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What You Need To Know About Business Website Hosting

Not all web hosting is created equal. This is especially true when there is a little bit more on the line than with a personal website or blog. When your business’s bottom line is on the line, then it’s time to ensure that your website hosting is up to par. Here is what you need to know about business website hosting.

Uptime

First, web hosting for your business needs to be redundant. 99.9% uptime is a fairly common promise in the hosting industry—but the key is to weed out the promises and make sure that the web hosting company is as serious about your business as you are. It might cost a little bit more than the $3.99 a month that the super discounted budget hosting companies sell their service for, but when it comes to your business, quality comes first.

Storage Space

This used to be much more of an issue than it is today—with proliferation of lots and lots of super-cheap hard drive storage technology, storing the files that make up your website—even up to the gigabytes—is not really that big of a deal for most web hosts. In fact, many web hosting companies even offer “unlimited” storage these days (of course, there’s always some fine print there…just in case).

Transfer

Most web hosts also used to keep a super strict eye on how much bandwidth your site was using (the amount and size of the files that your visitors download in the course of their use of your website). Again, this is becoming less and less of an issue even though most serious business hosts still don’t run completely unmetered accounts for their customers. What is more important than the huge transfer limits that usually apply these days (so big that you’ll probably never even come close to the limits) is the ability of your web host to keep up with a large “burst” of traffic—like what happens when your latest blog post hits the front page of Digg or with similar social media exposure explosions that can happen from time to time and put serious stress on your site’s hosting for the few hours that they do occur.

Other Considerations

When thinking about business web hosting, it’s also important to factor in other considerations too—like where your email hosting will reside, what kind of technical support is available, how secure the hosting company is, who’ll provide and manage your domain name, and so on. Also worth thinking about is the fact that most web designers don’t automatically “do” hosting as well—they can usually lead you in the right direction or help out as necessary, but not all are comfortable handling the hosting completely on your behalf.

WSpider does offer full-service, fully-featured business web hosting to our clients—please be sure to ask one of our knowledgeable reps for details at any time.

What You Need To Know About Business Website Hosting

Not all web hosting is created equal. This is especially true when there is a little bit more on the line than with a personal website or blog. When your business’s bottom line is on the line, then it’s time to ensure that your website hosting is up to par. Here is what you need to know about business website hosting.

Uptime

First, web hosting for your business needs to be redundant. 99.9% uptime is a fairly common promise in the hosting industry—but the key is to weed out the promises and make sure that the web hosting company is as serious about your business as you are. It might cost a little bit more than the $3.99 a month that the super discounted budget hosting companies sell their service for, but when it comes to your business, quality comes first.

Storage Space

This used to be much more of an issue than it is today—with proliferation of lots and lots of super-cheap hard drive storage technology, storing the files that make up your website—even up to the gigabytes—is not really that big of a deal for most web hosts. In fact, many web hosting companies even offer “unlimited” storage these days (of course, there’s always some fine print there…just in case).

Transfer

Most web hosts also used to keep a super strict eye on how much bandwidth your site was using (the amount and size of the files that your visitors download in the course of their use of your website). Again, this is becoming less and less of an issue even though most serious business hosts still don’t run completely unmetered accounts for their customers. What is more important than the huge transfer limits that usually apply these days (so big that you’ll probably never even come close to the limits) is the ability of your web host to keep up with a large “burst” of traffic—like what happens when your latest blog post hits the front page of Digg or with similar social media exposure explosions that can happen from time to time and put serious stress on your site’s hosting for the few hours that they do occur.

Other Considerations

When thinking about business web hosting, it’s also important to factor in other considerations too—like where your email hosting will reside, what kind of technical support is available, how secure the hosting company is, who’ll provide and manage your domain name, and so on. Also worth thinking about is the fact that most web designers don’t automatically “do” hosting as well—they can usually lead you in the right direction or help out as necessary, but not all are comfortable handling the hosting completely on your behalf.

WSpider does offer full-service, fully-featured business web hosting to our clients—please be sure to ask one of our knowledgeable reps for details at any time.

Buyer Beware: Look Out For These Search Engine Optimization Hoaxes

Plain and simple—there are a lot of search engine optimization hoaxes out there to be on the lookout for. Getting caught up in the idea that SEO is maybe a little bit easier than it actually is—this is a common pitfall for website owners who are simply eager to see some results and healthy improvement for their site. Let’s bring to light a few of the more common SEO scams; look out for these search engine optimization hoaxes…

SEO Hoax #1: Results Too Quickly

This one is definitely something you’ll want to be on the lookout for in all cases. Search engine optimization companies (and scam artists) frequently promise outlandishly attractive results in a time frame that is entirely too good to be true. Like overnight…it’s just not going to happen. Same goes for this week or probably even this month. We all know that true SEO results take at least 6 to 8 weeks before they begin to start rolling along respectably.

Don’t fall for unrealistic search engine optimization hoaxes that promise results way too quickly.

SEO Hoax #2: Number One Results

It’s not unrealistic or unreasonable to expect top search engine results for your most valuable targeted keyword phrases. As defined by our point above, it takes time—but it can definitely happen with patience and quality SEO techniques. But to expect number one positioning for all of your major keywords (or the most general competitive keyword phrases that you have) is probably a little bit naïve. After all, are you really going to beat out sites like Wikipedia and other incredibly established authority sites on the web for the most general, highly competitive phrases? It’s better to focus your efforts on slightly longer-tail (multi-word) keyword phrases that embrace your targeted visitors well.

Avoid search engine optimization hoaxes that promise results that are unachievable in the real world.

SEO Hoax #3: Random Spam Emails

You probably get a couple of these emails every week (or maybe even every day). They look real enough—saying something like, “Happened to visit your site the other day and our company can take it to number one in Google.” It’s possible, but not probable. Although these emails look legit enough, we’ve seen enough of them to determine that they’re almost always unsolicited spam from just a few disreputable SEO scammers out there. As with any spam emails, just click delete.

Watch out search engine optimization hoaxes that promise you’ll benefit from services that you didn’t ask for.

Need real unbiased advice on SEO and how to avoid falling for SEO hoaxes? If so, please feel free to give us a call here at WSpider at anytime. We always do our best to be above the line and provide accurate answers with complete honesty…even when it might not always be what exactly what you want to hear.  We like to look out for our customers :)

WSpider Web Marketing Combines Marketing With Cutting-Edge Technology

Traditionally, there has really just been one generalized approach to marketing on the web—and it comes from a viewpoint of single track traditional marketing. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with taking the tools and techniques that we’ve all learned from offline marketing and applying them to promote our websites…in fact, with some creative application of standard marketing techniques, great results can actually be appreciated online.

Applied technology makes the difference.

However, in addition to utilizing traditional marketing techniques to their fullest for a website, today’s tech-heavy web environment just requires more. Getting to the top is more demanding than ever before. This is where applying cutting-edge web marketing technology—right alongside standard marketing techniques—really makes a very noticeable difference in positive results.

Here at WSpider, applying this synergy is exactly our strategy.

Component One: Organic Search Engine Optimization. Naturally, one of the most cost-effective, results-producing marketing techniques online is organic SEO. It takes some time, effort, and expertise to get a great SEO campaign off the ground and on the path to success—but once implemented initially, the results (free targeted traffic from the search engines) are incredible. Consider the relatively minimal maintenance that is required to keep great organic SEO thriving for a website and the ROI is extremely attractive.

Component Two: Pay Per Click Marketing. Yes, using pay per click advertising is essential to reaching out to your online customers and bringing them to your site. When implemented with strategic expertise, PPC is highly niche-oriented—targeting and attracting true customers (and not just “tire kickers”). Of course, WSpider will help you get this based covered with authority…through our comprehensive PPC Management Program.

Synergy: Better Technology. Using our proprietary WSpider Internet Marketing Intelligence Center (IMIC), we can more effectively understand how the search engines actually work—measuring and interpreting their algorithms and applying this knowledge with precision to WSpider Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns that perfectly blend white-hat SEO with cost-effective PPC marketing. This is the synergy component. Custom built by some of the brightest web technologists in San Jose, IMIC synergizes and takes otherwise traditional web marketing techniques to an entire new plateau.

The bottom line is this—all web marketing techniques work well at some level. By all means, use them to the fullest. But combine them with total precision using cutting-edge technology like WSpider IMIC and brand new doors are opened for the first time.

Content Management Systems (CMS) Made Easy

Content management systems, usually referred to simply as CMS, are certainly nothing new. In one form or another, major companies and webmasters all around the world have used them for years and years. The thing is, you’re hearing more and more about CMS lately because the trend has caught on with all different types of websites—large and small alike.

Chances are, if you have given any thought to updating your website lately, you’ve probably asked yourself these questions:

· What is a Content Management System?

· What is a CMS used for?

· Why do I need this for my website?

Well, let’s take a look at each of these in detail.

What Is A Content Management System?

In a nutshell, it’s just a user-friendly way for you to enable authorized users to log in to your website via any internet connected computer (and some mobile devices too). Once logged in, the content of the website can be added, edited, and removed with a really simple interface. This interface, usually dubbed WYSIWYG (stands for “What You See Is What You Get”) very closely resembles most word processing and email editing software and works much the same as well.

What Is A CMS Used For?

Having a CMS built into your website enables full self-management of all of the site’s content (or in some cases, only specified portions of the content). The idea is that any user with the proper login credentials can make changes on the fly—just like writing an email or editing a Word document. Having the ability to add a new page or remove an old one is also a predominant feature of most CMS systems.

Why Do You Need A Content Management System For Your Website?

CMS finally puts you in control of your website’s content. This has multiple attractive benefits. The first one is speed—no longer do you need to rely on your web designer to handle each little update or change to your website’s content (and we all know with everyone’s busy schedules, this can sometimes take forever, especially when multiple changes are in order). So instead of waiting days or weeks for getting changes made on your site, they can be done in just minutes right from your own office or home office. And the best part, naturally, is the fact that you will no longer need to pay your web design company to make each and every little content change required.

And with this in mind, it’s pretty difficult not to love CMS…once installed for the first time, most find themselves asking how they ever managed to live without it. There are many different types of CMS, each designed to suit specific needs—would you like to discuss a few of the different possibilities with a web design expert? If so, please give us a call here at WSpider—we’ll be more than happy to go over all of the pros and cons of CMS with you and look at how it might work best with your unique situation.

5 Success Inducing Search Engine Optimization Hints & Tips

Looking for a few more good search engine optimization hints & tips? If so, you’re at the right place here on the WSpider blog. It’s always fun to share some insider SEO hints with our readers. Here are 5 success inducing search engine optimization hints for you:

SEO Hint #1: Seek More Natural Links.

Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away looking for links in all the wrong places. One such example is trying to work out reciprocal link exchanges—they’re often way more trouble than they’re worth. Instead, look for opportunities to place links to your sites from authoritative websites like your local business organization’s website or other similar authority sites. Your “batting average” will likely be much higher following this technique than sending out random link exchange requests.

SEO Hint #2: Determine & Use A Specific Keyword In Every Web Page.

For every page you produce on your website, for every blog post you create—this success-inducing search engine optimization hint works just the same. Build each piece of web content around just one specific primary keyword phrase. Use it wisely, but not overwhelmingly, throughout your writing for that post or web page. The focus will pay in dividends over the long haul.

SEO Hint #3: Avoid Search Spam Tactics At All Costs.

Even if it “seemed like a good idea at the time,” using any kind of search spam or black hat SEO tactics will cause lasting damage that has been known to survive even a complete change in attitude towards using organic white-hat SEO only. The test is asking yourself each time you’re about to implement a new SEO idea if it will benefit both your visitors and the search engine’s users alike. If the answer is no, forget the idea before it causes irreparable damage.

SEO Hint #4: Bring In Some Professional Help.

Ideally, outsourcing your website’s SEO to a qualified expert like WSpider will be one of the best decisions you can possibly make for your site’s success. But even if you just hire an SEO professional for a one-time consultation, having the opportunity to pick their brain and look for applicable success-inducing techniques that can work for your site can be invaluable.

SEO Hint #5: Use Your Keyword Phrase In A Title Tag On Every Page.

If there is just one idea that you take away from these search engine optimization hints & tips, it should be this one. Your title meta tag for each page is probably about the most critical piece of information on the page when it comes to SEO. It’s amazing how many people overlook this one and leave it blank. Hint: Perhaps they should have followed our SEO Hint #4 above :)

Anyway, hopefully these hints will help you find more success with your website. And be sure to stay tuned here on the blog for frequent tips, advice, and suggestions!

Whitespace Is The Key To Clean & Clear Websites

Something that you will learn right from the very early stages of any graphic design course is that too much is, well, just too much. You can go way over the top with your design—adding all of the “bells and whistles” you can possibly imagine; you can go on and on with your paragraphs full of ranting and raving; you can add dozens of images on each of your web pages.

Each of these techniques will indeed “add more stuff” to your site. They’ll also significantly detract from the usability, readability, and clarity of your website. And this is probably not something you’re after at all.

The Simple Whitespace Rules Of Thumb For Web Design

There are some really simple rules of thumb to using whitespace to your fullest advantage in website design:

• Ensure your headlines are clear, punchy, and easy to read.

• Keep all written paragraphs short and to the point. Use just 3 or 4 sentences per paragraph, tops.

• Use bullet points, numbers, and lists in your content to “white-space” out your written content and let it breathe.

• Use sub-headlines and images to break up long-winded text articles.

• Adjust your fonts and line spacing so they’re airy and spacey; this is much better than compact and cramped.

• Use light-colored backgrounds behind they body of your site’s content. Also, insist on dark, high contrast text on top of your background to make it easy to read. Both techniques improve the perception of whitespace.

• Add reasonable spacing margins between images and text components of your web pages. Give the eyes of your visitors someplace to catch and land.

• Break long content down into multiple pages. Never go on and on, and on and on, all on the same page—it’s too daunting and intimidating to readers.

• Study traditional media like magazines and newspapers and pay close attention to how they handle spacing and formatting—there’s lots to learn about whitespace from those who’ve been using it for decades.

These rules of thumb when it comes to whitespace and clear, clean formatting definitely go a long way towards improving the functionality of a website for sure. But for many first-time or do-it-yourself web designers, it might not make the most sense. Sometimes, the best option for the long run really is to bring in web design pros (like WSpider).

In the end, remember this one thing: Whitespace is the key to clean & clear websites. It works every time!