by TheMarketingProfessional
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
When deciding to start your own WordPress blog or site, you have to take into consideration which web host you will use. The greatest web hosts for WordPress provide one-click installations and great support. I have used a few different web hosts for my WordPress blogs and sites, and I’ve put together my experiences to make a few recommendations. I will provide some valuable information in this article to help you learn How to Choose a Good WordPress web host.
Since I’ve put in some hard work in reviewing the Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts, I am publishing this article in order to provide you with information that will assist you in choosing the best webhost to meet your needs for your new WordPress website. If you are completely new and know very little about WordPress or Web Hosting, I’m sure you will learn a lot from this article.
For those who are new to WordPress, it is a blog and portfolio publishing platform designed for Internet websites. It is offered by a number of popular web hosting companies on the Internet. WordPress is the “interface”, so to speak, through which you are allowed to modify and change your website. WordPress makes things easier for you to carry out website modification without needing to work at the code level. The advantages of WordPress are plentiful, as it is a program that focuses on “aesthetics, web standards, and usability” of your website, as quoted from WordPress.org.
WordPress is also highly customizable with various add-on modules which provide a large variety of features. The huge community and open-sourced add-ons available are advantages offered by few, if any,other publishing platform. WordPress supports categories, modification of the core files (open source), and plug-ins for even more customization. Of course, there are various other publishing platforms available, but with the industry dominance enjoyed by WordPress, being the most popular and well-designed platform, it is no wonder that you would want to use one of the Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts to support your new website.
When starting your own personal WordPress blog, picking a good web host is often described as the first step towards success. With a good web host, the entire process of getting your website up and about is simplified; without a good web host, the problems that your fledgling website will encounter are multiplied many-fold. The advantages of using one of the Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts are plenty.
A Top 5 WordPress Web Host will assign a certain amount of space on their server for you. You need to confirm that it has enough storage space for your WordPress website and any relevant files. You may want to expand your WordPress site in the future which would require much more space. Thus, it’s imperative that the web hosting company should be able to provide you with ample amount of disk space, especially if your website is rich in graphics or has video clips.
You also need to know if your Top 5 WordPress Web Host provides you with sufficient bandwidth for efficient data transfer and visitor traffic. After all it’s your website and you need to make sure that you are getting the best services for the money you invest. The hardware quality of good web hosts makes a critical difference in the impression your WordPress website has on its visitors. The difference between a T3 and T2 connection is highly obvious to the conscientious user.
The quality of the servers also makes a difference in the loading speed of your website. Choosing Top 5 WordPress Web Host that will have minimal server downtime and high bandwidth with a fast connection can often result in an increase in web traffic. Too often websites miss out on many visitors because the page isn’t loading fast enough.This is a significant worry for any website, especially business related ones.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access is very crucial since it provides the ability to upload new pages. The Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts offer 1-click installation of the WordPress interface on any domain you have registered with them. This is very beneficial for beginners who may not be knowledgeable on the coding level or who aren’t familiar with database management.
Since WordPress is highly customizable, there are many pre-made themes and templates available on the internet. To install and implement these themes/templates, you will most likely need to download them to your local computer, then upload them to your web host server. The quickest and easiest way to do so is through a FTP client. If your web host does not offer FTP access. It will be very challenging to upload the files. Hint: one of the most popular FTP clients is FileZilla.
Most important of all, a good WordPress web host provides 24 hour customer service and technical help. This may not seem like an important factor when considering web hosting, especially if you think that you’ll be sleeping for at least 8 of those 24 hours anyway. However, when your website goes down in the middle of the night for overconsumption of bandwidth or any other reason, a good web host can get your website back up and running quickly, no matter if it is 3am in the morning.
As you can probably tell, any downtime in a website can severely affect business, income and traffic. If an online visitor finds your site listed on a search engine and then tries to access it but you site is down, the visitor is sure to move on to the next link and you lose an important customer or visitor. For a business oriented WordPress site, having 24 hour customer service is, by far, the most important factor when choosing a Top 5 WordPress Web Host.
These are some factors that prove the importance of learning How to Choose a Good WordPress web host. Picking a lousy web host and transferring hosts later on can be a tedious and tiresome process. Deciding on a quality web host the first go round can help you avoid many of the pitfalls faced by other new websites. Good web hosts have the solid community and experience to help make the setting up of your website as smooth and easy as possible.
To conduct a little more research before you choose a web host for your WordPress site, please visit the Popular WordPress Web Host Reviews and see which web host will be best for you. In this review, I provide a number of recommendations for you to choose from some of the Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts.
To your blogging sucess,
The Marketing Professional
Read the rest »
by TheMarketingProfessional
Blogs can be a very marketable and profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article blogging expert, Ant Onaf shows you the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”. Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family…you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don’t come to work for days or weeks…you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here…if you don’t update your blog for days or weeks you’ll lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It’s no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
For the info about free traffic and realistic tips – visit this site and start getting targeted traffic.
5) Track Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple tracking program like ProTrackerPlus.com will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
Short & Concise
Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.
9) Digital Art
Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your Visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated”.
Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You’re a Professional
You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a “move” announcement. The title should be “Moved” and the blog entry should state something like “Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com”. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
Here’s to Professional Blogging,
The Marketing Professional
Read the rest »
Tags: Blog, blog site, The Marketing Professional, Top 5 Wordpress Webhosts, web host, webhosting, Wordpress Blog, WordPress.org