With thousands of web hosting companies in the market, it can be difficult if not impossible to know which web hosting companies truly provide an excellent hosting solution at a fair price. When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get reports on your traffic and which of your pages your customers are visiting most often, as well as many other statistics.
Your web host will charge you a fee for monthly service that ranges from $3-4 for smaller hosting packages and it goes up from there. Pretty much every hosting company gives a discount for paying for more months in advance.
Be wary of free or very inexpensive web hosting services, as you may experience frequent server downtimes. You are also more likely to have significant limitations in storage, number of email addresses, FTP uploads, and available features.
Be sure your web host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, blogs, forums, chatbots, online interactive help desks, and any other functionality you want to add to your site.
Estimate what your growth needs are and ensure that this web host can serve you as you grow with packages for increased traffic. The last thing you want to do is give your money sites significant downtime due to switching hosting companies unless you absolutely have to do so.
Check your bandwidth capability to be sure that, if your website traffic grows rapidly, your readers will not have to wait to download or view information.
Three things to look for in a web hosting company
1. Excellent Customer Support: Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 and give you reasonable access to the technicians you need to solve any problems. Ask them how long it takes for them to typically respond to a problem. A good test is to call them in the middle of the night to check if you are able to get to a live, level 3 support.
2. A Sound Infrastructure: Check whether they offer a multi-homed network powered by multiple bandwidth providers to ensure redundancy. Check guarantees and the rates of uptime.
3. Financial Stability: If you're running very critical operations, you can't afford to be with a hosting company that may not be in business in a few months. Established hosting companies are a safer bet for your projects.
My recommended hosting provider is Hostinger. (affiliate) They are one of the cheaper hosting providers for beginners and their uptime and customer service are very good.
Web hosting Services and Domain names
Choosing an appropriate domain name is very important. When it comes to domain names, try to avoid the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website. Branding is for every company, not just the giant corporations, and your website is part of that.
Take note that, while your free domain name on WordPress.com or Blogspot may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also do poorly in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Some search engines place less value on domain addresses that reside on these free or cheap servers.
Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated keywords is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business entity by your prospective customers.
Purchasing domain names is not that expensive (usually in the neighborhood of $10-15 per year). There are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and is not already being used by another company. My recommended domain provider is NameCheap. (affiliate) One of the reasons I like them so much is that they provide free WhoIs privacy protection. You can point the domain name servers on any domain names you buy to the hosting service of your choice.
Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. It is also more effective to use domain names without dashes.
For example, abctireshouston.com would be more effective than abc-tires-houston.com, if the first domain name was available.
You may also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your supporting or pillow domain sites to your primary money site. Just keep in mind that you will have to pay for each domain name. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition. In more competitive cities and niches, it may benefit you to have multiple opportunities for search engine traffic. In smaller towns, you may only need one site.
Keep in mind that some search engines may disregard pillow sites. So put regular content on the pillow site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But don’t design it as an empty page with only a link to your main site.
The other reason for having a primary domain is you can have professional email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel.
When customers get emails from johnsmith@abctireshouston.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation. So you can forget about that Gmail address for your business and set up your own business email.
Recommended Resources In This Article
Domain Names: NameCheap (affiliate)
Hosting: Hostinger (affiliate)
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