How to Choose a Web Host

Tips on selecting the best web hosting for your needs

What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host? The criteria for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are slightly different although they do overlap. If you are only interested in one of these types, you can simply skip to the appropriate section. I have written these sections to be as independant of the other as possible.
Choosing a Free Web Host
1)Advertising
Most free web hosts impose advertising on your website. This is done to cover the costs of providing your site the free web space and associated services. Some hosts require you to place a banner on your pages, others display a window that pops up everytime a page on your site loads, while still others impose an advertising frame on your site. There is really no hard and fast rule which is to be preferred: some people hate a pop-up window, other webmasters dislike having to stuff banner codes onto their pages, and many people cannot stand an advertising frame (which may cause problems when you submit your website to search engines). Whichever method is used, check that you're comfortable with the method.
Note that free web hosts without forced advertisements aren't necessarily good news. Without a viable means to recover the costs of running their server, many of them close with alarming frequency.
2)Amount of web space
Does it have enough space for your needs? If you envisage that you will expand your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most sites use less than 5MB of web space. Indeed, at one time, one of my other web sites, thefreecountry.com, used less than 5MB of space although it had about 150 pages on the site. Your needs will vary, depending on how many pictures your pages use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.
3)FTP access
Some free hosting providers only allow you to design your page with their online builder. While this is useful for beginners, do you have the option to expand later when you become experienced and their online page builder does not have the facility you need? FTP access, or at the very least, the ability to upload your pages by email or browser, is needed. Personally, I feel FTP access is mandatory, except for the most trivial site.
4)File type and size limitations
Watch out for these. Some free hosts impose a maximum size on each of the files you upload (including one with a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG files. If your needs are different, eg, if you want to distribute your own programs on your pages, you will have to look elsewhere.
5)Reliability and speed of access
This is extremely important. A site that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and he tries to access it but find that it is down, he'll simply go down the list to find another site. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors (and for you too, when you upload your site). How do you know if a host is reliable or fast? If you can't get feedback from anyone, one way is to try it out yourself over a period of time, both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it is free, so you can always experiment with it.
6)CGI-BIN access / PHP
This is not particularly crucial nowadays for a free web host, since there are so many free CGI hosting services available that provide counters, search engines, forms, polls, mailing lists, etc, without requiring you to dabble with Perl or PHP scripts.
However if you really want to do it yourself, with the minimum of advertising banners from these free providers, you will need either PHP or CGI-BIN access. Note that it is not enough to know they provide PHP or CGI-BIN access: you need to know the kind of environment your scripts run under: is it so restrictive that they are of no earthly use? For PHP scripts, does your web host allow you to use the mail() function? For Perl CGI scripts, do you have access to sendmail or its workalike?
7)Bandwidth allotment
Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you a bill). It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage, however, will vary.

Choosing a Commercial Web Host
1. Reliability and speed of access
Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end - the host usually requires all sorts of documentation. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.
2. Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)
Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.
Don't believe any commercial web host that advertises "unlimited bandwidth". The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having "exceeded" the "unlimited bandwidth". Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises "unlimited transfer", even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine "unlimited" to be limited in some way.
In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits..
To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that are not software archives or the like use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known (and well-linked), so you will need to also check their policy for overages: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to foresee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.
3. Disk space
For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those "unlimited disk space" schemes. Most sites need less than 10 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 200 MB or 500 MB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 500 MB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there. As a rough gauge, thefreecountry.com, which had about 150 pages when this article was first written, used less than 5 MB for its pages and associated files.
4. Technical support
Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), and all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn't want to sign up for a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.
5. FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, crontabs
If you are paying for a site, you really should make sure you have all of these. Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or CGI scripts without their approval. This is not desirable since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site. ".htaccess" is needed if you are to customise your error pages (pages that display when, say, a user requests for a non-existent page on your site) or to protect your site in various ways (such as to prevent bandwidth theft and hotlinking, etc). Telnet or SSH access is useful for certain things, including testing CGI scripts, maintaining databases, etc. Cron jobs may be needed for programs that you need to be run periodically (eg once a day). Check to see if these facilities are provided.
6. SSL (secure server), MySQL, Shopping Cart
If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you plan to collect credit card information on your site.
7. Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding
If you have your own site, you would probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com, etc. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it allow you to have a catch-all email account that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to wind up being routed to you? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address?
8. Control Panel
This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I would not go for a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such chores are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.
9. Multiple Domain Hosting and Subdomains
For those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted in your account, you should look to see if they provide this, and the amount extra that they charge for this (whether it is a one-time or monthly charge, etc).
10. Server
Is the type of operating system and server important? Whether you think so or not on the theoretical level, there are a few practical reasons for looking out for the type of server.
In general, if you want to use things like ASP, you have no choice but to look for a Windows NT/2000/XP machine for your server.
Otherwise my preference is to sign up for accounts using the often cheaper, more stable and feature-laden Unix systems running the Apache server. In fact, if dynamically generated pages that can access databases (etc) is what you want, you can always use the more portable (and popular) PHP instead of tying yourself down to ASP. Another reason to prefer Unix-based web hosts (which include web hosts using systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc) using the Apache web server is that these servers allow you to configure a lot of facilities that you typically need on your site (error pages, protecting your images, blocking email harvesters, blocking IP addresses, etc) without having to ask your web host to implement them. Knowledge about configuring Apache servers is also widely available..
11. Price
I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it's futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise that you often get what you pay for, although it's not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.
12. Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans
Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I'm assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I'm not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I'm dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after many months or even more than a year), when I'm satisfied with the host, I often change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.
13. Resellers?
Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don't know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.
14. International
If you don't stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.
The Myth of the Perfect Commercial Host
In general, I doubt that there are any "perfect" web hosting companies around. Note that even if you are prepared to pay a huge price for your hosting needs, it does not guarantee that your host is any good. This is an interesting industry where a high price does not necessarily yield quality hosting and support.
On the other hand, one thing you can probably be sure of is that you will not get top-notched support if you only pay (say) $5 a month. At that price, which company can afford to hire enough good help to cater to all its users?

How important is the age of a domain name in SEO?

One of the important factors in Google’s search engine algorithm is the age of a domain name. It gives the appearance of longevity and scores a higher relevancy in Google.
For example, in business people tend to trust a business that has been around for a long time over a brand new business. The same is the case for websites. In fact one should register the domain before opening the business.
The age of the website and length of time a domain has been registered are considered in the age of a domain name.
The age of the website is built up on following basis:
a)How long the content is on the web.
b)When was the last time the content was updated?
c)How long the site has been in promotion.
In latest updates by Google, some of the big changes seen were the importance given to age; date the domain was registered, age of web content and age of incoming links. One of the ways used by Google to minimize spam is by giving new websites a waiting period before giving them any PageRank. This is referred to as the ‘Sand box effect’. The idea behind this is that Google wants to see if the new site is serious about staying around. Although it is a disappointment for new websites but there are some things to do while waiting for the sandbox period to expire, such as concentrating on back links strategies, PPC, article promotion, RSS feed etc.
Even though the domain’s age is a factor, according to critics it only gets a little weight in the algorithm. As one has no control over the age of the domain, it does not necessarily mean that your site is not going to rank well in search engines just because you have a new domain.

Web Design

A Good business web design starts with thinking about your customer and what is it that they are looking for? Internet marketing is different than normal business marketing because the web is an impersonal place. Always focus on ways to humanize and personalize your business.
Before you can start designing the website, you need to decide what the purpose and goals of the website are. What are the company’s goals? The web design produces a marketing piece. The Internet marketing strategies need to be consistent with the marketing strategies for the organization.
Business web design requires that websites be designed with CLASS. The web design acronym CLASS highlights the elements of best in class web design. They are Content, Logical flow, Aesthetics, Simplicity and Search engine optimization. Top business website designers uses a balance of these five key elements to produce websites that meet the goals of business owners.
Eye-catching graphics and style will fail miserably if there is an unfocused message or if no visitors end up coming to the website. The right planning combined with these five elements will produce a winning website.
Content: Remember visitors arriving are fast paced, click happy and easily bored. Your website content needs to grab your visitor’s attention in order to get results. Content is what tells what you have to offer and creates a “call to action.” If the content does not provide the information needed it will provide little value.
Logical flow: The organization and flow should follow the natural selling process. Organizing your website’s navigation may seem simple, but it actually requires a good deal of careful thought. One of the first steps is to establish the call to action. What are your goals and what action do you want visitors to take?
Aesthetics: Develop that right first impression through style, color and simplicity. Design draws your visitors to what is important. Blending of color, graphics and design creates an emotional response to make your website memorable. Color communicates powerfully in business web design. Aesthetics bring in the emotional response that is so important in branding.
Simplicity: Create a simple and focused message to avoid confusion and gets results. In design you want to capture the visitor’s attention with your message. With search engines, focus and simplicity gets faster and better results. It is important to get the visitor’s attention and understand the purpose of the website in 3 seconds or less.
SEO: The perfect website without visitors is utterly worthless. Search engine optimization should be designed into the website. Web designers should chart out their SEO plan before beginning their design. Start with keyword research, create a keyword plan and use these keywords in page names, navigation, linking and headings to dramatically improve the design’s effectiveness.
A well-designed website has many facets, but it hard to beat a website designed with CLASS.

SEO tips

SEO tips

1)Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

2)Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

3)Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

4)Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

5)First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page.

6)Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

7)Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

8)Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

9)Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

10)Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar.

The first thing to consider is the importance of hiring an ethical SEO specialist. SEO ethics is not just about being nice little boy scouts. An ethical SEO specialist will make sure your website is not penalized or even banned from the search engines.
To the outsider or the novice, SEO (search engine optimization) seems a bit like voodoo magic. Not surprisingly, website owners want some kind of guarantee. This makes them easy prey for the most common scam: a false promise.
How can you tell if a guarantee is false? Any guarantee is. A reputable freelance SEO specialist or SEO firm will not provide a guarantee, because too much is out of his control. Consider the following professions:
A stock broker cannot guarantee that a stock will rise. The economy could tank, the CEO could skip the country, or the product could be discovered to cause cancer in children.
A baseball player cannot guarantee the team will win. The pitcher could give up too many runs, the other teams could be really good, or he could have an off-season.
A lawyer cannot guarantee you will win your case. The star witness could die or leave town, the judge might be in a really bad mood, the other lawyer might be a whiz. Your search engine optimization specialist cannot guarantee results either, because the search engine algorithms can change unexpectedly, the competition might be better entrenched than appears, or the competition might start getting better optimized, too. Such promised are 100% unethical and most likely illegal.
Why search engine optimization ethics is important
Because the SEO field is unregulated and operates in the virtual world, some SEO specialists have been known to take the money and run. This is where SEO ethics hits you where you feel it most -- in the pocketbook.

To make sure you hire an ethical SEO specialist, always check that he has a physical address posted on his website. That is a sign that he is less likely to disappear. Most reputable search engine optimization specialists will ask for some of the payment up front. Some will bill in arrears. There should be no reason to give full payment up front to a perfect stranger.
Another typical scam is to use dirty tricks, called "black hat SEO", to get your website ranking highly. You are pleased as punch, hand over the money, then five months later you wonder what happened to your rankings when the search engines get wise and ban your site.
It is important to ask an SEO specialist about his methods before hiring him.

Another common trick, often in conjunction with a false guarantee, is to choose poor keywords.I could get your automotive site to rank #1 at every major search engine for the term "double-decker bus sundae delight". Unfortunately, not too many of your customers are searching for that term.
Be careful, however, not to demand the most competitive terms, either. For instance, if your automotive site is for a chain of repair shops in Pennsylvania, you probably do not have the financial means to compete for the term "automobiles", nor is that the most effective term to target your most likely customers.
Ask an SEO specialist how he plans to select the keywords for you. If your bottom line is not his top priority, find another SEO specialist.
Another search engine optimization scam is to guarantee placement within a short period of time, and to buy pay-per-click ad space. Pay-per-click ads appear as "sponsored" listings in the search engines. While they will attract some targeted traffic, only 40% of Internet searchers click on the sponsored listings. Worse, they are temporary listings that end when the account is depleted.
A similar scam some SEO specialists do is to place temporary links on their own sites or buy paid advertising links on other sites. Once the money is paid, they remove the links on their own sites, and once the ads expire on other sites, your site loses those links and rankings also fall.

Tips for getting higher search engine rankings

You can get high rankings and increase web traffic to your site by doing the following steps.to your site by doing the following steps.




1)Research what keywords people use most often on search engines that pertain to your products or services; use these keywords as text in the design to increase website traffic.
2)"Keep It Simple" - 99% of all web designers use too many graphical images and programs like Java, Flash, etc. which results in lower rankings and less traffic..
3)Web pages, like a spread sheet, are made using cells and tables. Use as few cells and tables in your web design as possible.
4)Create good Meta Tags. Each page should have different keywords in the Title and the Description Meta Tag.
5)Limit the number of times that you repeat words in your Keyword Meta Tag.
6)Place your important keywords at the top of the page as text headers.
7)Your most important page and keywords should be on the first page of a website.
8)Frames based websites should only be used for Intranet (a site only for company employees) and not for Internet.
9)Do NOT include pages that re-direct (a page that automatically sends you to another page) people to other pages.
10)Run an analysis program to count the number of times keywords are used in the first 7500 characters of computer code.
11)Limit your use of services that automatically submits your URL to the top 10 search engines.
12)When finished with a page, run a spell checking program and then compress the html code.
13)Keep track of your search engine rankings and website traffic.
14)Once a website is indexed, a good web designer should go back and improve pages that didn't get high rankings on key words.
15)Every 3 months you should make a small change on each web page. Search engines like to see that changes are being made to a site and that it just isn't sitting there for years with no upgrades.



Why Web Designers Don't Follow The Above Tips


1)Time is money. Most web designers bid on projects and know it takes at least 30% more time to create a site that gets high rankings. Since most companies / people don't know what should be done to get an increase in website traffic, web designers cut corners and only design a website that the customer sees is appealing.
2)Most web designers haven't taken the time to learn how to get high rankings on multiple search engines.
3)Many web designers don't care about getting high rankings, as it's not fun and creative work



Test Your Web Designer



We are aware of many details that are important in getting top rankings. To evaluate the skill level of your web designer, ask them these sample questions and record their answers. Then contact us, and ask us the same questions.


1)What's the maximum number of characters that should be used in the Keyword Meta Tag?
2)What's the consequence of placing the page's Title just beneath the "" statement vs. the bottom and just above "" statement?
3)How do you get a high popularity rating?
4)Which search engine bases a majority of its ranking on popularity?
5)Which search engine gives "bonus points" for high popularity and for being listed on Yahoo or LookSmart?
6)Why is it a bad idea to create websites that use frames?
7)What are the top 3 search engines or directories used by people?
8)A listing on what directory also gets that page listed on MSN, Google, Overture, Go, and Iwon?
9)Besides Yahoo, what is the second most important directory to get listed on to increase your web site traffic?
10)Which search engine indexes ALT Tags?