Moving to a Business Web Hosting Company - 5 Essential Steps

So you finally decided to change web hosts and kick that cheap web hosting company to the curb. Maybe you just got fed up with their mediocre service, slow connection times and shoddy customer service. Maybe you just felt invisible, or worse yet, like a needle in a haystack. Perhaps you need a web hosting company with Internet marketing expertise to help your online business grow. Whatever the reason, you decided it was time to switch to a real business class web hosting company!

So, now that you have decided to make the switch to a business web hosting company, what exactly do you need to do? Well, there are 3 steps that you need to follow if you’ve decided to make the move away from the cheap web hosting company.

1. Do your research: This time around, make absolutely sure that the new web hosting company you choose has everything that your online business needs to succeed. This includes personalized customer service, adequate expansion capabilities, and Internet Marketing expertise. Make sure that the business web hosting company that you choose really does value your business and they have the latest technology. You don’t want to find out that your new web hosting company is still conducting business as if it is 1970. Internet Business moves much too fast for that.

2. Back up your files: Do Not let your current web hosting company get wind of your intention to move to the business web hosting company before backing up all your files. You should have done backups as a matter of course anyway, not just for this occasion. In any case, you need to have copies of your content, database, scripts and any other files. If you let your old web hosting company know that you intend to move before you do this, you run the risk of having them “accidentally” lose your data or parking and locking your domain, all of this meaning extra headaches for you.

3. Use Both Hosts: have your site run on the two hosts for a short while. You need to do this to make sure that everything is running properly. Of course, if you are moving to a business web hosting company that really values you as a customer, you won’t need to do this, as they will walk you through the process.

4. Notify the cheap web hosting company: Yep, let them know that you are unhappy and leaving. Maybe if enough customers complain, the cheap web hosting companies will get the message. At this point, they’ll probably try to convince you to stay. Don’t give in to their last ditch efforts to retain your business. Ask yourself: why did they let it come to this point in the first place?

5. Move your DNS servers (nameservers): At this point, you’ll need to change your nameservers from the cheap web hosting company to the business web hosting company’s servers. Normally, DNS server changes take 24-48 to propagate (take effect).

If you’ve chosen your business web hosting company well, you can be assured that they are reliable, knowledgeable and will be able to assist you in growing your business. Better yet, you will know that they are primarily interested in helping your business succeed and will give you the advice that you need when you don’t have the answers yourself. Greg Cesar gets results. Find out how hundreds of webmasters and online business owners benefit from Greg’s web hosting and internet marketing knowledge by visiting this link: http://www.hostpartnerplus.com

About the author

Greg Cesar is a successful Internet marketer with over 10 years’ experience. He specializes in providing innovative internet marketing services that help business owners make more money online. To improve your online business immediately and work with someone who understands what it takes to make real money online, visit: http://www.hostpartnerplus.com

4 Customer Service Mistakes Companies Should Avoid Making

1) Being placed on hold endlessly. Don’t you just love it when you call a company and they place you on hold, leaving you to listen to their latest on-hold, recorded sales pitch, over and over again. Would you think it normal business practice for a retail store clerk to ask you to “wait a minute” while they disappeared into the back of the store for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes or longer? People do things over the phone that they would never do in person. It’s bad business either way to leave a customer hanging without at least coming back to let the customer know how much longer they’ll be holding.  

2) Getting rude with a customer. As the saying goes, even if the customer’s wrong, the customer’s always right. There’s never any reason to get rude with a customer. If a customer gets rude with you, let them blow off steam and remember that their behavior is not an attack directed against you personally. Always keep in mind that as long as you remain calm and in control, you can address the reason behind the customer’s anger.

3) Ignoring a problem. Ignoring a customer’s problem won’t make it go away. The same can be said of fixes that work for the company but not for the customer. Some customers have problems with a service or product that don’t fit comfortably into any category. Those are the problems that need special attention, not standard responses. Too many companies ignore this and try to use the “one size fits all” method of complaint resolution. companies have to realize that their policy must fit the customer’s needs, not the other way around.

4) making the customer jump through hoops for a refund or exchange. I recently had to return a product to a national bookstore chain. Before the clerk refunded me, she asked me for all sorts of personal information. I refused to give this information. I explained that I hadn’t given this information out when I made the original purchase, and didn’t see the purpose in giving it out to get my money refunded. After 15 minutes and a visit from the store manager, they finally relented and gave me my refund. The time spent waiting in line, plus the time spent to get my refund, added up to 20 minutes. This company wasted 20 minutes of a customer’s time, all in the effort to get information. If you have to disregard your customer’s time in order to gather a marketing profile, you’re defeating your long-term marketing goal, which is to retain a satisfied customer base that makes repeat purchases.

About The Author
 

russ mate is President of MateMedia, Inc.
www.matemediainc.com
sales@matemediainc.com
Your Partner on the Web
Toll free 1-877-309-7521
MateMedia offers the following services:
Web Hosting
Web Design & Development
Search Engine Optimization
Domain Name Registration
webmaster@matemediainc.com

301 Redirects and Search Engine Optimization

There are multiple reasons to redirect URLs. For one, your web pages may have moved but their old URLs may still live in users’ bookmarks or in search engine indexes. Without implementing some sort or redirection, that traffic would be lost to a 404 Error Page.  

On occasions, you may also want to register several extensions for your domain name: ‘mydomain.com‘, ‘mydomain.net‘ and ‘mydomain.org‘, and have ‘mydomain.net‘ and ‘mydomain.org‘ automatically redirect visitors to your site, hosted under ‘mydomain.com‘.

Furthermore, if your company sells several products, you may want to give each of them an individual domain name, and have it point to a specific subdirectory of your main site. For example, if you own a site called ‘businessvideos.com‘ that sells a product called ‘Marketing Made Easy’, you may want to set up a domain such as ‘marketingmadeeasy.com‘, and redirect it to subdirectory: www.businessvideos.com/marketingmadeeasy/.

There are several ways to redirect domains, however, most of them will get you in trouble with the search engines. The search engine friendly way to redirect URLs is to use what is know as a 301 redirect (you can see how Google and Yahoo! specifically endorse this kind of redirection). Here is my take about the different redirection methods and their implications on search engine optimization:

Meta-Refresh Javascript Redirect

You can redirect visitors by placing a snippet of javascript code within the HTML code of the page you want to redirect. With this method, you can specify the number of seconds before the visitor is automatically redirected to the new page. search engines don’t like this method, because of the potential for abuse: you could write an optimized page for a non-competitive search term, and then automatically redirect your unsuspecting visitor to whatever URL you want. For example, it could be relatively easy to write a page about english literature, have it indexed and highly ranked by the search engines, and then redirect your visitor to a casino or Viagra site. If search engines allowed this, users would quickly stop trusting them. That is why search engines penalize this practice, and why you should avoid it.

Parked Domains

You could register an additional domain name, park it, and make it point to the DNS servers of your main site’s hosting account, so that when somebody types the additional domain, they will be transported to your main site. However, this approach may lead to search engines listing the same content twice, one for your main domain, and one for your additional domain. In the past, unscrupulous webmasters would use multiple domains to spam search engines and directories, making them list the same pages hundreds of times under different domains. Even if your intentions are good, we don’t recommend this approach to redirecting your additional domains, since search engines may penalize your site for duplicate content.

302 and 301 Redirects

When a request for a page or URL is made by a browser, agent or spider, the web server where the page is hosted checks a file called ‘.htaccess’. This file contains instructions on how to handle specific requests and also plays a key role in security. The ‘.htaccess’ file can be modified so that it instructs browsers, agents or spiders that the page has either temporarily moved (302 redirect) or permanently moved (301 redirect). It is usually possible to implement this redirect without messing with the ‘.htaccess’ file directly, using your web host’s control panel instead.

>From a search engine perspective, 301 redirects are the only acceptable way to redirect URLs. In the case of moved pages, search engines will index only the new URL, but will transfer link popularity from the old URL to the new one so that search engine rankings are not affected. The same behavior occurs when additional domains are set to point to the main domain through a 301 redirect.

The URL Forwarding Feature

Most domain registrars offer a feature called URL Forwarding. With this feature, you can register a new domain, such as ‘mydomain.net‘, and have it point to mydomain.com (or to any other URL). The problem, however, is that registrars usually do this by implementing a 302 redirect (page moved temporarily). While Google handles 302 redirects very well, passing link popularity from the additional domain to the main one, other search engines don’t do this well, diluting link popularity by splitting it between the two domains, and negatively affecting rankings. Therefore, it is better not to use this method, and implement a 301 redirect instead.

Redirecting Old URLs

To ‘301 redirect’ an old URL to a new one, just go to your web host’s control panel, and choose the “Redirects” option. You can then set up the redirect by filling the blanks. You want to chose redirect option “Permanent” to implement a 301 redirect.

Redirecting additional domains

To 301 redirect an additional domain (like in the case of the .net or the .org version of your domain name), you have to set it up as an add-on domain with your web host (some hosts offer this option for free, and some others charge a small monthly fee per domain). If the additional domain was not registered with your web host, you will first have to go to your domain registrar and change the DNS (domain name servers) to the DNS of your web host (you may have to wait a couple of days before this change becomes functional). Once you’ve done this, go to your web host’s control panel, choose the “Add On Domains” option, and set up your add on domain as follows:

New Domain Name: additionaldomain.com (Do not put any http:// or www)

Username/directory/subdomain: additionaldomain (Enter ‘additionaldomain’ by itself. Do not put any ‘.com’ or ‘www’)

Password: 123ABC (Enter whatever password you want).

Then, set up the redirection by filling the appropriate box with the URL of the landing page (where you want your traffic to go).

Once your additional domain is redirecting to your landing page, take this one last step to see if everything is working fine: go to a server header checking tool, type your add-on domain in the query box and hit enter. If you get a message similar to this: “Status Code HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”, then your 301 redirect is working.

You can also use 301 redirection for common mispelled versions of your domain name, or for other good domain names that you don’t want your competitors to get.

About The Author
 

mario sanchez publishes The internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an internet marketing content site packed with useful articles and resources, and SEO Tutorial (http://www.seotutorial.info) where you can learn the basics of search engine optimization in four easy steps.

3 Mistakes to Avoid While Choosing a Web Host

choosing a web host is the first vital step you’ll take
toward having your own website. Your web host
will provide space on the Internet for your site so
that the whole world can view it. But, choosing a
web host is not as easy as it may seem.There are a few mistakes to avoid while choosing
your host. I’d like to share these with you below,
and explain why it’s important to avoid these
mistakes at all costs - especially if you wish to
start an online business.

17 Mistakes Professionals Make with Their Blogs

Are you getting results from your business blog? Is it getting harder for you to spend time on your blog because you’re just not seeing how it is going to pay off? If so, you’re not alone. Hundreds of blogs are started each day and many of them are abandoned after several months because it takes time and energy to keep a good business blog going.

Copyright Denise Wakeman & Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. - http://www.fixmyblog.com

Related Keywords:
1, mistakes, professionals, blogs, denise, wakeman, pats, krakoff, psy., marketing, free, articles, articles, authors, credit, reporting, free, reports

15 Brand New Free Websites On Building, Running And Advertising A Succesful Internet Business!

Did you know there are 15 brand new websites that offer over 8,000 free articles on Making a Living Online There is! Check out this new resource on MAKING MONEY ONLINE! Over 8,000 free Articles! The sites have great cutting edge information by many of the webs top marketers, publishers and experts who share tips, tools and tactics on running profitable internet Businesses!!

About The Author:
mark davies the owner of http://bestinternetbusinessesreview.com the #1 site for reviews of internet BUSINESSES THAT REALLY MAKE MONEY. The site can be found at http://freeinternetmarketingarticles.org mark davies has been reviewing internet businesses for over 5 years and has over 8 years of experience selling and marketing products on the Net

How To Choose The Best Web Host…For You

Web Hosting is a service. Auto mechanics also provide a service. How would you decide which mechanic is best for you? Price? Experience? Reliability? This is the same line of thinking that should go into deciding which company should host your website.

It is very common to see choices centered around price, especially with so much competition in the hosting business. It is not uncommon to see hosting plans range from free to upwards of $50 per month. However, if you happened to see a sign on the street that said “$2 mechanic inside” you would probably drive right by, right? How good could a “$2 mechanic” possibly be? Why would a mechanic with skill and experience charge next to nothing for their service? Certainly, it is worth paying a mechanic. You don’t want to be overcharged, but you do realize an experienced mechanic has value.

This example is very similar to the hosting world. Some may argue a car is more important than a website. Tell that to the bed and breakfast owner who does 90% of their booking via their online reservation system. If your business depends on a website to either completely drive or supplement sales, you know how important a website can be.

When it comes to choosing a host, there are not enough choices centered around experience and reliability. These are the foundations for any good company. A mechanic who has worked on cars for 10 years is going to be more familar with his trade than a mechanic who only has 2 years experience. If you were deciding on a mechanic, wouldn’t you lean towards the one who has worked on cars for a longer period of time and perhaps comes on a good recommendation?

Okay, enough talk about cars, let’s talk hosting. When you are looking for a company to provide the service of web hosting, try placing price aside for a moment. First, look for a company that has been in businesss for a number of years. Any host that has been around for over 5 years is probably doing something right. That’s not to say a host of 2 years can’t help you, but at least begin your search with the most experienced.

After you’ve found a few candidates, write down about 10 questions you would like to ask your future host. Even if you know the answers to some questions, that’s okay. The reason for the questions is to see how long it takes to get answers and the quality of those answers. If you don’t like what you see, scratch them off your list because that is exactly the type of response you will get when a support issue arises.

Try to get the web addresses of 4 or 5 sites they host and visit over a period of a week or so and see if you notice any downtime or blatant sluggishness. You may even want to email the owners of these sites and ask what they think of their host.

This may seem like alot of work just to decide on a host for your website. It’s certainly more involved than simply looking for the cheapest price. When you only look at price you overlook some essential factors, such as experience and reliability. If your website is important to you or your business, you will come to rely on that experience which translates into quality service.

About the author

Anthony Vita has been helping businesses and individuals get an online presence ever since starting his own successful web hosting business, Web Feat, Inc., in 1997. Contact him at http://www.webfeathost.com

11 Quick Tips To Drive More Return Traffic To Your Business Website

Sometimes you need a kick start to get of the ground when promoting your new business website. Use these 11 tips to get started. A combination of several tips will most likely guarantee return visitors on your website. return visitors most likely mean more sales.  

1. Build a solid business foundation before starting. Create a business plan (this should be document revisited every quarter), marketing plan, client profile, and a site map for your web site.

2. Be very consistent. Brand your company and stick to it.

3. Create acceptable and easy to understand policies the build trust: Customer Service, Code of Ethics and a Privacy Policy.

4. Network locally to bring people to your site. Start with the local chamber of commerce as an example.

5. Place your website’s URL address on all your printed business literature — business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, invoices, ads, etc.!

6. Offer added values that are related to your business and the ideal client (target group). A solid resource database helping clients getting most out of your services could be a good start. Maybe offer products. A FTP software for a web hosting client makes perfect sense as they can use it to conveniently upload their files to the hosting web server.

7. Add a “Recommend This Site to a friend” script on your site. If someone visits your site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will email the page’s link to the recipient. Easy access to a tool like this could increase ‘word of mouth’ advertising.

8. Setup monthly chats about related topics or install bulletin boards (forums) to build a relationships and community. This will attach customers to your business. Invite industry specific folks to a chat so that they can answer customer questions. This is a perk nobody can resist.

9. Teach classes in colleges or schools or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products and services. Students suddenly turn into customers and/or spread the word ….

10. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site. As a web host you could have contest for who has the best web design on your servers. People like to show off. Use this behavior to attract new clients.

11. Participate in online forums as an expert. Do not SPAM the forums with your advertising messages. Use the signature to quietly promote your services. Once people see you as a valuable member with lots of information and start trusting you, they will start trusting you their business.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author’s resource box is provided)

About The Author
 

christoph puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

A Short Guide to Affordable Web Hosting

For individuals & businesses, choosing an affordable web hosting plan on a limited budget is a challenge. The main reason for this is that most hosting companies focus on the higher-end corporate market and often overlook the small office/home office (SOHO) bus segment. However, finding reliable web hosting isn’t exactly a cakewalk, but it can be relatively easy if you follow these simple steps: define your requirements; user review survey; create a short list of potential web hosting service providers and ask questions.

Define your requirements: *How much disk space and bandwidth is necessary? *Type of hosting - dedicated or private? *Will you require CGI or database capacities? *What operating system will you need? *Will your website have any streaming media requirements? *Will your site change substantially in the future? *Are you searching for hosting only for your purposes or for clients? User Review Survey: *Always take testimonials at face value. User forums are the best place to find the truth. Also mail webmasters to get a reality checks. *Be wary of Web hosting directories and mailing lists, many are owned & operated by Web hosts. *Read the declarations regarding service uptime, downtime, backup, security etc. Create a shortlist: *Make a list of hosts that you see are recommended the most and complained about the least. *Determine which hosts offer specific services that you need, with scalability for future changes. *Determine which host fits your price range. Ask questions: *Ask mundane questions to check the quality, speed & efficacy of their response. *Ask the service providers technical questions to gauge their acumen, knowledge and accuracy. *Ask a lot of question to determine the host’s commitment to customers. *Subject host to an honesty test: offer them the opportunity to up sell you needlessly. (simple yet effective) The Tricks of the Trade SOHO consumers can find the most effective hosting services for their business if they follow and understand the following recommendations: *Make sure the hosting company offers 24/7/365 technical support by phone, email and chat. *Do not be seduced by hosts offering cheap services or extra services than you need. Most of them skimp on security & support.

*Choose a host who is flexible, scalable, and who can grow with your business. *Ensure that you can add domains to a core plan and resell services. *Ensure that the host offers a knowledge base of scripts, online marketing effective coding. (A surefire way to check their scale of operations) *Check to ensure that the host offers some level of interaction. *Watch for signs of rudeness, impatience and unresponsiveness. *Do not sign a long-term contact for hosting services right away. *If you have more than one site, consider spreading them among several hosts. For a small web business start-up, choosing the right ecommerce hosting at the right time can be the best strategic move. It can enable your business to grow fast and offer you a high ROI. Reliable and affordable web hosting can be the crucial factor between failure & success.

About the author

The author has done his masters in computer science and presently he is assisting serverplex.com. For more information please visit us at www.serverplex.com

Simple Steps For Choosing A Great Web Host

There are thousands of web hosts around today with thousands of plans to choose from making what was once a simple procedure seem like a daunting task for both newbie and pro alike.

Whether you’re looking for your first host or looking to move on to a better one there are 7 simple steps you must follow to succeed in choosing a great host.

1. Platform The first and most crucial step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows.

Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.

2. Features Once you’ve chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you’ll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story.

Only you can determine the specific features you’ll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:

Disk Space Bandwidth Backups Uptime Money Back Guarantee Domains Allowed Databases (Number & type) CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI Cron Email accounts

The list goes on and on, just remember to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.

3. Cost Often this is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.

I can’t stress enough that choosing a web host based on price alone is asking for trouble, remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee.

Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it’s really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.

4. Customer Service Customer service is another aspect that is often forgotten about until it is too late, something breaks and you need it fixed and those wonderfully handy sales people who were more than helpful in taking your money are now nowhere to be seen, all the while you’re losing out on sales every minute.

You shouldn’t settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it’s no good if your hosting company doesn’t work during the holidays. Don’t take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.

5. Support An extensive knowledge base or faq can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service support and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.

Are questions in the knowledge base answered thoroughly? Are real solutions provided or are they just “cut and paste” replies?

6. Longevity Do a whois on the web host’s domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won’t be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn’t something you should be taking a chance on.

7. Uptime It’s a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn’t get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.

99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents.

About the author

Kyle Tully is the Founder of Web Host Critique | Web Host Review