Web Hosting: Six Things You Should Consider

Some of the features you may be looking for when it comes to a web host for your website include cost, dependability, customer service, features, bandwidth and disk space.

Cost

When reviewing the price structure of any web hosting solution you should always take into account the total package of services offered, reputation of firm, testimonials from customers, and ease of use.

Dependability

Has the web host had a problem with down time? Have other customers had a problem with the service? Have all functions of the service proven useful to other customers?

You should always investigate the reliability of the firm.

Customer Service

Some web-hosting firms talk a good game, but will they be there for you when you have difficulties. Many netrepreneurs have horror stories about poor customer service and unresponsive web hosts. Ask questions and check out any guarantees they may offer.

Features

Some web hosts provide a minimal cost but have fewer features than other firms. It’s possible a company has a significant package of services, but may not provide enough space for future growth. You may also find there are add on features that you are interested in, but add significantly to the overall cost of the service. Determine the features you need and look for a match that can manage those features.

Bandwidth

Can the web host keep up with the information load for your website? Do they have a limitation? Will those limits work for your ecommerce site?

Disk Space

Your web host should have adequate space set aside for you to grow. It may seem like a shoe that is too big, but dream big because your business footprint may one day match the size of the shoe.

Choosing a web host is kind of like picking out a new computer. You need to determine what you want it to do now and what you believe it will need to do a year or two from now. If you chose a computer that is only adequate for your immediate needs you will not have any room for future growth. The same is true with a quality web host find one that exceeds your current needs. If you don’t you severely limit your ability to grow your ecommerce site.

A good web host can provide the building blocked needed to develop a quality online presence and keep the doors open for expansion at a moments notice. Without the flexibility the web host may be less than adequate for your ongoing needs.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

Why Choose cPanel Reseller Hosting?

When you're about to buy web space with the intention to resell it, you have to look at the software available in that web space. You need to know, for example, what web panel software the web host prefers. Reading up on different web panels will prepare you for the task of managing the reseller space you plan to buy. And if you plan on getting cPanel reseller hosting for the first time, you need to know at least why it is so popular.

Here are just some of the reasons why you should choose cPanel reseller hosting above the other obvious choices:

1. Ease of use. This is always the number one reason uttered by reseller space buyers and vendors alike. The main attraction of cPanel as a web integration software is that it has a pleasant and neat graphical user interface (GUI), similar to a Windows Explorer window set to display files as icons. This allows even people who are not familiar with web space management to be swiftly oriented to the demands of the task.

2. Multiple features. As with every computer program, an easy-to-use software that comes packed with useful features quickly wins hearts. When people use web panel software, they are looking for things that would make their lives easier, such as automated scripts. Automated scripts are commands that simplify complex tasks like backing up and transferring files and entire databases from one server to another. cPanel has plenty of such scripts. With the push of a single button, a user will be able to launch a series of complicated commands.

3. Security. Just because cPanel is easy to use, it doesn't follow that it has a major downside - such as being easy to hack into. cPanel is recognized as a very secure web panel software, even if like all web panels, it does have its share of minor bugs. You will want security in your web management software, so that just any web-savvy stranger won't be able to maliciously crack your safeguards, steal your files and deface your websites. Among the many invaluable things that a secure web panel can offer, peace of mind is probably one of the most priceless.

If you've made up your mind to get cPanel reseller hosting for your first reselling account, know that you've made a wise decision, which millions of other satisfied users have also made. But feel free to try other web panels - true knowledge comes from one's inclination to experiment!

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How to Save Money With a USA Reseller Web Hosting Outfit

USA reseller web hosting is one of the most sought-after services in cyberspace. You must know how USA web hosting is considered one of the most reliable and most marketable, since a lot of the world's technological hubs are located in the USA. If you are located in the USA, you must know how lucrative this industry is for people who are looking for affordable web hosting services.

In and out of the USA, people seek the security and flexibility afforded by US-based web hosts. A great many of the world's most secure web hosting infrastructure is located in the USA, and this is why USA reseller web hosting services will always be in demand. But you need to know how to properly address this need, and to scale your services according to global demand.

Price is always a driver. Even if you offer the highest caliber security and the best features, if your price is not friendly to customers, their attention will wander. Your rates must be able to compete with the prices offered by other web hosts, in order to draw people in and make them aware of what you can do.

How do you do this? Well, as a reseller, you have to understand that scalability is a major asset of resellers. People wouldn't purchase web space directly from a web host if they can get a more attractive package from a reseller. And by "more attractive," we mean less expensive. Less expensive, on its part, comes with a bunch of other meanings - like smaller web space, lower bandwidth requirements, and fewer features.

Why would people want less of anything? Well, if the price is right, individual buyers can do away with certain features, and still feel like they're getting good value for their money. For example, not everyone needs unlimited email and domain/subdomain functionalities. And not everyone needs over 200 mb of space! Sometimes a person will only want to create a single site made of static webpages, with a single domain active, in order to promote a product or a service. You definitely won't need a lot of space, email or domain/subdomain functionalities for that! You may, however, need a lot of bandwidth, especially if your marketing arm decides to make your brochure-type website a primary selling tool.

And because technology experts in the USA continue to expand and innovate, USA-based individuals or companies offering "techie" products - such as web space - will always be in demand. It's probably safe to say that USA reseller web hosting outfits will continue to find the market very lucrative indeed in the coming years.

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Hosting Your Website - Disc Space and Data Transfer

In search of that perfect web hosting provider many webmasters are concerned with two important factors of the possible hosting plan: disc space and data transfer. Today many web hosting providers offer more and more of disc space as well as data transfer- two major needs when it comes to any website in the universe. You need disc space to store your website and you need data transfer to allow people to visit your website.

Disc Space. When it comes to web hosting space, process of using it is very simple. The more files you upload to your server the more space you use. Every time you upload new picture, web page or text file certain amount of web space is used to store these files on the server. An average HTML page requires about 90 MB-130 MB of space on your server. This is not including image files. One of the ways to save on disc space usage is to use smaller images.

Data Transfer. When it comes to data transfer required for your website, it is more complicated. If you check your log files, you may notice that sometimes a smaller number of visitors consume less data transfer and wise-versa. This is due to different ways of how your data transfer is consumed. Returning visitors may consume less data transfer, since they may have stored some files on their own computers needed to view your website from previous times they have visited your website. Generally your allocated data transfer is used on following protocols: HTML, STMP, FTP and POP

1. Data Transfer used on HTML protocol.
   HTML or Hypertext Markup Language is a an authoring software language used to write pages. But even if your pages are written using different scripting language like PHP, the output that an Internet browser receives is in HTML code. So when you access your log files the statistics shown for HTML data transfer generally reflects the visitors that have come to visit your website. This includes people who are browsing Internet as well as robots such as search engine crawlers that visit your site in order to index your pages.
2. Data Transfer used on STMP and POP3.
   STMP and POP3 stand for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Post Office Protocol
   respectfully and are used to send and receive e-mails over the Internet. If you use your server to send and receive e-mails, this will use your allocate data transfer. Whenever you notice that small amount of visitors to our website resulted in greater consumption of data transfer, this may very well be to the fact your data transfer was used to send or receive e-mails.
3. Data Transfer used on FTP.
   FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is generally used whenever you upload files to your server. Whether they are HTML, images or other types of files.

How much Disc Space and Data transfer used for an average page?
Presuming that an average size of web page is about 135 KB following should be true: 1 GB of disc space will allow you about 5000 pages
1 GB of data transfer will allow you about 2500 visitors.

Volodymmyr Zablotskyy
Writer for
Web Hosting Review Blog

Select a Web Hosting Provider before Launching a Website

Now that you have completed the website and are launch it on the Internet, you need to consider two main questions. First - where you will host your new site and what will be your domain name?

To start with the first thing- the Web Hosts. A Web Hosting Provider is a group that provides you with server space on the web for your web site. The space that is allotted to your website includes all your web pages, graphics, scripts and files, databases etc. The web host is the link between the browser and your website. When your web address is typed into a browser, the web host is the first to be contacted and requested to locate and display the requested page.

You can find a number of free web hosting provider and services on the internet. However, if in case you are planning to create a website with a business purpose in mind, then go for professionals web hosting provider instead of the free web hosting services. These professional web hosting provider ensure more credibility since web sites hosted on free servers are not taken seriously and suffer a serious loss of business due to varied reasons. Unfortunately, for those of us who are on shoe-string budgets that rely on free servers are not taken seriously and can lose business. In order to establish credibility, you must be willing to invest in a professional web hosting service.

While selecting your web hosting provider, do some research about the web hosting company as to how many customers do they serve, their uptime percentage visitors, set up fees, do they offer secure servers etc. Make sure you do your homework efficiently and ensure that the web hosting providers you select for your self offer exactly what you need for your website.

Apart from selecting your web hosting provider, a domain name is as important to select. It is used to relate the particular web site on the web and is that part of the URL that basically instructs the web browser to find a particular page from the search engine content. It is important in the sense that it has to create a brand among the consumers, and it should signify what your business is all about. A good domain name is one that will be easily remembered by the visitors, as it relates to something they are interested in.

Each of them has the same data base that contains all the domain names that have been already registered. You can register your domain name with any one of them. There are many companies available online that will help you out to register a domain name for your website and are efficient web hosting provider.

Author is operating a web hosting provider directory – http://www.betahosts.com/ Here you can find a wide range of web hosting providers. Browse our website to find the best web hosting packages and the lowest prize.

How To Choose The Right Company To Provide Multiple Domain Web Hosting

If you're looking to establish more than one domain on the internet, you should looking into multiple domain hosting plans. Multiple domain web hosting allows you to run more than one domain from a single account. Before this service became available, you had to have a different account for each domain you wanted to run. Such a set-up was rather inconvenient and downright ineffective. It made it hard to keep track of multiple web sites and increased the likelihood of one of your web sites going down. Now there are countless companies offering plans geared specifically towards clients who want to manage more than one domain from just one account.

Why would you want to have multiple domains? Let's say you want a main page to provide information about your business. Then you might want a separate domain for, say, forums for users to discuss your products and so you can share information with them. You may also want to set up chat rooms, which could be on another domain. Multiple domain hosting gives you room to grow. Also, if you want to have domains which are completely unrelated, but you still want to manage them all together, then you'll want a multiple domain plan.

When looking for a web hosting service that offers multiple domain accounts, there are a few things to consider. First you need to check out their disk storage plans. Obviously you pay more for more storage space. You don't want to buy too big of a plan but you also don't want to shortchange yourself. You'll need a lot of storage space if you intend to build a large site and provide large files to your visitors such as audio, high resolution images, and video. Remember to get what you need, while also giving yourself room to grow.

You also need to take a look at the plan's data transfer rate and bandwidth. Again, if you plan on offering music and video, you want to make sure that the files are transferred smoothly and at an acceptable speed. Music and video require steady and reliable data transfer and plenty of bandwidth. You do not what your visitors viewing or listening to choppy files. It is important that you come up with an estimate of how much traffic you anticipate on your site and how much data will be transferred. If your bandwidth is low then high speed won't mean much because you'll quickly exceed your limits and your site will be shut down.

Another thing to consider is how many email accounts you will need. You'll probably want to have separate email accounts for customer service, employees, order inquiries, web master, etc. As always, you should have more accounts available then you need so there is room to grow. Email accounts are an absolute necessity for a web-based business. Even if you're not on the web you should have an email address. In many sectors, emails has surpassed the phone as the most important means of contact.

As with a single domain hosting plan, you should look at the company's control panel. This is all the more important when you're operating more than one domain. You should be able to easily access information for all your sites.

The fees for multiple server web hosting plans vary by plan, company, and features offered. There may be monthly fees, a yearly contract, etc. Shop around and choose the service which best suits your needs. Don't forget to ask other people, too. Word of mouth is often the best way to find who's reliable and who's not.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Florida. Find more about this as well as href="http://www.businesswebhostingsolutions.com">business web hosting at http://www.businesswebhostingsolutions.com

How to Choose a Web Hosting Plan for E-commerce Websites

The requirements for E-commerce websites are determined by the characteristics of online operations and the need for conducting transaction online. An e-commerce hosting plan you choose should have the flexibility for customization, the capacity for handling the web traffic, and the functionality of online shopping cart for online catalog and online payment processing.

Online Operation and Hosting Capacity

An e-commerce website should be running smoothly in order for customers to make purchase. There are many things to consider while investigating the hosting capacity for your site:

1) What are the preferred programming languages for your developers? Once you've picked up the programming languages for your Web development, you still have freedom to choose the operating system that hosts your Websites.

2) What is the preferred hosting platform? Is it hosted on Unix, Windows or Linux? The decision depends on whether you want to use, install or migrate certain applications. For instance, if you plan to run SendMail, an email program, you won’t get this on Windows. If your custom applications are developed in ASP scripting language, you can’t run them on Unix. Besides ASP which works only on Microsoft Windows, PHP, JSP and PERL work on Windows, Unix and Linux.

3) Do you need shared hosting, managed hosting, dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS)? Shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and you can host as many sites as you like with a Reseller Hosting option. VPS costs around $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan will cost from $50 - $100 or more a month dependent on storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

4) How much storage space do you want and how much bandwidth do you need? If your site offers custom business cards with lot of templates online, chances are you’ll need lot of hard disk space for storing those business card templates, and lot of bandwidth as well There’re tens of thousands of people searching for “business cards” online. On the other hand, if your site offers manufacturing of smart cards or membership cards, you’ll need lot of storage to host the graphic templates, but you won’t really need a huge bandwidth since the number of people searching for “smart cards”, or “membership cards” is less than 5% of that searching for “business cards”.

E-commerce Hosting Features

To evaluate e-commerce web hosting plans, first of all, you’ll need to find out a list of plans that meet the needs of the functionality, then do price comparison for each plan. The comparison of functionality is often straight forward, and the comparison of cost for different e-commerce hosting solutions are dependent on both the setup fees and your transaction volume. Different hosting plans may have different free structures. Online shopping carts offer users the ability to search the products by keywords, price etc., which is a huge advantage over catalogue printing on papers. For a turnkey commerce solution, EBay Stores, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral are the most popular ones for small businesses.

To compare e-commerce functionality, the questions to ask include:

1) Whether a shopping cart accepts online check or eCheck beside support on online credit card and paypal for payment options? Whether the payment processor handle transaction in a particular country? For instance, you can’t accept from and or send money to Romania with paypal, but you can do that with 2checkout.

2) Whether there’s a limit on the number of products and categories that you can setup?

3) Whether it automatically sends out an email notification once an order is placed successfully?

For comparing the cost of e-commerce hosting plans, the questions to investigate include:

1) What’s the basic monthly subscription fee?

2) Whether there’s a setup fee for a new online store?

3) Whether you have to pay for the addition of new items to the product catalog?

4) How much it charges for each transaction? High volume sites may prefer the plans that charge a higher monthly-fee but a lower fee on each transaction, while low volume sites work better with hosting plans that charge zero or low monthly fee and initial setup fees but a slightly higher fee on each transaction.

The website is the virtual storefront for your e-commerce operation. A thorough and careful evaluation of e-commerce hosting plans is a part of ingredients to your e-commerce success.

Natalie Aranda writes on the Internet and the Web. The requirements for E-commerce websites are determined by the characteristics of online operations and the need for conducting transaction online. An e-commerce hosting plan you choose should have the flexibility for customization, the capacity for handling the web traffic, and the functionality of online shopping cart for online catalog and online payment processing. If your site offers custom business card printing with lot of templates online, chances are you’ll need lot of hard disk space for storing those business card templates, and lot of bandwidth as well There’re tens of thousands of people searching for “business cards” online. On the other hand, if your site offers manufacturing of smart cards or membership cards, you’ll need lot of storage to host the graphic templates, but you won’t really need a huge bandwidth.

Easy Web Hosting Affiliate Money For Low Traffic Sites

There are a number of bloggers and web site owners who make easy affiliate money from web hosting services without owning or running any hosting services themselves. All they do is review web hosting services and create a top ten list. Every hosting company that appears in these top ten lists has to pay upfront for the privilege, just like they would pay for an advertisement. They then collect more cash from affiliate commissions run by those hosting services.

One of the reasons why this particular scheme (which many consider unethical) works so well is because hosting services are usually in very high demand. Not surprising this, when you consider that it is impossible to have any online presence without being hosted by somebody.

This existing high demand for hosting services is evidence enough that one does not need to be so aggressive to the point of being unethical to make serious money from web hosting. Actually, all you need to do is find an affiliate program that meets the following conditions:

a) Find An Affiliate Program That Sells Low Cost Web Hosting Services
There is a huge demand for web hosting services, but there is an even bigger demand for low cost web hosting services. Naturally you want to join an affiliate program that has a huge demand. Higher demand means higher sales and ultimately, higher affiliate income.

b) Find An Affiliate Program That Pays For Second Tier Web Hosting Sales
Second tier commission's means that you get paid for the sales of persons that you have introduced or referred to the affiliate program. This means that instead of getting paid once, you will get paid again and again for the same referrals as each sale by them puts money into your pocket. This can make a huge difference to your earnings.

c) Find An Affiliate Program For A Well Know Web Hosting Service
The better know the hosting service that you are trying to promote as an affiliate, the higher the sales and revenues you will generate. It is human nature, people feel more comfortable dealing with familiar well known names. Choose the sort of web host whose positive information can be found easily and quickly with the help of any search engine.

Follow these simple rules and you will be guaranteed easy affiliate money from web hosting services.

What sort of web hosting affiliate programs meet all the requirements spelt out in this article? Get the details in my web hosting affiliate secrets blog.

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5 Ways To Make Money With Blogs

5 Ways To Make Money With Blogs

There are hundreds of ways to make money on the internet, but most oversee the idea of making money with blogs. blogs are a great way to promote articles, discuss various ideas, and promote your website itself. However, there are several ways you can make money with blogs as well. Here are 5 ways to make money with blogs.

1. Sell advertising

The most common way people make money with blogs is selling advertising. If you build a large blog you can sell advertising space for people to put their ads on your blog. However, a majority of people aren’t capable of building a blog big enough to do this. That is where Google AdSense and blogAds can help you. It is free and they pay you based on the number of people that click their ads for further information.

2. Sell your products

A blog is a great place to discuss advice and opinions on various subjects. It can also be a great place to promote your product and tell them how it can benefit them. Whether it’s your blog or someone else’s, look at it as an opportunity to fulfill peoples’ needs, not that you are just selling your product.

3. Affiliate programs

This is a great way to make money with blogs that hardly anyone even considers. By mentioning the product, the affiliate program will provide you with a clickable link to hyperlink the word with. This way if people are interested in your blog post and click on the product word, they are directed to the affiliate program website where you make commission on all products they buy.

4. Sell your website

It may seem cliché because everyone sells their own website and business through blogs. However, it is your approach that can mean the difference of you making money with blogs or not. If you spend the whole time talking you will seem uninterested in others’ insight. If you incorporate others’ thoughts and opinions and strike up a conversation with little bits and pieces about your business, you soon will have them reeled in. By talking about their business and showing interest you will find that more people are interested in your business in turn.

5. Consistency

The more you post the more chances people have to see you and your website link. It is vital that you make one post a day or at minimum a few a week. This way people become accustomed to seeing your posts and hearing your advice or questions. This is a great way to build relationships, which will help you sell your product, share ideas, and promote your website.

If you take the time to put in the effort in blogs you can easily make money with blogs. There are some people that make a living through making money with blogs. However it is commitment, consistency, and your approach that can either break your or make you money with blogs.

Copyright 2006 Mal Keenan

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10 Effective Ways to Optimize Wordpress for Search Engines and Traffic

10 Effective Ways to Optimize Wordpress for Search Engines and Traffic

1. Use Descriptive Titles, and Mod-Rewritten Permalinks

Descriptive titles will bring relevant traffic to your site. This is one of the most important things you can do to your site to bring SE traffic to it. While I'm writing this article specifically for WordPress, I'm sure you probably could find similar mods or plugins for other blog engines to take their place. When I say a descriptive title, I don't mean to spam your blog's titles with keywords, I mean to write a short summary of the post contained within it that lets users know what they're fixing to read. Think of it from the users side: If you're on google and you see a site titled "Hosting, Domains, Design, DNS - Joes Web Hosting", and a site titled "Great Hosting from Joes Web Hosting", which one would you click? Even though I dramatized the example, I made my point. Another thing to consider is phrases. When a user enters a phrase that's on one of your blog's titles, it will most likely be ranked higher than other pages. For example, if someone's looking for "Great Hosting", the post titled "Great Hosting from Joes Web Hosting" will rank higher (though, not much higher since that's such a general term). Secondly, you should use mod_rewritten links on your blog. This requires a server with Apache installed, with the rewrite module. This is a great tip, since it will place keywords in your individual post URLs.

For example, instead of "domain.com/p?=1", you'd get "domain.com/01/20/08/joes-web-hosting-services/". This, along with descriptive titles will help your blog out greatly.Wordpress has this built-in, but you must first configure it. Login to your WP admin area. Once the page loads, select "Options" from the upper menu bar, then select "Permalinks" on the next page. I recommend using "Date and Name Based", or enter this custom value in the box towards the bottom of your screen: "/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/". After doing this, you must update your ".htaccess" file so it rewrites the URLs correctly.

2. Remove your blog's name from Individual Post Page Titles

While this may seem counter-productive, it's actually a good idea. When your blog is indexed by google (or any other search engine), many times the pages are seen as being too-close together and they are omitted from the search results because of this. This also reduces the relevancy of search results from your site, since your blog's name is taken into account by the search engine. By removing your site's title, you can (in most cases) cure this problem. To do this, look in your Wordpress' "header.php" file. This is found in your theme's directory.

Find the following code:

<i><title><?php <b>blog</b>info('name'); ?>
<?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » <b>blog</b> Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title></i>

Replace it with the following code:

<i><title><?php <b>blog</b>info('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » <?php } ?>
<?php wp_title(); ?></title></i>

(http://wordpress.org/support/topic/66362)

3. Install the Mega tag description and Keyword plugins

META tags aren't as important as they used to be, but they are still a factor in the ranking of your site, especially on smaller search engines. For META decription/keyword tags to be effective, you must choose relevant and unique tags. However, both of these mods do this for you to some extent. You can choose your own, or use the default ones (either one is fine, since the plugins generally choose good keywords and a good description by themselves). If I had to choose between the two of these plugins, I'd say to just go with the description tag (though both are better). To find these plugins, just do a google search for "keyword meta tag plugin Wordpress" and "description meta tag Wordpress plugin", or something similar (as these plugins/Wordpress may be updated rendering the old links useless).

4. Install the google sitemaps Plugin and Submit to google

Installing the google sitemap Plugin can decrease the amount of time it takes google to index your site dramatically. It generally takes weeks or months (depending on the size of your site, sometimes sooner) for google to index new pages on your site. With the sitemap Plugin, this amount of time can be reduced to just hours. To install this plugin, simply do a google search for "Wordpress google sitemap Plugin", find it, and download it. Installation is just like a normal plugin. Once installed, submit your sitemap to google at "http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview". As of writing, you'll also have to verify that the site is your own by either inserting a META tag into your site, or by uploading a specifically named HTML file.

5. Submit your RSS Feed to Other sites

Submitting your RSS to other sites can increase your traffic substantially. Each time your blog's RSS feed is updated, you can have the other sites download the new feed and index your site (see the Pinging area below). This is essentially the same thing as letting a site index your site, but it's more targeted towards news and blogs. If you can find a site targeted towards you own site's niche (ex: Gardening, Computers, Autos, etc.), you're sure to boost your traffic levels, as long as your blog has unique content that's updated frequently. An excellent list of sites to submit your RSS feed to is available here: "http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm".

6. Ping Other sites Automatically when you Update your blog

As mentioned in the RSS feed section, pinging other sites allows other sites to get updates from your blog much sooner and automatically when you make a new post. This is very much like the google sitemap plugin (the concept is, anyway). To have your blog update other sites when you update it, login to your Wordpress' admin area. Select "Options" from the main menu, then select "Writing" on the next page (sub-menu). You may want to choose others, but I have the following sites in my blog to ping:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

Please keep in mind, unless you install the "No Ping Wait" plugin, there will be a delay after you make each post (while your blog contacts the other servers to ping them).

7. Use "alt" and "title" tags, respectively, on your posts images and links

Using "Alt" tags on your images and "Title" tags not only helps your search engine rankings, but it also helps disabled people with screen readers view the content on your site. It also can help your page be valid HTML (another thing that can help your SE ranking). I recommend simply describing the link/image and not trying to cram tons of keywords to boost your ranking. For more information on doing this, visit W3C's site and look up the tag for the version of HTML/XHTML used on your site (if you want it to be valid).

8. Exchange links with other relevant sites, but don't use exchange networks
Exchanging links with other sites can help your rankings tremendously, but trading with the wrong sites can do the opposite. That's why I reccommend only trading with sites that are relevant to your own and are listed in google. One-Way links are placed much higher in google than reciprocal links, so free or paid directory links would be even better. An excellent list of SEO friendly directories can be found here: "http://info.vilesilencer.com/". Using an exchange network can have adverse effects on your site due to the general quality of sites in them. Basically, a one-way text link on a high PageRank directory is the best route. Be sure to use good keywords in your link/title, as google takes this into account for keyword/phrase rankings.

9. Post short, interesting posts on your blog daily to keep readers coming back for more

You don't have to write a book to keep readers coming. In fact, most people like reading short and simple articles that are straight to the point. By giving readers what they want, you are increasing the probability that they will come back. Choose interesting topics to post on your blog that are relevant to your site's niche. For example, if Ferrari just released a new car and you have an Auto blog, you could post a short paragraph summarizing the information about the car and your opinion, include a picture or two of the car, and include a link to a more in-depth article. Alternatively, you could re-write the article (it allowed) and post a link back to the site in a "Source" list under or above your own article. Doing this will keep readers on your site.

10. Share your site with people you know, and ask them to tell others they know

While it may not seem like much, telling people you know can help you build a site. People you know can offer advice on design, topics, etc. and let people they know about your site. People who know you are also far more likely to comment on your postings, making your site look more active, thereby encouraging others to do the same. If you choose to do this step, ask the person to tell 3 other people they know about your site. This will in effect create a small network of people reading and commenting on your site. Plus, if they really like your site they'll continue to tell others about it.

Article written by Hiram Davis, owner and publisher of http://www.blognation.be/

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4 Simple Steps To Blogging For Business

4 Simple Steps To Blogging For Business

blogging is a practice that has been around for at least 5 years. It began with average, but opinionated people with something to say, who wanted to share their opinions with anyone who would read them. While it has been popular with the general public, it hasn't caught on with many businesses until recently. blogging can be a powerful tool for marketing and exposure for any business if done properly. This article will cover the first steps businesses will need to take to set themselves up for successful blogging.

1. Select the Appropriate Hosting for Your business Blog

You first step is to select an appropriate host for your blog. There are a couple of solutions that you can use to host your blog. You can:

1) Host it on your own server

2) Host it at a blogging hosting server, such as livejournal.com or blogger.com

If you host your own blog on your own web site, you will need to find blogging software that you can use on your web site. You will need to determine what your web site server capabilities are, and then determine what blogging software will work within your server environment. You will then need to install the software and configure it in order to begin blogging.

If you host your blog on a blog hosting system, then everything is already set up for you. All you have to do is sign up for, and configure your account. Some of these blogging services are free and some of them will have a monthly hosting charge.

2. Configure Your business Blog

Once you have determined how you want to host your blog, and have installed it, or signed up for your blog service, you will need to configure your blog.

Configuring your blog includes, what template you want to use with your blog. Most blogs whether they are on a blog hosting service, or software that you have installed, will come with several templates. If you are new to the Internet, and don't have a lot of programming experience, it is probably best to stick with one of the templates that has come with the software or service. It is however, better if you have some programming background, or have the funds to hire someone, then you can get your blog to look like your business web site. Even if your blog is hosted elsewhere, you can do amazing things with the templates to get your blog to look very similar to your business web site. Most services will allow you to modify the templates that come with their subscription.

Other things that will need to be configured are settings such as the name and description of your business blog, the email address you want messages from your blog to be sent to, how you want your blog archived (posts saved for future access), what ping services you want to notify when you update your blog, and other settings too numerous to mention in this article.

3. Determine the Content of Your business Blog

This next step can be done before you actually install your blog, but you will need to determine the topic of your business blog, and how you want to convey your information to your target market. The content and topics of your blog should relate to your industry. You can focus as narrow or as wide as you choose think is appropriate. In general, it is a good idea to cover many areas within your industry and then separate the different areas of your industry into different categories within your blog.

For example, if you are blogging about your real estate business, the big topics would be commercial real estate, residential real estate, and investing in real estate, etc.

However, it would be better to specifically focus in your main category/industry. For example, if your main industry is residential real estate, you could have topics such as renting out your home, buying a home, and selling a home. Each of these would be a separate category within your blog.

Lastly but most importantly, you should choose topics and categories that will be of interest to your visitors. You will need to research the keywords that your customers would use to find you. There are many keyword research tools available on the web today that will tell you what exact phrases, and how often, your target market is using to find you. These keywords will determine the topics of your blog entries. You should also use some of the phrases you have found in your research in your business blog posts.

4. Begin blogging for Your business

The last step is to start blogging. You can choose from a number of different formats to add entries to your blog, as blog entries can take on any format. Some formats that you may want to consider include:

1) Writing articles and posting them to your blog.

2) Finding related news items in your industry and posting them with comments as to what you think of the news item.

3) Answering frequently asked questions you get from your clients.

4) Writing reviews of products/services in your industry

5) Writing "how to" posts

6) Using a free-style posting of anything you feel would be of interest to your potential clients and/or customers.

Your style of posting should match what your target market would find interesting.

Now that you know the basic steps of what needs to be done to begin business blogging, you can choose how you want to host your blog, what keywords your target market uses to find you, and what format would make the most sense to begin blogging. There are many web sites that have more articles and in-depth information about business blogging. You can use these resource sites to help guide you through the process from making your first post, to getting your first customer from your business blog.

Don't waste time learning about things you don't need to know about blogging. Get right to the heart of the matter and learn how to get your blog set up and working for you in a matter of a few hours! Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles for more information go to.
http://www.allwebcontent.com/resources/businessblog.shtml
(A http://drivetraffictomywebsite.com creation)

Blogging For Dollars: Your One-Minute Business

Blogging For Dollars: Your One-Minute Business

Have you ever wanted to work for yourself? Imagine - you could decide when and where you work, how much you want to earn, and best of all, no one could ever fire you.

What if I told you that you could start your own business in less than one minute?

You can.

You can start your own business in less than one minute by creating a blog. A blog is essentially an instant-publishing solution. Think of it as creating your own magazine. If that sounds intimidating, it's not. You're a mine of information and knowledge, but you're using all that know-how for someone else. When you create a blog, you're using that information for yourself.

You can create your blog today, and start adding entries to it. You can even monetize your blog today. Tomorrow, and for the next few weeks, you add more information to your blog. And then - you can make your blog your business, sooner than you thought possible.

Thousands of others are already developing their blogs into low-cost, instant businesses. Would you believe that some bloggers earn tens of thousands of dollars a month? They do. You can do it as well.

Start your blogging business today

You can start your blog in less than one minute. Go to blogger.com (which is owned by google) and create a blog. This blog is your new business.

Choose a topic for your blog on which you're an expert. Not an expert? Of course you are. You're an expert on what you do. If you're a mother, you're an expert. If you're a student, you're an expert. If you're a bricklayer, you're an expert.

Or, choose a topic that's your favorite hobby: sports, cooking, eBay auctions - the choices are endless. What do you love? Create a blog based on your passion.

Monetize your blog

Once you've created a blogger blog, monetizing the blog is easy. google does it for you, by running AdSense advertisements on your blog. businesses pay google to run ads, and google pays you. You just need to set up an AdSense account (it takes minutes), wait for google to approve it (takes a day) and then insert the ads into your blog. Check the blogger Help file for all the information you need.

Keep adding information, and collect cash

The next step is to keep adding information - blog entries - to your blog. The rate at which you add entries is up to you. You'll find that the first few days of creating entries take longest. This is because you're building your blogging muscles. Within four days, you'll have gotten into the swing of it, and you'll find that it just takes minutes to create a blog entry.

As you add entries, they will be indexed in google, and when readers visit your blog and click on the AdSense ads, you earn money. The more visitors, the more you earn. It takes around a month for you to start seeing consistent income from your blog. Then, as you keep blogging, your income will rise steadily.

There are many other ways to earn income from your blog.

So there you have it: your one-minute business. No other business is as easy or as simple. And very few other businesses are as profitable.

Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and blogger. Her ebook, Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger -- in your PJs, if you want, is available at http://www.abmagic.com/Blog/blogging.html You can visit the book's blog at http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/ Angela will show you how to turn a humble blog into a great career, or a lucrative business.

How To Decide On A Domain Name For Your Website And Register With Your Web Host

How To Decide On A Domain Name For Your Website And Register With Your Web Host

Walk into a room filled with people today and chances are 92% of them have been on the Internet today. Take that same group of people and at least 63% have their own website whether on a community network, business, or a separate web host. It is becoming easier and easier to develop and maintain a personal or business website.

One of the first and most important parts of developing a web site is to do a bit of research on the subject. By researching you will be better informed and prepared when you are ready to get a web host. Once you are familiar with the terminology and usage of the Internet, you must come up with a domain name. This part can be especially tricky since there are literally millions of sites already named. Every domain name is different. If only by one letter or number there can be no domains with the exact same name. domain names are sort of like your fingerprints.
A domain name must be registered with the web host in order to be activated. Once you have chosen a domain name you cannot change it. This will be the name of your site until you open another, so be sure to think carefully.

Once you have your domain name registered you need to purchase web space from a web host. The amount of space you need depends on what you plan to do with your website. Most web hosts offer 5MB of storage to begin and you can always purchase more lately. If you plan on trading files or using the site as an adult website you will need additional space. This additional space can easily be purchased from your web host.

If you plan on sharing music or video downloads or files you will go through a lot of space due to transferring. This can quickly become a problem if you purchased only a small amount. You will then need to either buy additional space or eliminate some things from your site.

If you research the Internet you can find a lot of important information regarding your domain name and website. Keep in mind that all information available on the Internet is not necessarily correct. It is important to look the terminology up for yourself and to only follow information from reputable web pages.
Once you have purchased your space and registered a domain name you can then build your website. Sending others links to your new site is an excellent way to get the word out about your site and a great way to receive feedback on things you can work to improve on. With patience and effort you will soon have your own site up and running joining the millions of users worldwide.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Florida. Find more about this as well as web hosting services at http://www.webhostingservicesplus.com

Top Four Key Issues - You Need To Consider When Choosing Keywords For Your Domain

Top Four Key Issues - You Need To Consider When Choosing Keywords For Your Domain

I have spent the last three weeks working with one of my new clients. They have been building their own website for over three years, spent $20,000 and have virtually no traffic. Like many people on the internet, they saw an opportunity to license some material from another company and did so in the promise they would make money. Yet to their distress they have never ranked well online and have never had high levels of traffic.

This particular client has spent thousands of dollars on building email lists using Adwords to assist in driving traffic their way. They are fast running out of money and becoming very distressed. The client has spent lots of money paying other people to get search engine traffic but has never achieved a good ranking and in some search engines did not even register an existence.

Two weeks ago we worked out what keywords would suit the licensed products that the client had purchased, built a website based on the sales pages the licensor had provided and using the right keywords this client has now achieved the most outstanding results.

The client achieved within 1 week of the site being live a #1 ranking in Yahoo.com on a keyword. A number one ranking is predicted to bring about 50 hits a day. The website also achieved a number 2 ranking in Google.com on a keyword which is predicted to bring about 150 hits a day. The reason our client achieved these outstanding results was simply because of the process we followed in choosing the right and appropriate keywords for the domain and key webpages. I should note that whilst the client will only pull about 200 hits a day on this one key world, we expect to make 3 to 5 sales a day for a $300 product. If you look at the numbers from the best case scenarios, the sales will pull $1,500 a day US which works out to about $10,500 a week and about $500,000 a year. Not bad for one single keyword.

There are four key issues you need to consider when trying to choose the right keywords for your domain name.

Issue #1 – Identify The Actual Words Your Customers are Using To Search For Your Products

one of the biggest mistakes many people make is to not do the research to identify the actual keywords your customers are actually searching on. In fact I have found that often what a client thinks their customers are using to search for their products is totally different to what their clients actually search on.

There are many tools on the market to help you do this and there are new ones coming out every week. My team and I use a range of tools like WordTracker and Overture to develop lists of keywords our clients customers are actually searching on. I find that Wordtracker is a fantastic tool for this.

When you are trying to use Wordtracker, I recommend that you start your searches with just a single general word about your product. This will give you a full list of all the words and a range of important information.

Issue #2 – Identify the Right keywords with Minimal Competition

When you work with Wordtracker the system will give you a range of information about your keywords including the number of competing sites by search engine, the total number of hits per day in total to expect and a prediction of the number of hits per day by search engine. There are two issues you need to consider. one is the number of competitive sites for the keywords and the second is the number of hits you can expect.

The number of competitive sites is the most important issue to look. keywords that have few competitive sites are much better to go after than those keywords that have lots of competitive sites as it can take a while to rank well. For example, my team and I have been going after a general term which currently has about 900,000 competing sites. The downside is that it takes a lot of work, lots of articles and a lot of time to achieve a number one ranking. In particular it has taken us 4 and half months to rank in the top twenty and we expect it to take another 2 months to get into the top five.

I know of one company that wanted to rank well for the keywords "wholesale hats" and that it took them 6 solid months of writing articles and building back links to be ranked well in the number one position. When you are starting out, you will want to make sure that you choose low competition websites. Now here is the interesting issue, just because a keyword has 1 million competing webpages does not mean that its going to be hard to rank well. What you need to do is to identify how many backlinks the top competitors has for the keywords. If the top competitor's webpages have only a few links to their page or even their site then you may find it very easy to top those webpages.

one of the aspects to consider when choosing your keywords is to make sure that your general keywords are in fact included in the domain name. For example if you were creating a website on Asthma, then in your domain name, you would want to include the keyword Asthma but it is unlikely you would get Asthma.com. However you would want to include the term asthma as the search engines give a better ranking to those that have the keywords in the domain, simply due to relevance.

Remember one key issue, the more relevant your keywords and domain, the more likely your website will rank highly.

Issue #3 – Identify keywords with Good Daily hits

The next issue you need to look at is the number of daily hits you can expect using those keywords. If the only keywords you can get with low competition webpages have 10 to 30 hits per day, then it is going to be a long haul.

The best type of keywords are those where you have a couple of hundred hits per day, preferably a thousand plus a day and only a few competing webpages. one of the sites we did for one of my clients had 350 daily hits per day but only had 104 competing webpages. This number of competing webpages is minute and it will not take a huge amount to get a top ranking position.

Issue #4 – See What Your Competitors Are Doing With Your keywords

The next issue you need to look at is which keywords your competitors are using. When you are trying to work out your domain name you need to weigh up what your competitors are using to secure your customers, what keywords they are using in the keywords section of their meta data and what keywords they are using in their webpages and the text in their hyperlinks and their domains.

With all of this information you need to then balance out which keywords will give you the best results. Knowing what keywords your customers are searching on, which keywords have the least competition, what keywords your competitors are using and the total number of hits per day on your keywords will help you choose the right domain.

Oh and there is one other issue in all of this that you need to consider, is the domain with the keywords you have chosen still available?

Look the bottom line is that you want to build sites that are relevant and bring value to your customers and also to the search engines. If your websites do not do that then you will never be truly successful. All of the most successful websites in the world actually follow this credo.

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Why Populate Domain Names with Keywords

Why Populate Domain Names with Keywords

A proper domain name is essential to guiding traffic to your website. If your domain name seems entirely unrelated to the topic of your site, then it probably doesn’t draw the customer base that you desire. However, adding keywords to your domain name can be a driving force for search engines to top a list with your site for inquirers. Your position on the list of sites found based on a keyword search could be impacted severely by a domain name that does not incorporate the correct information.

Stay On Topic

The way to begin is to make sure that your website stays on topic. In other words, if you decide to sell nail polish, don’t get involved in pages and pages of information on nail files. Staying on topic will help you pick out the true keywords that will draw people to your website successfully. If you trick yourself into believing that “nail files” is an important keyword for your site, then you are misguiding potential visitors of your site. Staying on subject keeps every other step simpler.

Narrow the Field

While your site may have several relevant keywords with which to populate the domain name, you’ll want to narrow down the subject severely. You don’t want a domain name that goes on for miles because people can’t remember it. If you are selling nail care products, don’t try to include every product in the domain name. Try to consolidate. Either use the one or two most prominent products in the name or find a way to state your topic in general. Use “nail care” or “fingernails” in your domain name to suggest all products. Or, if you are focused on specialized grooming products for the nails, use “nail grooming”.

Be Unique but Simple

A domain name populated with keywords doesn’t have to be fancy. It simply needs to get the point of the website across in a somewhat unique way. If you are publishing a site about various grooming techniques or types of manicures for nails, you could use something cute like “fingernail tips”. If you are providing a service, you should include the location of your business, especially if the service is to be local and not an internet provision. If you live in Florida, you don’t want someone calling from Oregon expecting service the next day.

It is good practice to review other domain names regarding the same topic as you intend to include on your website so that you can get an idea of how others have attracted attention in the past, as well as what domain names are already taken so you can stay away from those and any others that are too similar. Start by searching the keyword or keywords with which you’d like to populate your domain name; this will return several sites that have already accomplished this. One of these sites may give you the best idea for your own site, and you’ll be ready to get started.

Keith Mallinson is a software publisher who helps web master automate their portal building business. Visit his site at http://www.subdomainwizard.com where you can get unlimited domain names for $97

What is an Expired Domain Name Drop Registrar?

What is an Expired Domain Name Drop Registrar?

Once a domain expires one of two things will happen. Firstly the domain will expire and become available to register as a domain name through the normal registration process. If the domain has any value then it is likely to be picked up by a name drop registrar.

Before we go deeper into the world of dropped names you may want to know what an expired domain name is and how you go about getting hold of an expired domain name.

You may have noticed that your registrar offers a back ordering service. A Back order service allows you to pay your domain registrar to try and acquire a specific domain name once it expires.

There are drop registrars whose sole purpose is to try and register a domain name once it has dropped. These expired domain name catchers work on behalf of individuals and other domain registrars to acquire domain names on their behalf.

expired domains are a big business as webmasters and large corporations try to grab as many valuable domains as they drop. The reason for this virtual land grab is that many domain names can fetch high resale prices on the open market or have valuable existing traffic or type in traffic potential.

Find out more about Domains names at http://www.NameSearchDomain.com.

Your Domain Can be Stolen

Your Domain Can be Stolen

Believe it or not, even thieves are already high-tech these days. Browsing the net and reading through online forums, I came across a startling story about how thieves have found their way to infiltrate the world wide web. I read about a lady who was planning to put up a web page of her own. As the normal process dictates, she first thought of a domain name for her website. She chose her own name and had it checked in CNet domain Search page for domain registrations and found out that it is very much available. A couple of days later, she checked it again and was shocked to discover that her name is already taken. She found out that her name is already a domain name registered to a firm with the name Chesterton Holdings.

The helpless lady brought the matter to the attention of Larry Seltzer, a columnist of eweek.com and a staunch critic of cyber crimes. Larry Seltzer investigated the matter himself. He checked the website whose domain name is that of the lady's. He immediately came to a conclusion that firm who "owns" the website and its domain name is a domain squatter, one among many domain squatters scattered all over cyberspace. Seltzer saw that the website is full of advertisements all domain squatters are associated with. He even claimed that the advertisements were syndicated through information.com. In Seltzer's column in eweek.com, he followed the next events regarding the theft of the lady's domain name. He reported that after a number of days, Chesterton, the bogus owner, has already let go of the stolen domain. He said this could have been prompted by the low hits or very few visits the site had. Apparently, silly domain squatters do not stay long in a domain, which is not lucrative for them. Squatters are somehow wise, at least in that sense.

The question that was immediately formed in my mind that Mr. Seltzer also posted, is how in the world was Chesterton able to register someone else's name to be its domain name? Moreover, why was the squatter allowed or given the permission to have ownership of a domain that is obviously not theirs? Anyway, I think my questions are unanswerable as of the moment. Even big companies and other established domain owners cannot exactly explain how domain theft is being successfully done. I bet you have also heard of the stealing of panex.com's domain. Well, if you have not, the bottom line is that even the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers (ICANN), whose mandate is to police the world wide web, failed to fully account the culprit behind the theft.

Curious about how rampant domain theft is, I made a little cyber investigation and probed on my own. I logged on to search.com, a property of CNet domain, and searched for the availability of my own name. I guess you've already guessed the result. Yes, my own name is already a registered domain name. With whom is it registered? Bingo! It is with Chesterton Holdings. My possible domain is already stolen. But I am confident the squatter will leave sooner than I think. My name is unpopular nor does it sound good to generate thousands of hits and visits. There is no way that notorious domain thief can make profit out of my unpopular name.

Though my stolen (domain) name is not much of a big fuss for me or for others, domain theft is an issue of great concern for other web owners. It is alarming that theft incidence can happen so easily and victims cannot do anything to account for the theft done.

Who is behind this syndicated theft? I do not think we can answer right now. Who is to be blamed for the proliferation of cyber thieves? We can go on pointing fingers but still not quell domain theft. I guess the only question we can answer as of now is who is already registered in a particular domain and who is not -- thanks to whois, a *querying database*. Whois is a transmission control protocol(TCP)-based query or a response protocol. It is utilized to identify the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the internet. But then, it is also very probable that domain squatters are using whois to know which domain, in the form of people's real names, can they squat in.

domain theft and squatting is really a complex and alarming matter. This issue is a concern for current domain owners but more so to those planning to put up a website. This issue is most especially pertinent to those who are planning to put up an online business and use a website for marketing. I guess the best that people can do is to seek only the services of trusted web servers and hosts for domain registrations to ensure the security of their domain.

For more valuable information on domain registration, affiliate program(s), please visit http://www.businessanalyst.com