Posts from — May 2010

The annual great web hosting sale is back. Starting from 1st June 2010, all new customers sign up for Budget Hosting, Business Hosting, On-Demand Hosting, Reseller Hosting and VPS will all receive additional 3 months free for 12 months sign up or 6 months free for 24 months sign up.

Search Engine Optimization customers can also receive a 30% discount  off any of our 3 available SEO Plans.

Web Design Customers will receive 20% discount (S$440 Saving) off Milan Design standard 10 pages professional web site design.

Hurry, as this promotion ends 30th June 2010 and do not extend thereafter.

New website owners aren’t usually as aware as they might need to be regarding how your web hosting affects your SEO. There are a number of factors that indeed make a significant difference, and it is wise to at least bear them in mind when choosing a web host or a particular hosting package. Let’s look at some of them, and what you can do to help yourself!

Where Does Your Site Reside? - There are such things as bad web neighborhoods, and your site could be sitting smack dab in the middle of one. This happens when another site, usually on a shared server, is penalized for whatever reason by Google. Unfortunately for you, this often paints your site with the same brush, as you typically share an IP address. Until you prove to Google otherwise, you are in just as bad a position as the offending site, and you didn’t do anything wrong! There is really no way to know this ahead of time. All you can really do if you have to use a shared hosting account is to pay for a few more IP addresses you can use, (if your host allows this) in the hopes of distancing yourself.

Does Your Site Disappear Often? - If you have a web host that keeps experiencing problems with uptime, you’ve got serious problems. If your visitors can’t get on your site, or if search engine robots are unable to index your pages because your site is down, you’ll be hurt not only in the short term in lost visits, but in the long term with a non- or poorly indexed site. Stuff happens, but frequent outages in service and downtime are grounds for desertion. Don’t tolerate it.

Software Updates - This has to do with the software that your web host uses in the operation of your web hosting account, as well as any scripts they are offering as part of your deal. It’s not unusual for hosts to neglect to upgrade to more current versions of software. This can have a negative effect on the operation of your site, and subsequently, affect other aspects of how the search engines view your site. Again, this is usually through no fault of your own. Ask if the software is current, particularly if you are using a Wordpress installation, or any other type of CMS.

How Fast Is Your Server? - More and more these days, it looks like search engine rankings are factoring in how fast your site loads and performs as a part of their ranking algorithm. Like it or not, Google is all about end-user experience, and if your visitors have to wait around for your site to load, while your competitor is up lickety-split, you have a problem. The only way to ensure that this never happens to you is to make sure you are using a web hosting plan that affords you the amount of server resources you need, particularly if you get busy. Many webmasters spend all their time and money trying to get traffic, and when they do, they find that the plan they are on can’t service them. Get the most you can afford, and don’t be afraid to upgrade when the time comes. Your web host will gladly help you!

Making sure you have the proper web hosting plan for your business is a crucial link in your web business. Get it wrong, and you’ll find a lot of your efforts wasted. Don’t get it wrong!

HostSG will be upgrading all existing Business Hosting customer email account from current 200mb to 1GB coming July. With this upgrade, current pool of 35,000 business email users need not worry anymore about lack of account space for email storage. Designed to be cost effective for our business hosting customers, it is believed HostSG is the web hosting first company in Singapore to offer this large amount of space upgrade.

Many people don’t understand how crucial domain names are to effective search engine optimization. A domain name is capable of changing the entire fate of an online business, and this has never been more true than in today’s highly competitive keyword driven market. A good domain name could mean the difference between a page rank of 10 or a page rank of 1.

Search engine optimization can be a very complicated process to try and master, especially if you are relying entirely upon on-site optimization. Although populating your site with high quality content is definitely a good way to get a high ranking in the search engine, there is nothing more effective than good old domain name keyword targeting.

How Do Domain Names Affect Search Engine Optimization?

This question may seem basic to some, however the answer is a lot deeper than most would expect. If you want to fully understand why and how domain names affect the search engine optimization of a site then you need to understand how the search engines think. Search engines base their search results on the usefulness, relevancy and popularity of a site. Now first and foremost if your site is brand new then it cannot be very popular yet, so we can eliminate that form the equation. However, your site does not have to have any daily visitors to impact the relevancy category of search engine optimization. In other words -you can rank highly in the search engines based on just your domain name alone. By having a domain name that is similar or identical to the keyword or phrase you are targeting, you are automatically guaranteeing yourself a high ranking in the search engine for that keyword.

How to Find the Right Keyword for Your Domain

This is perhaps the most challenging part of picking your domain name. If you are searching for a domain name that targets a keyword, it can be very difficult to find one that is even similar to a valuable keyword. It is however possible, and with the right researching skills you can easily make it happen. The key to finding a good keyword for your domain name is targeting long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are basically long spin offs of the main keyword. For example, trying to register a domain name with the keyword “loans” (loans.com) would not be plausible. However you could target the keyword “bad credit car loans” (badcreditcarloans.com) and you may be able to secure this domain. If you can get a domain with that name, and place content on it that pertains to that niche, then you will find yourself at the top of the search engine for that niche in a very short period of time.

Optimizing your Keyword Targeted Domain

Once you have your keyword targeted domain, you will need to fill the site with content that is relevant to your niche, and then submit your site map to Google so that it can be indexed. Simply find a few articles that pertain to your niche and rewrite them or write a few unique articles yourself. Once you have done this you’ll being to see consistent traffic to your site on a regular basis, based on your domain name and very minimal work on your behalf.