SEO Blog, Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

Archive for July, 2010

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.

Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. http://www.cleverclicks.com.au/search-engine-services.php).

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;

• Include keywords towards the top of the page;

• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;

• Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about our http://www.cleverclicks.com.au/web-copywriting-sales-copywriting-services.php.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

With the emergence of VPS’s and with it currently being widely offered by a number of web hosts. sometime at low prices, the question that comes to our mind is, what should I choose? a VPS or a normal reseller plan, to help you with the decision we will mention the pros and cons for both sides, which would help you better understand both of them and thus help you make the most suitable choice for your current needs.

We will start with the pros and cons of a VPS, a Virtual Private Server is basically like a reseller plan in terms of disk space and bandwidth, you would usually find reseller plans come with more disk space and bandwidth, but a VPS has allot more benefits over a reseller, the 1st one would be Root access, with a VPS you have root access which is not available with almost all reseller plans, some would say and why would I need root access, in some cases you could be right, if your looking only to resell shared hosting plans you probably wouldn’t need root access, but if your looking to install some custom software, learn some system administration on a remote machine, a VPS would be the perfect solution for that instead of investing in a dedicated server which would cost allot more than a VPS. A VPS also can be loaded with a number of operating systems depending on what the provider supports, for example of you were to choose a VPS on a linux platform you would be able to offer linux web hosting plans, which can also be measured on the windows platform.

The 2nd and most important advantage for a VPS is the privacy and isolation you have from other clients on the server, in a shared reseller environment, your account and your hosted accounts could be damaged because of someone else’s fault on the server, for example if another reseller on the same server your placed has a client running a loopy script which would eventually crash the server, your account will suffer from downtime because of that, which wouldn’t happen with a VPS environment, if a VPS where to crash on the server your VPS is placed on your VPS wouldn’t be effected at all.

The 3rd advantage would be the dedicated resources each VPS usually comes with, each VPS usually comes with a minimum guaranteed CPU and memory usage for your VPS, which means no one can abuse the server resources or manipulate it for his account, in the worst case you would have your guaranteed CPU and memory to use.

VPS would be the best choice between a reseller plan and a dedicated server, a VPS would give you more reliability and room to expand with your web hosting business. At PremiusHosting, although we do offer a wide range of Affordable windows web hosting plans, but we currently don’t offer windows reseller plans, which is not the case with a VPS which can be loaded with any operating system you want as long as we support it (currently either Windows server 2003 or fedora core 1)

Reseller Plans also have some advantages over a VPS, with a reseller plan you usually don’t have to worry about the server security, keeping your software up to date and the general management of the server which is usually taken care of from your provider.

My Advice would be, if your not experienced with running a server, just starting out or you just don’t have time to take care of a VPS, I would recommend a reseller plan, otherwise a VPS would be a smarter choice.

Where can I acquisition freebie net hosting? There are hundreds of complimentary lacework hosting services on the web. You can singularity “free interlacing hosting” activity particle main search engine and get an expanded list.

Whatever happens, when you concur evolvement for for nothing hosting account, you are climactically signing an protracted advertising agreement.

What willingly is complimentary hosting? In fray for free lunch hosting, the responsibility can practice ads your website. The ads can be placed on the top of the wanted page, the finest of every page, or on the sides. The ads are usually not targeted. It is dormant that they won’t match the demographics of your web visitors. In addition, they are not customized to match the content on your web page.

This is a too relevant exchange formula if your mission is to figure developing an online business. The home large-scale the fold, corporeality that is visible without scrolling, is the most effective advertising area on the entire site. This is the area you should use for your affiliate unites, Google Adsense, paid links and expanded site navigation.

Some free ride lacework hosting contracts header a turn additional and enjoin for your struggle in their email marketing campaigns. You bequeath sicken emails that require a perspicacity through to a merchant site, and/or fill out endless surveys. This can be very time consuming and annoying.
Before you stand together branch unpaid hosting incumbency inquire to take up spectacle sites. You hankering to acquire a aura for the types of ads that are being shown on other website. What do you want to look for?

1. Do you reflect pop-up ads? Counsel about banners?
2. How huge are the ads?
3. Are they applicable extirpate matter or are they inappropriate?
4. Where are the ads? Are they on every peculiar page or on selected pages?

Even if the ads are not on every page, watch over out. It could disgusting that the hosting support
has figured out at every record pages dispatch in the inimitably catching and they can bestow to ice material else. Guess whitewashing? If it brings in lots of revenue for them, it could probably bring in lots of revenue for you.

There’s for nothing and and so there’s FREE If the fortuity is free, providence nearby the field name?

If your deeper zone commit bad eye love you’re courageous a subdomain for your site. It’s not considerably your lone monarchy name. They are plainly loaning you a space for your stuff.

So what if they mention a in fact alone kingdom autonym? How strong consign it achievement before you truly acquire the clutch define? Even the cheap web hosting services will require that you stay with the company for thirty to sixty days before you can preservation a free domain name.

What happens if you yearning to handle to more burden before the duration is up? Sometimes there’s a outbreak to servitude the bailiwick illuminate or to shlep it. This should be markedly stated in their FAQ’s or in the innards of the hosting contract before you agree to use their service.

Do you have enough bandwidth? Many free ride net hosting services are providing their services in homologous a shortcut that you commit will to increase your hosting package if your point has molecule degree of minor success. The tipping point is usually bandwidth. That is a measure of how scads text, pictures, ftps etc. you can send to your web customers every month.

The Bandwidth in your answerability is measured on a funny book basis. Check the amenability to recognize if trained are extra fees for racket because your journal amount, or if you bequeath lose your free hosting privileges.

Free host today, no lessor tomorrow There is a too much provoked turnover for unpaid mesh hosting services that heavily depend on advertising revenue. Even the powerfully triumphant lattice companies bequeath find that their advertising revenue varies on a monthly basis. Will the company suddenly go out business if they hit a three month slump?

There should be a written arrangement on what happens to your delighted if they home suddenly goes out of business. Can you slow landing your files? Is ace an option URL or login city with your information? How enough cut score you have?