Getting Your Website Seen By the World

If you're new to website building, there's a big shock in store for you. Nobody will ever see your site until you make it happen! Find out how here in this helpful and informative primer.

For most people new to the world of website creation and that side of the Internet in general, there seems to be a lack of understanding when it comes to the most important aspect of why you have a website in the first place. That small detail is getting it put in front of eyes to see it.

Many believe that all it takes is to have a website and the world will come to see it as if by magic. When you get a little more seasoned in thus business, you soon learn that's not the case at all. Let's take a more familiar example.

As Simple as Reading a Book?

Producing your first website is similar in some ways to publishing a book for the first time. You do all the hard work putting it all together with graphics and design for the front cover (homepage), researching the information you're going to put in it, writing all the content for the story (web pages) and send it to the printers to be printed in bulk ready for sale (get hosting and hit the publish button).

Then you sit back and wait for the readers to beat a path to your door.

Well if you did that with a hardcopy book, you can pretty well be sure that your path will remain clear and your door will not get knocked on. Why? Because no one will know the book exists until you do some promoting through advertising to tell people it's there!

Advertising

Same goes for a website. If you don't tell people about it, no one will come read it. So what's the best ways of letting people know your website is there for the reading?

The obvious way is to advertise, but that can cost a great deal of money especially if you go through media such as television, radio and buying ads in newspapers and magazines. If your budget won't stretch very far, these avenues of promotion will be closed to you, so you need other ways of getting the word out to save money.

Luckily, the Internet provides us with several free or very cheap ways to promote a website and get it in front of the eyes that you want to be reading it. Let's take a look at some of them.

Online Promotion

The first place you need to look to get your site in front of the most eyes for the least amount of outlay is the search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo are the big three and to get your site indexed in their pages doesn't take any work on your part as they will find your site and if it's worthy of gracing their hallowed pages, they will reward your hard work with a placement.

Problem is, that placement will almost certainly be several pages back from the place where most eyes are looking, which is the front page! So your site may be listed on say page 3 or 4, but almost no one ever searches that deep for something. Worse, if your site is ranking for its name (or your name) it won't even matter if it's top of page one if no one knows who you are!

Keywords

Until things change sometime in the future, the search indexes are run on keywords, or those words that people type into the search box to find information or whatever it is they're searching for. Some keywords attract a lot of searches, so websites that occupy a high spot on the front page will get a lot of visitors searching on those keywords.

So you are probably thinking, "Great, I'll call my site Credit Cards and get a guzillion peeps looking at my site!" Well, your idea is in the right place, but you'll soon learn that there is a business model for websites and the keywords that get the most searches are usually the ones that also attract the most money for advertisers.

That means there is a lot of money riding on having a website occupy the top spots for big volume keywords and your little site with its budget of a few bucks doesn't stand a snowballs hope in hell of ever joining them in those lofty positions.

Suffice it to say, unless you target low volume, low competition long tail keywords, you're still not going to get eyes on your website via search.

Blogs

A better way to get visitors to your site is to do some "guest blogging." That's writing articles to publish on blogs that already have good traffic numbers. You can find blogs on a wide range of topics that happily accept guest posts from other writers and even allow you to place a live link back to your website that visitors can click and find your site.

The trick here is finding blogs that match the topic of your own website. Think about that. Someone with a blog on electrical goods is not going to want your article on fluffy socks (assuming your site is about fluffy socks). You'll need to find blogs that are about clothing and then you might score some gusts posts.

Forums

Another way to get traffic to your site is to get active on forums that are focused on your topic. Get yourself known, be helpful and never spam your site in forum posts. Most forums will allow you to include a link to your website in your "signature" which is a box that gets displayed beneath your posts.

This can result in some traffic to your site depending on how helpful and knowledgeable you are on your subject in the forum and of course how active the forum is. Some have many thousands of members active on a daily basis, so this is a source of traffic that should never be ignored!

Article Marketing

You could go the route many site owners go which is to write articles and publish them on article directories. This method is less effective as a traffic source unless you stick to the big, reputable directories like Ezine Articles for example. However, traffic to these places is a fraction of what it used to be since their search rankings were decimated through too much very low quality content being published on them.

So there are some ideas that you can take forward to get your new website put in front of the people you want to visit it. Whatever you write about on there, it should be interesting, engaging and helpful for your visitors, because good sites will have their visitors return and build a following over time. Bad ones will not!

Simple.

Hostgator Hosting Discount After Black Friday Cyber Monday

Did you miss the massive discounts on offer on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Don't worry, here is a great Hostgator hosting discount code NOWSAVE25PC that you can use right now and anytime you want.

Many of the top webhosting companies offered great discount deals on those two cost cutting days this year, but even though it was a great way to save money on web hosting, not everybody was ready to buy a plan for their proposed new website for a variety of reasons. No sense in paying for a service if you're not going to use it, even if it is really cheap.

If for whatever reason you have had to wait until the dust has settled after the mad gold rush that saw many companies literally grind to a halt during those two manic days, you are probably not alone and in fact in good company. Because good things do come to he that waits!

All Year Round Hostgator Discount Coupon

If you are more focused on getting your own website planned and designed before you go ahead and launch it, you might as well wait until you're good and ready before signing up to a new webhost. The great thing is you can still take advantage of our discount Hostgator coupon code whether you buy your plan now, tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year!

The code is current, working, validated and active!

I've already explained how this coupon works in previous posts on this blog. And it's also clearly explained in the right hand column of this (and every) page so you really can't go wrong and there's no need for me to go through it again. Duplication of effort can get a little tiring after a while!

Make Your Website Count

Serious web designers and Internet business people tend to wait until the moment is right before launching the website. No sense in releasing a half-finished site that looks like it needs some more work, because potential customers will be turned off and go look at competitors instead.

It's all about making your site count for what it has been created to do. If it's a business site then it should reflect the professionalism of your company by looking amazing on launch day. Having been tested thoroughly for bugs, it should provide visitors with a smooth, seamless experience that will make them want to trust and buy from you!

Staying On Budget

Another aspect to business web design and production that often floors many small business startups is doing everything possible to stay on-budget, a feat that often goes south and ends up costing the business owner dear. Some of the cost of website launch can of course be pegged back by making use of hosting discount deals, codes and coupons.

That way you can still afford a high quality, full spec webhosting plan for your site and save money by not paying through the nose for it. It can mean the difference from staying within your tight budget or busting it open and having to take funds from another area to pay for it!

Be sensible and be professional. Host your precious website with Hostgator and get the best service for a fantastic price using our 25% money off hosting coupon: NOWSAVE25PC because you know it makes sense!

Save Money by Consolidating Your Hosting

If you have multiple shared accounts for a bunch of websites, you can save money by consolidating your hosting onto one Hostgator reseller account. Doing this would make managing your collection of sites a whole load easier too!

One reason you'd have several small shared hosting packages dotted all over the place is if you were caught up in the old SEO method of hosting a small personal network of sites on different IP addresses. That might still be a reasonable assumption to make, but these days of so many dead SEO practices that once proliferated before 2012, is it even viable any more?

Is Multiple IP Hosting Dead?

Whoa, what are you saying here? Everyone knows that if you want to host a small network of sites that provide link authority to a "money site" with links that you control, you have to host them in different places, right?

Well, that used to be true. Maybe it still is to a certain extent, but think about how much SEO has changed over the past 18 months. Your chief reason for doing this was to try and fool Google into thinking you didn't own the sites that were linking to your money making site, right?

But Google has gotten very good at sniffing out blog networks. So good that even if you think you've done everything possible to throw them off the scent, you'd be wrong.

One thing I figured out a long time ago is that I might be pretty smart, but the collective brains that run Google are a whole load smarter!

That means the chances are, unless you have really gone to extreme lengths to cover your tracks, there will be a footprint that can be tracked and traced back to you. In any case, the value of links is not quite as high as it once was and you can rank sites surprisingly well without them.

So is there any point to trying to cloak a network of sites by hosting them all over the place anymore? I am tending to think not.

Out on a Limb

I know the SEO guru crowd will disagree with me on this, and to be honest I couldn't care less what they say. I have little faith in anyone's opinion on what works best these days.

Remember, unless a person actually works on Google's algorithm and truly knows how it works, they are not qualified to tell me or you how to optimize a site (on or off-site) to get the best serps rankings.

So a lot of blustering and hot air might convince a lot of you out there that these so-called experts know what is right, but it doesn't convince me of anything. So there, I'm out on a limb in my reasoning and I kinda like it!

So Save Some Money on Hosting Already!

So all that money you're probably spending on a bunch of shared hosts may be money wasted. The sensible approach would be to try and save money on hosting these days where possible.

That money you're spending on shared accounts could be put to better use by sucking it in and splashing out on a reseller hosting plan, like the popular Aluminum plan from Hostgator.

It will cost you less than $25 a month to run it if you want to pay monthly and that can handle a lot of sites. I spoke about the benefits of reseller hosting in the previous post you can read by following that link.

Put simply, if you're spending $5 a month on 6 or more shared accounts, you can save money by consolidating them into one reseller. Better still, if you want to stump up the cash for a two year billing cycle, you can save 25% off the total cost of hosting by using the Hostgator coupon printed above in the right hand column on this page.

Here it is again if you missed it: NOWSAVE25PC

You can argue the pros and cons of doing this until the cows come home. But if you are finding money a little tight these days because maybe your sites aren't producing the income they once did, you might want to consider this option for saving some cash.

Think about it at least and you might just see the common sense in what I'm saying here.

Why the Latest Hostgator Coupon is the Best Choice for November 2013

We're already in November 2013 and people starting a new hosting package with Hostgator can save 25% with coupon NOWSAVE25PC. But why is it the best choice of coupon to save money with?

The truth is that when you try to use a discount coupon code during the sign up process for the best in hosting with fast server load times and top quality service, you really want it to be valid and to work first time. After all, your time is valuable and you don't want to waste any of it trying to input am old code that is not valid or just plain won't work!

This coupon: NOWSAVE25PC is valid, tested and works. Simple!

Are There Better Deals Available?

From time to time Hostgator publishes special deals on their hosting packages and I've seen some pretty attractive ones over the years. But you need to be aware of what you're getting with these codes and any others that look too good to be true.

Often, with very big discount codes, like the occasional 40% and 50% deals that you sometimes see offered, they are valid but only give you that discount off your first month's hosting with your chosen plan.

That's fine if you are going for a big dedicated server and you can save half the first month's price because those things are real expensive! But if you're going for a more modest shared account like the popular baby or a small reseller like the Aluminum plan, then half your first month cost is not much of a great deal.

That is, that best hostgator discount code you thought you were using is suddenly not so great when you compare it with a 25% coupon that is valid for the full term of your billing cycle like the one on display in this post and in the right column on this page. Let me explain.

Real Saving on Total Billing Cycle

When you use the coupon printed above to get 25% off the cost at signup, you get that discount on the full price of your hosting for the duration you pay for in one go. So let's say you're going to pay for a full two-year reseller Aluminum plan, which would normally cost $598.80 at today's prices.

When you punch in the coupon, you get that price reduced by 25%, or $149.70 giving you a total cost over two years of $449.10. That works out at $18.72 a month for the next 2 years!

Let's compare that with a 50% off coupon that only gives you that discount for the first month, which is currently $24.95. You'd save $14.43 but after that you'd be paying the full price every month. Not much of a saving compared to the 25% coupon, right?

You Know it Makes Sense!

It just makes perfect sense when you consider the savings in real terms and not just what you can get off the first month! And that includes those insane looking 1c hosting discounts. If you think you're going to get your hosting for 1c a month with that coupon, think again!

It's only 1c for the first month and after that, you pay full cost my friend!

So if you are serious about wanting to save money on web hosting, take a closer look at this 25% off coupon. You can use it for the full billing cycle that you pay for initially and if you are considering paying for a full year, 2 years (or even 3 years on shared hosting plans), you can end up saving yourself a serious wedge of cash!

What's that coupon code again? NOWSAVE25PC

Use it as per the simple instructions you'll find in the right column near the top of this page.

Top 10 Ways to Reduce Your Website's Server Load Time and Increase Page Load Time

There are many reasons why you'd want a web page to load fast while using minimal server processing resources. Here are the top ten ways to achieve it and the major reasons why you should always strive for the most efficient website!

Following from the post on the differences between a Wordpress site and a static site, this article presupposes you are already well versed in HTML code and know how a web page is constructed.

Why A Fast Loading Web Page is Desirable

As already mentioned in previous posts on web page load speed optimization, there are three major reasons for working toward achieving the most efficient web page code for your site.

The first is for your visitors. A fast loading page will keep them on you page, whereas a slow loading page may lead them to leave and find a faster website to get their information. Keep visitors on your page and they will read your content and if your site is monetized, may buy your product or click your ads. Either way, keeping visitors happy can make you more money!

The second is appeasing the search engines, especially Google. Search engines will rank your page higher if it loads fast and thereby send you more traffic that you can convert into customers. But if it loads slowly, the opposite may apply and you could lose ranking and all that free targeted traffic.

The third is keeping your hosting company happy. While you will have a certain amount of headroom for using the server's resources, it pays to try and use the minimum. When sites using a server are not resource hungry, the server will run faster, pages will load faster and the two points above will be satisfied.

One last thing: If your site takes too many resources every time a page is loaded, your host can disable your account to protect its hardware.

So you see having fast loading pages is a no brainer.

Ten Ways to Ensure Fast Loading Web Pages

The first five points concern static sites, while the second five cover Wordpress s or other database reliant CMS (Content Management system).

1. Build a simple static site rather than using Wordpress unless you really absolutely need a blog. I see so many websites out there that really don't need to be blogs and don't behave like blogs but use blogging software to display a handful of pages often overloaded with plugins and that load way slower than they need to. Keep it simple unless you really need additional functionality.
2. Keep HTML code as clean as possible and only use programmatic processing if it is absolutely necessary. Us the latest version of HTML and rather than try and control page layout and display criteria within the HTML , use a well formed CSS style sheet instead.
3. Double check your code for improperly closed tags, missing close brackets, duplicate lines of code and unnecessary statements. Comply with W3C constraints and use a code checker to make sure there are no errors on your page. Errors can cause unnecessary additional server processing and  while one may only slow things down a nanosecond or two, many errors can add up to fractions of a second or more and search engine bots will take notice of this, as will your host.
4. Watch the size of images. Anything around 30kb will load almost imperceptibly slowly for a broadband user, while files over 100kb will load more slowly. Remember that a sizable percentage of the world's Internet users are still using dial-up modems and a 30k image can take 3 seconds or more to load!
5. Video can affect the load time of your page even more than large static images if it's hosted on-site, while embedded video such as Youtube items will load only as fast as the connection between Youtube and your visitor. Aim to serve smaller video files if possible or choose a smaller dimensioned video to embed from Youtube. If visitors want to see the full size clip, they can always clock through and visit the Youtube site!
6. Wordpress (or other CMS such as Joomla, Drupal etc) require much more server side processing than simple static sites. You can still serve a fast loading blog page as long as you keep things as simple as possible. Such as: Do you really need this or that plugin? Keeping plugins to the absolute minimum to serve up the kind of site you want will help increase page load times and reduce server load.
7. As with static sites, keep image sizes to the barest minimum. It's too easy to use the "insert image" or "insert media" button and upload a huge .png image that will take until the end of next week to load up, without bothering to pre-process and optimize that image first. It is far better to do some image processing on your computer using Photoshop or similar program to reduce the file size and create an image of the exact size in pixels and perfectly optimized you want displayed on your web page.
8. Themes differ surprisingly widely in the way they handle internal processing. While most themes are correctly optimized, there are some free themes that have not been optimized as best as they should and can cause problems server side. If your page loads slowly using your current free theme, try changing it and see if there is a difference. If there is, change your theme!
9. Keep your Wordpress install up to date. One common irritation with Wordpress is the constant updates. But nevertheless it is important from a security aspect as well as an optimization one to ensure your site is running on the very latest version. There may have been processing issues with an older version that a newer one fixes, so stay up to date!
10. Keep your site secure as possible. If hackers get in, they can inject malware that will be served to visitors, insert thousands of outbound links to all sorts of bad neighborhood sites, hijack your administration panel and change you settings. A hacked site is the saddest thing to see for a webmaster who may have spent countless hours creating and evolving their site. Stay up to date with the latest security patches, installs and plugins and make it as difficult as possible for hackers to get into your database!

These are the ten major points for ensuring you are serving up a fast loading, well optimized site and an all-round great user experience for any visitor who comes upon your site, while keeping you reseller or shared hosting company happy by not hogging its resources and helping to ensure better uptime. There are many more things you can do to keep things ticking along smoothly, so use common sense and don't over complicate things when the simple solution is the best!

How to Make Your Hosting Pay for Itself

If you chose to host your sites on a reseller plan, you can make that hosting pay for itself by doing a few simple but effective things that I will tell you about here.

Before I get into the workings of what you need to do, I should first point out that this is not some trick to defraud the hosting company or get your hosting for free in any way. This is a legitimate business strategy that people are using to make their hosting work for them. Here's how:

How to Sell Hosting Yourself

You need a reseller account to do this properly, but it's as easy as anything to set aside some of your resources to sell other website owners some hosting on your account. A Hostgator reseller account comes with a front end called the WHM (Web Hosting Manager) panel that you use to maintain your websites each in its own sub-hosting account within your reseller. At least that's what you should be doing!

Each account is literally its own "shared" hosting account that you manage within you own WHM. This means that you can allocate one or more of these accounts to other people in return for a small monthly or annual (or other periodic) subscription from your "client(s)".

How to Attract Hosting Clients

To attract clients, you can make use of a variety of mediums such as Internet Marketing or web hosting forums, your own website or blog, an email list or other social media such as a Facebook page. The method you choose should be suitable as I'll set out below:

• Forums: You need to have already built up some standing and respect from your fellow forum members before you start offering them hosting on your reseller host. People don't much appreciate new forum members coming in and offering such services right off the bat, so if you want to be successful with this method, make sure you are well known, active and respected in the forum before you start making tentative steps to offering hosting services.
• Social Media: Places like Facebook are ideal for advertising your services in this way, but be a little careful how you go about it. Don't spam your family and friends with the hard sell because you'll only end up annoying the hell out ot them! Same goes for people in your circles as you don't want to alienate people.
• The List: If you have built up a substantial email list over time and are working it correctly, that is sending subscribers lots of useful informative newsletters and only the occasional sales email, then you could make a special offer of cheap hosting for the subscribers in your list. Tread carefully because people are quick to unsubscribe if they think they're being treated as cash cows, so easy does it.
• Your Website or Blog: On your own site you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as it is useful to visitors and of course you are already attracting relevant traffic to be able to sell to. The best way to advertise is to write a big article about hosting and drop plenty of hints that you are providing this service.

How Much to Charge Your Clients

How much you charge depends on what you are offering them and what you are able to offer depending on the size and resource level of your reseller account. If you have sufficient resources, you can offer unlimited bandwidth but limit storage as a reasonable percentage of your account's allocation. Remember to set aside sufficient for several sub-accounts should you be lucky enough to attract them.

You could advertise that you offer unlimited domains, which looks good but few people ever end up hosting more than a handful of domains on any one account, so you should be OK there. You should also be careful to make sure you don't charge any more than your host charges for their cheapest shared hosting account, or why should anyone use your service when they can go direct through the hosting company themselves.

Also bear in mind that there are lots of cheap hosting companies out there that are already vying for business and some are so cheap they almost give it away. That doesn't mean you should try and match them. Chances are your reseller will be more robust than a really cheap host and you'll be providing a better service.

With relatively good shared hosting available for under $5 a month, you will probably want to pitch your price a little less than that to attract business. That will be up to you and what you think you can get away with charging and still make enough to cover your own hosting costs.

An Alternative Way of Attracting Business

Do you flip websites? Then one additional source of clients could come from this and make a selling point for the sites you are selling. You could include an extra bonus that the buyer of your website gets 6 months free hosting and after that you can start charging them.

Many website owners will readily accept the free hosting and be too lazy to bother changing when the free period is up as long as you come in with an affordable price, they'll likely stay with you. This is especially so if you sell your websites with a Wordpress setup.

This is a good way of getting clients to host sites on your reseller and pay you for the privilege.

When you have enough people hosting with you, you'll find you're soon covering your costs and then making a nice profit every month. And it doesn't take long before this builds up using this method and you need to buy a second reseller to cope with demand.

A nice situation to be in, wouldn't you agree?

Considerations for Hosting a Wordpress vs Static Site

Many website builders turn to Wordpress for a simple blogging solution, but there are some hosting considerations that can potentially cause problems at some point that many are unaware of. There is a trade off between ease of website building and the consequences of the increased server load that people ought to be aware of.

While not too serious and often dismissed by many, some concerns over hosting sites on a CMS platform like Wordpress are very real. So this article takes a look at these in relatively simple terms that can be easily understood.

CMS versus Static Site Build

There is an ongoing debate over which kind of site build is best for certain types of website. There are two basic types, which are often referred to as "static" and the other type which is the "database driven", CMS (Content Management System) or "interactive" or simply "blog". 

Most people are not so technical that they could be bothered with the rather steep learning curve that comes with coding a static website in HTML/CSS. So most opt for the easy way out and simply install Wordpress on every new domain they buy. This is mostly prevalent in Internet Marketers who are looking to make money by increasing their traffic through various methods.

But is it the right thing to do and is it the best thing to do? Let's look at the differences.

Static Site

A static website is easy enough to define, since it consists of a set of "flat" files that are hard coded in HTML and are created individually and manually by the webmaster as needed. A template is often used to ensure all pages are created with the same basic layout and color scheme, so all that is generally needed when adding new pages is to copy/paste the text from a word processor and fill in the spaces and other formatting with "tags".

Static sites typically have a low server load as pages load very fast thanks to minimal processing required server side when a visitor opens a page on the site. With no active database and associated processing required, this is an efficient solution for hosting on a small, low resource server.

A big upside to static sites is their lack of database, meaning there is not that aspect of a site for hackers to attack, which seems to be an on-going battle between CMS based sites and those that try to infiltrate sites and inject malware or steal information.

Database Driven Site

Wordpress sites typically consist of a user front end that they must log into with a password so they can add posts and embellish their site with themes that can be chosen from a wide selection along with software plugins for a huge variety of functionality. These sites are driven by software that utilizes a mysql database for storing and accessing data.

This kind of site has a higher server load because much more processing is needed server side when a visitor lands on a page and opens it in their browser. Depending on the extent of additional software from plugins, page load time is generally slower than static pages and can get slower the more "bloat" is added from more processor hungry plugins.

An added concern is the apparent relentless pursuit by hackers for a crack in a database driven site's defenses through which they can gain access to your site, its database and the data contained in it. There are many plugins that can be used to increase security, but these add extra bloat that increases processing and further slow sites down.

When All is Right With the World

When things are going fine, the balance of power definitely goes to Wordpress installs over static sites for things like user interactivity, quick and easy site build and embellishment and tech-free content posting. Wordpress is relatively easy to learn and is accessible by even the most technically challenged of website owner. Score one for ease of use!

Static sites, on the other hand are more "hands-on" when it comes to updating, embellishing and maintaining them. If user interactivity is needed (and these days, it seems it is almost compulsory) then specialist coding is required to provide this functionality. Either the webmaster must pay for this or learn to do it for themselves.

When Things Go Wrong

Unfortunately, the domain of the world wide web is rarely so happy feely nice and perfect. Things go wrong and sites go down for one reason or another. Ironically, it is generally the more hands-on static sites that fare better when problems arise than their database driven counterparts.

The reason is pretty obvious when you think of it. With no database to process in order to serve pages to end users, a static site can ride the wave of a slow server without too much of a slow down itself, whereas a database site can hang, causing the visitor to lose patience and reach for the "back" button.

That can mean loss of traffic with the resulting loss of potential sales if the site is monetized in one way or another. What use are all those bells and whistles when a site fails to load?

Moving Hosts

There is another huge gap between static and Wordpress sites when the time comes to move hosts. The spectre of the much feared database move can raise its ugly head and things can go disastrously wrong in a number of ways:

1. You may no know how to move a database site between hosts, so help will need to be sought. Some hosts like Hostgator are happy to help you move a Wordpress site, although not all are so accommodating.
2. The database can be corrupt and will not load into its new home. In that case, a backup will be needed, which is fine of you remembered to take a backup before you moved your site, but a fatal blow if you didn't!
3. The old host might refuse to release your database. This can happen when there is a dispute and you hot-headedly decide to move away from a host because of an issue, only to find the host is not so keen to just let you walk away with your site intact. The author has had this happen to him, where several sites were hosted with a certain provider and following a dispute, the host denied access to the account so I couldn't export my database. Lucky for me, I only had one Wordpress site on there, with the others being static.
4. Static sites do not need to be moved as such. It is common to keep a live copy of all files on your computer's hard drive that you work on as necessary. So if you need to move a static site to a new host, it is simply a case of uploading those files via FTP and changing nameservers at your registrar. A host cannot hold your static site to ransom as it can with a live database!

Conclusions

The choice between whether to build your website on a static or Wordpress platform is often out of your hands if you don't have the necessary technical know how to write the appropriate code. In such a case, a Wordpress site is the only choice for many users.

However, if you have some coding skills or are keen to learn new ones, there are many benefits to choosing a static platform. The choice then boils down to how much work you are prepared to put into developing and building a site using your skills or leaning new ones.

Whether you choose the ease and user friendliness of Wordpress to build your site with or prefer to roll up your virtual sleeves and get your hands dirty and build a static site is ultimately up to you.

How to Increase Traffic with Long Tail Keywords

As a website owner, increasing targeted traffic is a primary concern when you rely on search engines to supply it. By targeting long tail keywords you can increase that traffic many fold by simple methods that I will explain in this article.

Lack of traffic to a website is frustrating, especially when you're doing everything "by the book" and not engaging in any methods frowned upon by the major search engine and the primary source o0f all organic search traffic, Google. By that I mean SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics that are contrary to the search engine's quality guidelines as I'm sure if you have even the most basic experience you'll know what I'm talking about here.

Where Many New Internet Marketers Go Wrong

Website owners who use their websites to make money online are generally termed "Internet marketers" and we make that money from collecting revenue from a number of sources such as PPC advertising (Adsense), CPA offers (affiliate marketing) and lead generation. There are other methods but I'll stick to these as they are probably the most highly used methods of monetizing websites.

So where are you going wrong, assuming you're not getting traffic to your site like you expected to?

One of the prime mistakes new marketers make is to target core, or "shirt tail" keywords as the main focus of their site. Sure, if you want to go after a term like "Weight Loss" there is a huge potential for earning if you get the right traffic. I should know as this was a niche (pronounced "neesh", not "nitch" as I hear all too often) that I excelled in back in the day before Google waged war on SEO and made it very difficult for the average mom and pop marketer to make money where they used to.

But even I wasn't so foolish to go straight after the term "weight loss" right off the bat, otherwise I would have been doomed to failure. I saw many train wrecks happen along the way from 2007-2012 but I wasn't one of them. How did I get to do so well in that niche?

Going After Low Hanging Fruit First

I went after the "long tail" and dominated one after another after another until my site had gained so much authority for those longer, less competitive terms that it eventually ranked well for the shorter, more competitive (and more lucrative) terms. It was literally a case of reaching up to pick the "low hanging fruit" or targeting easy keywords first that started the snowball rolling down the hill.

This is how you can dominate any niche that you choose. Just know that the easier terms can be ranked for faster, but the harder ones take time to conquer!

Of course, back before the not insubstantial impact of Google's now infamous algorithm updates codenamed Panda and Penguin that targeted low quality content and unnatural backlinks respectively, it was all much easier to rank for a given keyword if you knew what to do.

You simply wrote a bunch of big articles all focusing on various aspects of the core keywords in your targeted niche to exploit the "easy ranking" factor of long tail keywords. Then you backlinked the living daylights out of those articles and watched them climb up the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) onto page #1 and into the money!

What Can You Do Now?

Funnily enough, the tactics are relatively similar, with a few alterations to make sure you adhere to the criteria of the current SE algorithm and don't veer off the narrow path of quality guidelines. In short, you still need to write those articles and they better be good.

No more spinning garbage or unreadable gobbledygook, that stuff just won't cut it anymore. After all, what's the point of spending money of the best web hosting if you're just going to fill your site with rubbish?

Articles need to be lengthy, useful, readable and provide a good user experience for real visitors to your page. You need to make sure your website looks good and is easily navigable, while making sure it is hosted on a quality host that provides the best website up time.

If that sounds like too much hard work, then you should probably either consider spending money on outsourcing those articles, or take a look at the job vacancies at your local supermarket.

Here's why you should write long articles:

The more you write, the more variations of your core keywords will naturally fall into the text, so it mot only looks natural, it actually IS natural! The search engine bots will read your content and the algo will determine its relevancy. Because it is keyword rich without being stuffed, it should pass all the internal tests and be marked as high quality.

A high quality article will rank on its own without any backlinks as long as the keywords your are targeting are low competition and not spammy. You can help things along by publishing your articles on a domain that already has some authority and age and then lightly backlinking with a handful of quality in-post links from other sites that are relevant to your niche.

You do that by guest posting or commenting (with useful comments) on authority blogs where the author may (or may not) be curious about your site, go visit and be so impressed by your article that they feel justified on naturally linking to it from their site.

Is All This Work Worth All the Trouble?

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well, right? You want to make money from your work, so don't cut corners. Do your best work and follow it up with more of your best work and you will be rewarded down the line by an increase in SE traffic that you got not by gaming the system but by working with it.

If you don't think it's worth your trouble to do this, your options are to go on doing whatever it is your doing (that obviously is not working or you wouldn't be reading this), or to try churn and burn tactics that usually result in very short lived projects, or give up and go get a real job!

Personally, I like working from home and I like making money from doing my best work online. So I just keep writing quality articles, target long tails and making bank at the end of the day from all the extra traffic I'm generating.

Reseller or Shared Hosting?

As you build more and more websites, your needs for web hosting will grow. Do you upgrade to a bigger shared or a reseller package? Your choice will be determined by several factors which we'll cover in this article.

When the size and type of your next upgrade in hosting becomes the next dilemma, you need to take note of what you actually need. The number and type of your websites will dictate to a certain extent the kind of account you will need. So which will it be and why?

Shared Account

If you intend only to maintain a handful of sites and expect them to grow in terms of physical size and traffic, you can often stay with a shared account until your sites have become too big for the amount of server resources and bandwidth your sites are taking up. Simply requesting an upgrade to the account can pose the simplest option because it will mean no moving of sites, IPs or nameservers.

This is the solution favored by many because it involved zero work on behalf of the website owner apart from contacting their host's support people to request the upgrade. This usually happens seamlessly and you simply carry on as before. It's a great way to continue as you were and still save money on web hosting.

Reseller Account

If your intention is to grow the number of sites you own to more than around 50 or so, then it becomes a lot more manageable to opt for a reseller package. You can get one for under $25 a month from Hostgator (it's a lot less with our discount 25% Off Hostgator coupon code) so it's actually very affordable considering the additional functionality you get over a shared account.

The most obvious difference is that you can place each website into its own hosting account within your reseller. This is a big step up from allocating an add-on domain for each site with shared hosting. In fact, a reseller is just like having your own master host with a load of smaller shared accounts attached to it.

It also means you can recoup some or all your expenses by hosting other people's websites for which you can charge them a monthly amount. They get their own shared account with cPanel and all the features you had with you basic shared account!

With a reseller, you can allocate resources to each internal account so if one site is getting lots more traffic than another, you can allocate more resources to that sub-account and less to another.

Another big benefit of a reseller over a larger shared account is the way in which the host allocates resources to its accounts.

Benefits of Reseller Over Shared

Shared accounts get loaded together onto each server by the hundreds or even thousands. So if one account starts getting a lot of traffic and exceeds its limit, it will quickly be disabled to protect the other accounts on that server.

A reseller account on the other hand will be placed with other resellers and not so tightly packed onto the server. So if one account exceeds its limits, there is some leeway where the customer can be contacted to rectify the situation themselves and not have their account taken down right away.

This is pure gold if you absolutely cannot afford to have one or more sites on your reseller go down, or be taken down by someone else's site. You can get into the admin panel and suspend the offending sub-account before any further damage is done, then work it out with the owner of the site (if it is not you) later on.

Your Choice

The final choice will be yours as to which way you decide to go for you hosting needs. It will depend on the number of sites you have or intend to have as you business expands online.

It will also depend on whether you are happy with the simplicity of a shared account and your intention is to only host a few sites, or would prefer the extra power and control available with a reseller if your intention is to host a lot of sites and keep that number growing.

Cost and resources will ultimately govern your final decision, but which way you choose to go should be the right one for your individual circumstances. Either way, you will be able to upgrade as your needs increase over time, so you never need to feel limited by what you have when you choose Hostgator as your host.

The Importance of Website Uptime

One aspect of web hosting that can affect the success of a website in search engine ranking is uptime. Better uptime can mean better ranking, so it pays to choose a host that can provide the best in terms of the time your site spends on the air.

Hostgator shared and reseller plans offer some of the best uptime in the business for the price. The reliability of their hosting plans go hand in hand with great customer support for those times that you need some help.

How Does Downtime Adversely Affect Search Engine Ranking?

I'm glad you asked that question! When your site is down for any appreciable time (and that can mean literally a few minutes to anything longer), the search engine spider bots can't access your site. When that happens, they will try again but if they still can't access your site, an error is registered.

When your site gets an "uncrawlable" error, it negatively affects its position in the search engine index the next time it refreshes. As the Google index refreshes often (it can happen several times a day for certain keywords), that can mean your site drops several positions.

When that happens, you lose organic traffic which can equate to a loss in sales in the longer term. Of course, in the short term, you will also lose sales if potential customers click on your site's URL and they encounter a message from your host that your site is temporarily unreachable.

No visitors on your pages can result in a serious lack of conversions!

So Uptime is Important

It is very important, more important than you can imagine when your business is at stake. If your site is busy generating income for you in one way or another and it suddenly goes off the air, no visitors will be buying your goods or clicking your ads. This can happen with some cheap hosting companies where people try and cut corners to save money on hosting.

A site that stays up 99.9% of the time is a search engine happy site along with being a customer happy site. The owner doesn't lose any sales and their search index position can attain high ranking. Or it can maintain it if it has already reached the top and had to stop!

Hostgator

When you choose Hostgator as your hosting company, you are choosing the best uptime for your site (or sites). If your business incorporates being a hosting reseller, then your clients will appreciate their sites being up 99.9% of the time too, which can only be good for your reputation.

When you choose Hostgator and discover this site has a 25% Off coupon for new accounts, you get a double win-win by finding a great, reliable host that not only stays up more than many of its rivals, but you can get it for less than you were expecting!

Where to Find the Best Hostgator Discount Code

How bad do you want to save money on web hosting with Hostgator? I show you where to find an amazing 25% discount code off all their hosting plans!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then prepare your self to be amazed!

Take a look over in the right hand column on this page. You might notice a big, bold orange colored bunch of letters and numbers that spells NOWSAVE25PC and looks suspiciously like a discount coupon code.

Guess what? It is exactly that!

How Do I Use the Coupon to Save Money on Hosting?

Copy that code into your computer's clipboard and use it to grab 25% off the cost of any of Hostgator's hosting plans. It is valid for the already super cheap Hatchling Shared plan through all the Reseller plans and right up to their VPS and Dedicated server plans.

Follow the simple instructions below the orange coupon discount code on the right when you go to sign up for your chosen webhosting plan and you're good to go. That means you will save 25 percent off Hostgator hosting no matter which kind of plan you choose.

What if I'm Using a Smart Phone?

If you're reading this on a smart phone and you want to get signed up and use the code, I suggest you write that code on some paper so you don't forget it because it could be extremely valuable to you. Or type it into your scratchpad (or notepad depending on what phone/OS you're using) so you can recall it later when you need it.

However, until the technology for smart phone software improves, you might want to wait until you can get signed up using a full size computer or laptop. That's to avoid mistakes that can be made when using a really small display and tiny touch-typepad!

How Much Money Can I Save?

The amount of cash you can actually save with this discount code depends on the plan you select and the length of time you choose to pay for up front. Obviously, you will save more when you choose a higher cost plan over a longer period.

The best saving comes from choosing a big reseller plan (essential if you want to host a bunch of websites and expect that number to grow) and pay for it over two years. That locks in your saving for the whole period you pay for.

To give you an example of how much you can save, say you chose the popular (and cheapest) Aluminium Reseller Plan over two years. The full price would be $598.80 (works out at $24.95 per month), but with the coupon, it would cost only $449.10 (which works out at just $18.72 per month), a total saving of $149.70!

Where else can you get full spec, top quality, US based reseller hosting for that price?

Exactly!

More information on web hosting and starting an online business can be sourced here: www.sba.gov/content/start-online-business

How to Save Money on Web Hosting

If you are thinking about getting some web hosting, here's a primer on how to save money by getting the best deals that are available. This information is not just for new site owners looking for a great hosting company that is inexpensive to get their site up on, either.

It's for anyone who is looking at the economics of website ownership!

I'm pretty sure if you have a self hosted website that you're wondering if you can get hosting any cheaper than you're already paying for it, right? Well, I can tell you that if you're paying full price for yours, chances are you can get the same for less. How?

I will tell you!

Reducing Your Hosting Costs

First of all, it depends who you're currently using to host your site. If you're already with Hostgator (I mention their name since this site is pretty biased in favour of those guys), you might have to do some sneaky stuff to get the cost down. But it can be done.

If you are with another host, then you can easily move your site to Hostgator whenever you want and take advantage of our special 25% OFF coupon that is valid for up to 3 years of hosting if you pay all in one go. With a credit card, it makes sense to do it that way because of how much you can save.

To use the coupon, just follow the simple steps explained in the right column of this page.

If you're already a HG customer, you will need to cancel your hosting with them, then take out a new plan using the coupon. If you have two or more sites, it's easier. Because when you set up the new account, use a different domain than you used to set up the one you just cancelled.

Moving a Wordpress Site

Lots of people with their own website opted to set it up on a Wordpress blog, because it's so easy. That's all fine and dandy until you come to want to move it to another host. Then you have to do some work!

But it's not too difficult to move such a site. You need to take a few safety steps first, like backing up the database and keeping a copy of it on your own computer's hard drive. Its also a good idea to copy over your theme (especially if you did some customizing to it) and your images, plugins and any other custom made files.

There are plenty of tutorials online that can take you step by step through moving a Wordpress blog from one host to another. So I won't duplicate that info here, since this blog is dedicated to getting you cheaper hosting, not website building and such.

Save and Prosper

One thing you might not have considered about making a saving on your host's costs and that's in freeing up some finances for re-investing in your site and/or online business associated with it. You see, even a small saving can be used to buy more domains (of you want to spread your online presence wider) or to buy content from and outsourcing venue.

You can also use it to buy software or to buy tutorials on how to maximize your online business or learn new skills like html/css coding or a real programming language like php if you're interested. Or you could simply save the money to renew your existing domain's registration for several years.

How you spend the money you will save by using our discount coupon is up to you. But just having it there to spend is such a great feeling!

Hostgator Coupon 2013 Best Deals

Getting the most up to date coupon code for Hostgator is important because it means you get the latest and best deal the company are offering on hosting. The main reason for this is of course you want to get a code that actually works and not waste time entering an out of date code you got from someplace that doesn't work!

So what is the latest, most up to date working coupon discount code to be offered by Hostgator? Easy: Its the one displayed at the top of the right side column on this page!

What is the Best Deal?

Naturally, you are interested in getting the best deal that is available right now. Why would you want to waste time entering a code for a 10% discount on hosting when you can get a better one that offers a 25% discount?

Simple answer, you would be crazy to go for a lower deal when a higher one exists, right?

Our latest code is a fully functioning, 25% discount off the cost of web hosting with the world's favorite hosting company: Hostgator. That code is valid whether you choose to pay for a month, a year or even a three year hosting package (hint: The three year deal is the best and saves you the most money).

How to Get the Best Discount

Using a coupon code to get a discount off the regular price of web hosting is simple, even if you've never tried it before. All you need to do is follow the easy instructions set out below the code in the column on the right of this page.

To recap, copy the text (all the letters and numbers in orange) which comprise the code to your computer's clipboard. Note: if you don't know how to do that you probably shouldn't be attempting to build and host your own website!

Click the link to the Hostgator official website and choose the plan you want, then click on the button to buy that hosting plan. Fill in the form and paste the code you just copied into the relevant field, then click to verify the code before you click the button to submit your details.

You'll find that the cost displayed on the page changes when you enter the discount code to reflect the cheaper price. Then go ahead and pay for your hosting and pat yourself on the back for a job well done and a nice saving you just made.

Save 25 Percent Off Hostgator Hosting with this Coupon Code

Do you like the sound of getting 25% off the cost of hosting your website with the world's best known hosting company? Then read on because you are about to discover a true treasure that is often kept secret from the average Joe.

When it comes to hosting your own website, you should always choose a highly recommended host because not all hosting companies were made equal. Some are cheap, some are expensive (but provide a so-so service) while a certain few provide a truly great service giving you amazing value for your money.

Why You Should Avoid Cheap Hosting

Some of the cheap hosts provide a similarly cheap service and you could find yourself tearing your hair out trying to fix a site that is down more often than it's up. Using a cheap host can end up proving to be a false economy when so much of your valuable time is wasted trying to sort out a plethora of problems you really don't need.

Sure you can save money at the outset with a really cheap host. But you will lose in the long run to numerous server outages that mean your site is offline and not being served to the visitors you need.

Opt for Great Value Hosting

What is great value hosting? It's a host that you pay a fair price for a great service with almost total uptime, great backup service and a support team that can help you with anything related to your website.

Hostgator is one of the oldest and best known web hosting company and their service is second to none. I speak from personal experience, having hosted all my main money making websites with them since early 2007.

Outages are rare as hen's teeth and if I ever had a problem (which is rare), I can get onto live chat and have it fixed fast. Real fast!

This represents great value for the money I pay for the service and I pay it gladly. But in addition to this amazing value a the full price I pay, I as an affiliate of the company am able to offer you something I wish I had at the start:

A 25% discount coupon!

This coupon code literally reduces the cost of that hosting (whichever plan you opt for) by a quarter of the cost! You can see it right there near the top right of this page in big bold orange letters!

All you need to do is copy that code (either highlight it with your mouse and copy it to your computer's clipboard, or write it down!) and then enter it when you go to sign up for your hosting plan at Hostgator. You'll save 25% off the price, guaranteed!

How totally cool is that!