5 Common Web Site Mistakes

Mistakes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you can learn from other people’s mistakes it can save you from having to deal with them yourself. When it comes to web hosting, there are basically two kinds of mistakes - technical and general business.

Technical mistakes usually come up because of a misunderstanding of the internet and how it actually works. The first mistake many people make when creating a website is to cram as much information, photographs, images, etc. on each page as possible.

This makes the site take longer to download, leading to many visitors just moving on and never actually looking at the site. It also makes it more difficult to find what they’re looking for if the page is unorganized.

Another common error is creating a web site that isn’t search engine friendly. If the search engines can’t determine what your site is about, they aren’t going to be able to send you people who are searching for what you offer.

A mistake that many people make when starting out is to choose a host solely based on price. This is obviously an important factor, especially in the beginning, but if you choose the cheapest host you may be limited in your scalability as the website grows in popularity and traffic.

On the business side of things, the most common mistake is trying to be everything to everyone. You should have a plan for your website - a purpose for its existence - and build according to that plan.

Choose your target market and stick with it. Advertise in places they would see. Market in ways that would be of interest to them. Resist the urge to branch out into other areas just because something catches your eye. A site that tries to do everything usually ends up achieving nothing.

Another common business mistake is following the competition’s lead. You’ll obviously want to keep an eye on them to see what they’re up to, but if you copy everything they do you’ll always be one step behind.

Use your creativity and come up with unique ways to stand out from the rest of the websites in your market.


About The Author John Lenaghan writes about web site hosting and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. For more helpful web hosting information visit http://www.hostingreport.org
Article reprinted with permission from http://www.ArticleCity.com/

3 Reasons to Secure Your Own Domain Name - Even if it means Buying Cheap Web Hosting Services

When starting an online business, you might be tempted to use one of those “free” web page hosting services. You should beware of these plans if you want to build a successful web business. Having your own domain name is extremely important - even if it means buying cheap web hosting services! Here are three solid reasons you should secure your own domain name.

1. Build Trust with Customers

When visitors arrive at your site, they want to know that your company is legitimate and that it is there to stay. With your own domain name you reveal that you are in it for the long haul. For the mere price of cheap web hosting through a virtual host, you can have your own domain name and site up and running for as little as $20 or less as an initial investment. Some low cost hosting packages are as low as $5 or $6 per month!

It’s well worth the investment to establish your own domain name and pay a small monthly fee for cheap web hosting. When you gain the trust of visitors, it’s much easier to turn them into paying customers.

2. Freedom in Your Web Design

With your own domain name, you have total freedom to design your site the way you want. Even virtual hosts that offer cheap web hosting will give you the freedom to use the type of web design that will work best for your business. If you need to use PHP in your web design, you can easily find a low cost web hosting package that offers PHP integration. If you need to add MySQL databases to your site, you can find web site hosting packages with this feature included.

Another reason you need freedom to design your site is so you can test different designs and presentations to see which gets the most response from your visitors. Even with cheap web hosting, you can test almost unlimited presentations any time you want!

3. Maximize Your Promotion Efforts

When you secure your own domain name, you have complete freedom in your promotions. Many search engines, directories and other promotional sites will frown at “free” hosted sites. When you use a free web page hosting service, your site pages are placed on a website along with many other types of businesses. The search engines will not recognize your site as being a unique entity. They might even lump your site into categories with other sites that are using the free service. This wounds your promotional efforts tremendously, and you end up wasting time and money.

You’ll actually save money in the long run with your own domain hosting. By securing a domain name and taking advantage of cheap web hosting, you can promote your site to the fullest.

Even with cheap web hosting packages, you can still receive a wealth of features and benefits such as email accounts, auto responders, PHP and MySQL capabilities, password protected directories and even reseller hosting opportunities.

Use these tips to start building your web business today!


About The Author
Chris Robertson is a published author of Majon International. Majon International is one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing and internet advertising companies on the web. Visit their main business resource web site at: http://www.majon.com To learn more about subjects like cheap web hosting please visit the web site at: http://www.avahost.net For more information and informative related articles and links about this subject matter and content, please visit Majon’s Internet directory: http://www.majon.com/directory/Internet      Article reprinted with permission from http://www.ArticleCity.com/

3 Options For Hosting Multiple Websites

The prices of domain name registration and web hosting have dropped to the point that it’s possible to own multiple websites without going broke. If you plan to operate multiple websites, here is some information on the different options available to you.

The first thing to consider when setting up multiple websites is whether or not to host them all with the same web hosting company. Many web hosts offer packages that let you set up multiple sites on a single account and almost all will let you set up multiple accounts, one for each site.

If you are happy with the hosting company you’re using for your existing website(s), one advantage of using them for another site is the fact that you know they offer good service and support.

They might also offer discounts for multiple sites, so your costs might be lower if you stay with them again.

On the other hand, if you choose a different host you’ll be able to compare the quality of another company with whomever you’re currently using. If you ever run into problems with them, you’ll have an alternative. It’s wise not to “put all your eggs in one basket” as the saying goes.

Another advantage of using a different host is that you’ll get a different IP address for each of your sites. If your sites are related to one another and you want to link them together, having different IP addresses can sometimes help your site rank higher in the search engines.

Links from other sites are one of the most important factors in getting your site ranked highly. If those links come from sites on the same IP address, it is a signal to the search engines that they are quite likely all owned by the same person, and they may discount the value of those links.

If you do choose to host all your sites with one company, there are essentially 3 choices - separate accounts for each site, a reseller account where they are all hosted or a dedicated server, again where they are all hosted.

Separate accounts are self-explanatory, so let’s look at reseller accounts. As a reseller, you are basically acting as an agent for the hosting company - a middleman between them and the end user.

The idea is that you can set up your own company offering web hosting that is ultimately hosted by the company. You don’t have to resell this hosting however - you can use the hosting services for your own websites, essentially “reselling” the hosting to yourself.

A reseller account is nice because all your websites are “under one roof” and you have a single point of contact for any technical problems.

Hosting on a dedicated server gives you complete control of the computer that is the web server. You can install any software you want, any operating system you want and you can allocate resources like memory and hard disk space however you want to divide it up between your sites.

The disadvantage of a dedicated server is that you are responsible for maintaining the server and sometimes even for the technical side of things. If you aren’t familiar with the technical side of running a web server, you may need to choose a managed dedicated server, where the hosting company looks after these issues.

Dedicated servers are, of course, more expensive than the other options, so unless your websites are well established, with a lot of traffic, they may not fit within your budget.


About The Author
John Lenaghan writes about web hosting and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. For more information, visit http://www.hostingreport.org
Article reprinted with permission from http://www.ArticleCity.com/