My AdSense Guide

A good quality hosting partner will provide sufficient resources to provide all users with suitable web space, bandwidth, reliability, security, technical support and the latest available technologies. A poor quality hosting partner will offer a cheap rate to entice you to sign up with them and will then proceed to cram as many websites as possible onto each single server and not provide sufficient equipment and technical expertise. This results in constant reliability and performance issues.

Geographic targeting is also a key element when choosing your hosting partner as the location of your hosting partner is a vital clue used by the major search engines to determine the target market of your website. If the target market of a website is the United States then it is of critical importance that the website is hosted in the United States. Similarly if the target market is India then the website must be hosted in India.

Another important aspect is the IP address of your website and more importantly, if there are other websites sharing your IP address that have been blacklisted by the major search engines they could also have a negative impact on how your website will be viewed. A dedicated hosting plan can be expensive and only necessary for a hugely successful website. However, a dedicated IP address on your shared hosting account can be an effective tool for you to convince the search engines of your website’s validity and character.

Finally consider the technologies supported by your hosting partner and the website building tools they will provide you with. As standard you can expect to be provided with access to the latest versions of PHP, MySQL databases, FTP clients, blogging software, ecommerce solutions, .htaccess access and visitor statistics as a minimum. If these technologies are not available then you should consider searching for alternative hosting partner that will provide better value services for your money.

The bottom line is that selecting a reputable hosting partner should amount to more than a comparison of prices and selection of the cheapest option. Consult with business acquaintances to find reputable hosting companies and consult local technology forums for further insight.

When speaking with perspective hosting partners ask lots of questions such as the technology they support, well known websites they already host, what level of support they provide as standard. While researching a couple of different hosting options can be time consuming it is a worthwhile exercise and will ensure you get your website implementation and promotion off to the best possible start.

Your choice of domain name cannot be overstated and is one of the most essential elements of building a successful website and managing a successful SEO campaign. By choosing the right domain you are automatically creating company and brand awareness online and boosting the likelihood of remembrance amongst your online visitors. Elements to consider when choosing your domain name:

1. Unique Domain Name - choose a unique website domain to avoid have your website confused with existing websites or existing companies or brands.
2. Include Keywords if Possible - have the top keywords for your domain to hand when choosing the domain. These keywords can be paired with prefixes and suffixes to create a high quality domain name and enable visitors to instantly identify what your website offers. For example if your business offers computer services in New York then the domain name www.newyorkcomputerservices.com is a great domain name.
3. .com .com .com – . com is the most widely used domain extension and is (generally) automatically expected by online users. The only time to avoid a .com domain is if your website is restricted to a country and the country extension such as .co.uk (United Kingdom) or .au (Australia) or .ie (Ireland) can be used. Even in such instances it is recommended to register the .com name also so as not to restrict possible future online growth and expansion.
4. Easy to Spell – ensure your domain is easy to spell to ensure visitors can find your site where they expect to find it.
5. Easy to Remember – the easier your domain name is to remember the higher the likelihood of visitors returned directly and also promoting your website to others. Sounds obvious but is often ignored!
6. Easy to Type – how many times have you mistakenly typed www.gooogle.com or www.googe.com instead of www.google.com? Avoid commonly mistyped letters such as “q”, “x” and “c” where possible to ensure visitors can find you as easily as possible.
7. The Shorter the Better – the shorter the domain name the better it looks and is easier to remember, spell and type.
8. Exclude Hyphens or Numbers -hyphens and numbers make a domain harder to remember, harder to type and expose a greater risk to visitors getting lost when trying to find your website. On top of this they just look plain ugly!

Consider all elements and then choose the domain name you are most comfortable with based on the domains available.

All the major search engine operate in a similar manner so to master search engine optimisation it is good to understand how the search engines work and how they determine the order of websites in SERPs.  Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information;

1. Crawling the Web
   Search engines run automated programs, called “spiders” that use the link structure of the web to crawl the web pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.
2. Indexing Documents
   Once a page has been crawled, it’s contents can be “indexed” – this means they are stored in a huge database where they can be analysed in a minute fraction of a second.
3. Processing Queries
   When a user enter a search term into a search engine (performed hundreds of millions of times each day), the search engine retrieves all documents from its index that match the search term.
4. Ranking Results
   Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the search term, the engine’s algorithm (a complex mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

Although a search engine’s operations are not particularly lengthy, systems like Google, Yahoo, Bing and MSN are among the most complex, processing-intensive computers in the world, managing millions of calculations each second and funneling demands for information to an enormous group of users.

Getting visitors to your website is the most difficult aspect of website design to achieve. Once you have completed this step follow our guidelines to ensure this hard earned visit is not in vain and the user will not leave your site quickly:

1. Fix Broken Links and Errors – use an online service to ensure all linked pages are active and error free. Your website should always be free from spelling mistakes, broken links, navigation problems and any other problems that irritate and annoy users. http://www.linkalarm.com/ offers a reporting services where you can schedule an automatic check for broken links while http://validator.w3.org/ offers html and css code validity checks.
2. Review your Website in all Browsers – different web browsers such as Internet Explorer and FireFox treat web pages differently so what looks good in one browser may not look good in another. Ensure your website looks as you expect it in all the major browsers – http://www.NetMechanic.com/ offers a great tool for previewing your website in all the major Internet browsers in one go.
3. Include a Contact Web-form – include a web-form on your website where users can contact you easily on-site.
4. Include your Company Message – always include you company message or slogan beside the company logo. This will ensure visitors are actively aware of the products or services you are offering and not just the company name.
5. Include a Guarantee and a Privacy Statement – a guarantee and privacy statement will help users feel more secure as it takes away an element of risk and helps establish the credibility of the website. This is particularly important for e-commerce websites.

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