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Why host your site with Alexssa?
Good question! Probably the most important one that you can ask a host. What makes our services better than the next guy's? Alexssa has 99.9% server uptime. Our control panel allows you to have greater control over your hosting including adding and forwarding E-mail addresses, viewing site stats and Kanoodle - a way to advertise your website on search engines. We have redundant backup on all of our servers. We truly care that your site is up and running, that you are able to receive your E-mail properly, that the functionality and design of your site supports your business goal. We will not host adult or hate related websites. We understand how important your site is to you. After all, we make our living online too. How important is a reliable web host? Are your search engine rankings still yours? Other people might hijack your search engine rankings and they might steal your web site visitors. The worst thing is that you might not even notice it. Are you losing visitors without knowing it? Imagine your web site URL is listed in the search engine results on Google,Yahoo and MSN. Most people that click on your URL in the search engine results are sent to your web site. However, some people that click on your web site URL are sent to a totally unrelated web site that has nothing to do with your site. Although your web site URL is displayed in the browser, people see a totally different site that has nothing to do with you or your company. How do these hackers steal your visitors? The hackers exploit a flaw in the software of some domain name servers (DNS). The hackers send incorrect information to these DNS server so that the server redirects the traffic for the URLs to another site. If the DNS server does not validate that the information has come from an authoritative source it will send visitors to the wrong pages. That means that people who enter your URL in the web browser will be sent to the hacker's pages instead of your pages. How can you protect your web site? It's important that you use a reliable host that does not use an open DNS server. Go to www.dnsreport.com and enter the URL of your web site. You should see PASS in the Open DNS servers line. If your domain name fails the test, you should contact your web host. Using a secure DNS server is crucial if you don't want to expose your web site to hackers. If your web host cannot fix the DNS problems, you should use a new web host. Note that a secure DNS server only makes sure that no-one hijacks your search engine rankings. To get high search engine rankings, you must make sure that search engines can parse your web pages and that you have many inbound links that tell search engines that your web site is important. How to drive traffic with domain names Driving traffic to your website begins with the choosing of a domain name. Keeping it simple is incredibly important. Since people no longer have the time or energy to shop around, making your business domain name an easy destination is essential. When people are shopping online, in many cases they will type in the kind of business they are looking for into a web browser and hope that they come up with a match. How many times have you done this? A top level domain name has the ability to stick in the mind longer. Simplicity is better. Take for instance that your business sells gutters. Your company name is Mindel and Fractal. Your company would be better served by buying the domain name www.gutters.com than www.mindelandfractal.com. People who are shopping for gutters have an easier time remembering the URL www.gutters.com, and would have a better chance finding it again if they were trying to recreate it from memory. The second advantage is that people have the tendency to make unconscience decisions that long URLs are associated with free sites or those of lesser quality. First impressions are everything, and on the web, your domain name is the first impression they will get. Your domain name should also reflect the sites benefit to the consumer thereby further differentiating your company from the competition. For example examine the way these URLs effect your perception of the companies benefits: free-stuff.com, allergy-relief.com, and quick-recipes.com. Now compare those URLs with the URLs the companies would have if they had choosen their company names (according to the WHOis registry), harlanpartners.com, schering-plough.com, and akway-international.com respectively. It may also be a good idea to register variations of your domain name. An example of this would be neverlosedata.com and neverloosedata.com. A common spelling error typed into an address bar will still result in people being directed to the right website. Another example would be to register domain names that are your companies tag line. You can have the domain name directed to another URL, but the main reason for doing this would be to keep the domain name out of the competitions hands. Keep in mind that you must brand your website as effectively as you brand your product. In order for Internet users to find your Web site via a search engine, search engines must first know that your site exists. For this to happen, your Web site's content must initially be "scrubbed" - essentially added - to a search engine's database. This can occur in one of two ways. 1-a search engine scrubs your site on its own by automatically scanning the Internet for new content. 2- you manually submit your site to a search engine for it to scrub. While there are an increasing number of Web tools that claim to submit your site to many search engines at once for a small fee, an advertiser needs to be cautious with such tools, as there are many scams an ineffective strategies out there. For example, some tools offer to submit a Web site to over 100 search engines; however, it is dubious that there are that many search engines actually worth your time - and money. We suggest instead that advertisers submit their data only to the most powerful an defective players in search engine space, namely; MSN, Yahoo!, Google, and Ask. In addition, we advise that advertisers submit their Web sites in industry specific search engines, directories, business listings, indexes, trade groups, and those sites belonging to other organization tracking bodies that are more directly related to their businesses. Search engines grade every Web sit that they search. This grade determines how high, or prominently, the Web site will appear in future search results. Each search engine possesses its own algorithm for grading Web sites, but particular strategies can markedly improve the grade Web sites are assigned. The process of making adjustments to a Web site's content and its links so that the site receives higher standing in search results is referred to as Search Engine Optimization. Activities designed to elevate a Web site's standing in search results include: Using the title, description, keyword, and other meta tags; creating headers; avoiding placing text within images; creating navigation structures that search engines can read; properly naming links; avoiding flash demos up front; avoiding frames; reducing clutter; avoiding dynamic pages that search engines cannot find; adding convincing content. Search engine marketing refers to the purchasing of premium listings based on keywords that Internet users search for in a search engine. Advertisers often "bid" for these words, and prices rise depending on the volume of biders. Selecting the most valuable keywords is essential to yielding positive search engine results, and advertisers should experiment often with different keywords. One popular strategy for smaller companies is to bid on "local" or "specialized" terms that are not overly general, as general keywords are often purchased by larger firms. Advertisers pay per click through; prices can range from five cents to $100 per click, depending on the competitiveness of the particular industry. Advertisers should be wary of companies that make unrealistic claims regarding their tools, and it should also be noted that experimentation is the key in this business. Ultimately, advertisers need to figure out their own unique strategies in this market, as there truly exists no one-size-fits-all solution. The truth is that the search keyword marketing playing field is ever-evolving, and as such, advertisers need to strategically plan out their approach to keyword purchases. One option for search engine marketing is a product we offer called Kanoodle. Kanoodle.com is a "Pay-Per-Click" Search Engine that helps drive traffic to your website. Not sue hat "Pay-Per-Click" means? Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, is just that. You only "pay" when a potential customer "clicks" on a search engine listing that direct them to your website. PPC is the fastest, most effective, and affordable form of on-line advertising to increase your website's traffic, branding, and sales. Kanoodle.com is affiliated with thousands of Search Engines across the Internet. They power over 750 Million search results per month. You simply list your site with Kanoodle and they automatically list you on thousands of their partner sites like Infospace, Webcrawler, Metacrawler, Dogpile, and Go2net. Simply sign up for our hosting services and the ability to use Kanoodle.com is in the control panel. There are a lot of E-commerce options on the market today - and they are not one size fits all! To make sure that you are getting an e-commerce package that specifically meets your needs, please contact us! |
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