operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that anybody in the world can access your web site at any time.

There are literally thousands of web hosts to choose from so choosing an appropriate host can be a difficult task. The prices range from free to hundreds of dollars a year. Hosting companies can offer a multitude of services that can be confusing to a newcomer. This series of articles will help you to sort out all the information available and give you the confidence to make the proper decision about choosing a web host.
Free or Paid?

There are plenty of hosting companies that provide free hosting, so why bother paying for it?  The old adage ‘You get what you pay for’ is just as valid in the electronic age as it was 100 years ago. In web hosting, when you pay nothing you sometimes end up with nothing.

Most free web hosts offer limited services. Even though they are not charging you to host your website, they still need to make money. They often do this by placing advertising on your site. You probably won’t have any control over what kind of ads show up – it’s a matter of take it or leave it.

In addition, free hosts may restrict the content you place on your site. You may not be allowed to sell things or have certain content such as videos or music. Finally, your web site could simply disappear overnight. New companies that offer free hosting pop up almost everyday, but they also vanish with astonishing regularity. When your hosting company vanishes, your web site goes with it.

If you are serious about having a web site you need to use a reliable web host. Prices range considerably – some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month while others charge $60 or more. Be careful, though. High rates don’t always translate as high service. Some of the lower priced hosts offer reliable, stable environments that allow your website to be accessed day in day out for years.

Generally speaking the more you pay the more you get. Higher rates should bring you more storage space, more bandwidth to handle Internet traffic, and more services such as databases, email accounts, mass mailers, and the ability to add custom scripts. Higher rates can also mean better technical service if you have problems with your website.
What is a Web Server?

Whichever hosting company you choose, it helps to understand some of the technical details about their service. Every host has dedicated computers called servers which connect to the Internet and ’serve’ pages when they are requested.  That is, whenever anyone wants to see a certain web page by clicking on a link the request is sent to the particular server where that web page is stored. The server responds by sending HTML data across the Internet. A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability try to find a host that has multiple high-speed connections as well as reliable back up power supplies in case of power outages

Blogs and SEO - Keywords

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. Or you can shoot for a keyword that gets a moderate level of targeted traffic resulting in more subscribers and sales. I like to call this a “lucrative keyword”. Whatever you call them, here’s the most important thing: They may not get you the most traffic, but they often bring the most profit.
More Web Site Traffic and More Sales? Not Always

You may be surprised to learn that there isn’t always a correlation between high traffic and high sales. Many of the most profitable sites in the world get moderate traffic because their lucrative keywords result in a much higher ratio of visitors to buyers.
Length of Search Query is a Factor

A recent article in Information Week stated that the highest conversion rates from search engine traffic comes from people who do four word queries. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry.
Target Your Blog for More Traffic and Sales

It isn’t just the four word phrases that get converting traffic - there are two and three word phrases that can bring you traffic and sales. Targeting your blog discussion to a two or three word phrase that has a high yield of traffic, and yet has little competition, is not a dream of past Internet days. Another recent study revealed that surprisingly high percentages of search engine queries debuted as late as 2004.As long as there are new developments, new products, services and trends, you’ll never have a shortage of these terms if you learn how to discover them. a