With all the messages they can post in the Dashboard, wouldn´t you think they could have made sure everyone knew about this before it happened?

There are a few important questions that you must ask your web-hosting service provider before you sign up. Normally, the first question people ask is about the cost involved. Though it is an important factor that will help you make your decision, cost should not be treated as the primary factor. There are other crucial factors that need to be addressed.

You must first ask your web host about their average server uptime. Most of the hosting service providers advertise 99.9% uptime, but, in reality, it may not be so. There are a number of server related problems that can keep the visitors off from your website.

Second, you must ask your web host about the connection speed. You must have fast connections to give your website users an enhanced visitor experience. If the connections are slow, your website will take a long time to load and server connection will get disconnected before people can see your website, leading to annoying “The page cannot be displayed error.”

Third, you must know how much web space you get for the package you are signing up for. Most web hosts offer flexible packages. You should be able to advise your web host on the web space depending on the nature of your requirements. There are web hosting packages that range from 10mb or less to several GBs. The greater the space the greater the price.

Along with the allotted web space, you must also be clear about the data transfer bandwidth that is allowed for your package. If you anticipate high traffic, it is better to go with packages that have higher bandwidth capabilities.

The next question will be on the number of email addresses you can configure. There are many web hosting companies that offer unlimited email addresses. If you choose a lower end package, the number of email addresses may be limited to 5 or 10 or 25, depending on the web-hosting package you choose.

You must also be clear about the nature of the database tools that are available and the database types supported by your web-hosting service provider.

If your website is intended to sell your products online, it is important that you have a reliable shopping cart. Make sure you check with your web host whether you have any built-in shopping carts installed and the procedure to customize them to your specific need.

With the advent of the open source technology, web hosting service providers offer a number of free yet useful scripts for their customers bundled with the web hosting package. Check with your web host on the available free scripts, such as forums, blogs, chat support, web statistic tools, etc.

The control panel should be highly user friendly. Your list of questions to your web host must have a question about the control panel features.

Above all, the customer support capabilities of your web host and the turn-around time to resolve server related issues and other complaints is very crucial. To stand the competition, most web hosting service providers offer 24×7 customer support service to their clients. Make sure that your complaints will be addressed during weekends as well.

On the other hand, there are some websites which are very repulsive, boring or confusing. Some of these websites may have so many graphics or some have a very unappealing layout. These websites are not good for a business.

Your website makes or breaks your online business. A good and professionally designed website will bring you a lot of customers and sales and make your online business.

What are the factors that make a website uninteresting, dull and ineffective at creating you sales?

· Too many, and hard to load graphics. For many people websites with graphics that sing and dance are just annoying and unprofessional. These graphics do not add much to your website in terms of search engine rankings or user-friendliness, and are not therefore useful for your online business. What you need most on your website is unique, relevant and high quality content. A sleek layout that makes it clear and easy how to navigate the website is essential for your online business.

· Confusing websites. You know these websites – you visit them and you just can not tell what is on offer! The layout is not efficient, and you can not easily navigate the site. For some websites, the website name, URL and blog names do not reflect the website’s focus. These websites can also have a lot of products and services on offer that are not focused. Make sure that your website, as well as services and products you offer are as focused as possible. If you want to offer a range of products in your online business and want to sell them from one website; make sure that they are related and be creative in the way you present them on your website.

· A look-alike template that is mirrored off another website. Be original and creative. There are a lot of these ‘website in a box’ offers; although they make things easy for you since you get a ready-to-go website for your online business – they are not good for your business in the long term. Online customers do not want to see exactly the same website layout over and over. It is highly recommended that you hire someone to tweak and adjust your template to personalize it and make it your own. Personalize your online business’ website and be different!

· A website that lacks any ‘benefits’ to prospects. The internet is supposed to be full of useful and helpful information. Although you are selling your online business’ services or products mainly, your website must also offer the reader high quality unique information. Also, if you offer an e-zine or e-course on your website, it must also offer some useful information. It is also recommended that you get creative and offer many other ‘stuff’ that relates to your website. The idea is to make visitors want to bookmark your website and want to come back again. This is very important for your online business.

· Ineffective use of keywords and phrases. This is essential for your visibility on search engines. Make sure that your website is well optimized.

Your website is very important. Make sure that all the links are functional. Your website must be informative and easy to navigate. You must also offer various ways for payment processing for your customers.

It pays to hire someone to design or tweak your website for you. Avoid the mistakes listed above and have your website making money for you 24/7.

WordPress is such a versatile platform to use when designing a website – it can be a blog site, static site or ecommerce site.  When a client is looking for a fast solution to getting his business online I alway recommend WordPress.  The ease of updating is a big plus for my clients – I can hand the site over and they can take full control and feel comfortable updating their site whenever they need to.

There are several elements to optimizing a web site including keywords, backlinks, one way links and raising the popularity of the site. SEO is an ongoing endeavor with the bulk of the work concentrated in the first 3 months, and an ongoing campaign of updating and improvements to maintain a top position in the search engines.

Related Blogs

Your domain name should contain the most important keywords that are associated with your website. Think about what words people might use to search for your website or product.

Your domain name should be a .com name if at all possible. The .com extension is the first one that people think of when they can’t quite remember the name of a website.

The most used domain extensions are .com and .net. Other domain extensions can be used for indicating the country that a domain is located in, such as .uk for United Kingdom or .dk for Denmark. Other domain extensions include .tv and .moab. You may want to register your domain under more than one extension to protect it from people who want to “copycat” your website and get traffic from your efforts.

You can have your domain name be the same as your company name if you aren’t especially worried about getting traffic from search engines. If your company is a public service or non-profit company, it might be easier to find a .org domain name.

If the domain name that you want has already been registered, you can contact the person it is registered to and ask him if he’ll sell it to you. He may surprise you with a “yes.” You could also add a prefix to the domain name, such as the, my or your…if it makes sense.

Keep your domain name as short as possible. Long domain names make them more difficult to remember. It’s also more difficult to use long domain names in advertising campaigns. On the other hand, don’t abbreviate the name to the point that it’s unrecognizable.

There are opposing views about hyphenated domain names. I always try to get a non-hyphenated domain first. Then, if it’s not available, I get the one with hyphens. I’ve also heard that Google recognizes hyphenated domains better, but I don’t know if that is really true. It would be a good topic to research!

When you have decided on a final choice for your domain and you are ready to register it, there is one more thing you might want to think about. Privacy. When registering, you will be given the option of keeping your domain private. This means that your domain information (your name, your email address and your personal address) from appearing in Whois searches – and thus being available to anyone who wants it. Using private registration does help to lesson the spam going into your email box. This option does cost a bit more than registering a domain without privacy, but it may be worth it to you.

So, you see there is more to registering a domain name than you might think. Registering a domain name like MyPoopsie.com might look cute, but will it bring people to your site? Probably not. Choose a sensible domain name that relates to your website content. You’ll look a lot more professional.

Once you learn more about WordPress, you’ll understand why over 80 MILLION websites are built on WordPress, and why NOW is the time for you to learn what WordPress is all about too, and how it can provide immense value to your small business.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons why you should strongly consider WordPress for your website, regardless if you already have one or not.

1. Add Powerful Features with Thousands of Plugins

Forget spending $1,000′s on custom websites features when there are thousands of Plugins that can easily be installed and utilized instantly. Need a Calendar, there’s plugins for that. A shopping cart? A Contact Us form? A Image Gallery? Yep. If it’s a common feature, chances are you can find a plugin to use, most of them for free. If not, you can have custom features developed.

2. Focus on Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress gives you a big head start in the SEO race by providing the core features for you to implement your keyword strategy. You can use search-engine friendly URL’s, edit the META tags for each page, and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. In addition, most theme designers take SEO very seriously and code their themes to strict SEO best practices.

3. Constant Development and Enhancement

Technology is progressing faster and faster, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are constantly being developed and released to take advantage of new technologies, to enhance existing features and security, and to develop new, cutting-edge features that make managing your website easier.

4. Keep Your Website Safe and Secure

You invest a lot of time and resources in your website and you need to know it’s safe and secure. In addition to security being hardened in every release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep backups of all your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website in the worse of circumstances.

5. Never Outgrow Your Website

Your data, settings, and design files are completely separate from the core of WordPress. This makes it easy to upgrade any area of your site – whenever you want. And, since it’s open source, you can build features as complex as necessary. Once you build your website with WordPress, you’ll be able to grow your website to keep pace with your business, no matter how big your business grows.

However, although that is still a prime use for blogs, they are now also used for advertising and passing on information. Many use blogs as a type of article site, wherein there are no restrictions on their content or on the degree of advertising they include in the article body. If blogs are nothing but blatant adverts, however, they will tend to have very few subscribers.

Blogs can also allow comments to be posted by readers, although this is an option that not all bloggers allow. It is a good way to allow interaction on your website, and is something like a low key forum. However, blogs that allow this interaction tend to be more popular than those that do not, unless they are specifically known for their useful content.

There are two easy ways for the beginner to start blogging, and these are through Blogger and WordPress. Blogger belongs to Google, and strictly the content on your blogs on the Blogger site also belongs to Google. Blogger is not run from your own website, but from a site provided to you by Google, although you can provide a link from your website to your blog page. This, however, bleeds PageRank from your web page containing the link to your blog.

WordPress is a more advanced blogging option, and you can either have it hosted by WordPress, in the same way that Google hosts Blogger, or you can host your WordPress blog yourself. The latter is preferable because there are many WordPress plugins you can use to personalize or customize your blog. Once you get the hang of how WordPress works from your own website, then that is by far the better method. Links to your blog are then from one page of your site to another, and can be used as part of your internal linking strategy.

Blogs are used by many people to make money, and if you know how to use blogs for profit, then they can be a very good source of income. Some need no other since they make many thousands of dollars monthly only from their blogs. What is a blog to some is that it is their entire living. To reach that standard, however, you have a lot of learning to do, but it can be done. There are no secrets about blogs, and all it takes is the knowledge of how to use them and a bit of intelligence and common sense.

Another aspect of blogs that can be used to your advantage in marketing your website is Blog and Ping. This refers to the use of social bookmarking sites and others such as Technorati, where you can register your blog and ping them, or let them know when your blog content has been changed. Other such sites are del.icio.us. blinklist and spurl among others. There are techniques that can be used to help you get useful one-way links back to your website, and also exposure of your blog, and hence the adverts on it, to users of these very popular web2 sites.

So the answer to the question What is a Blog, is that it is a very useful means of communicating with others and a good way to keep your email list informed of new material on your website that could be useful to them. What are blogs used for? To market your site and your products, but also to keep people in touch with what is happening on your web site.

Use it right, and a blog can be the main tool you use to advertise your site, and you will no longer have to pay for advertising or other means of driving traffic to your site. A blog can do that job very well.

Related Blogs