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Web Hosting for Blogs: Everything You Need to Know

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Hosting

The post Web Hosting for Blogs: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on HostGator Blog . Before the internet, sharing your ideas with the world beyond your immediate friends, family, and colleagues was out of reach for most people. With the rise of blogging, everyone who has ideas or artistic creations they want to bring to a wider audience now has a way to do so. But before you can start pushing your thoughts and works out into the larger world, you have to get your blog up and running. One of the first and most basic things you need to accomplish that is web hosting. Website hosting for a blog is one of the most essential services required if you want to reach other people online. It’s one of the main building blocks of a new blog. Why Your Blog Needs Web Hosting Do you know why web hosting is important? Let’s take a look at what web hosting actually does and how it influences your overall site. We don’t often think about it when browsing the web, but every website we visit is taking up space. All the different files and elements that make up that website have to live somewhere physical. As much as the internet feels untethered by the physical world, in fact, every word and image you see takes up a tiny amount of space in a room filled with servers somewhere. Web hosting companies own and maintain those servers. Every blogger on the web has essentially rented space from one of these  web hosting companies of their choice on one of the servers the provider owns (except in rare cases where a particularly tech savvy blogger may own their own server). Now you understand the web hosting basics . Web hosting services are  basically the online version of renting real estate for your home or business but —as you’ll be glad to learn— much cheaper.   Typical Cost of Blog Web Hosting Web hosting plans start as low as $5 a month for the most basic shared web hosting plans. Shared hosting will be the best choice for most new bloggers. But as your blog gets more popular, you may end up upgrading over time to either a cloud hosting plan or a VPS hosting solution. A cloud hosting plan generally costs in the range of $5-$50, whereas a VPS , costs $20-$100 per month. In some cases, these starting rates won’t include additional features you may want or need, such as a domain name registration , SSL certificate (for security), domain-branded email addresses , or a website builder . Make sure when choosing the best web hosting services for your blog that you review the available features for different options and factor in the costs of anything that’s not included that you’ll need to pay extra for.   Web Hosting for Blogs : Top 10 Features While every blog will be different, the best web hosting for a blog will typically accomplish at least ten things. 1. Uptime Have you ever tried to visit a site only to get a message that it’s not available and to come back later? That usually means either that: The website has more traffic at the moment than its web hosting plan can handle, or The website’s hosting platform server is undergoing maintenance or facing another issue that’s taking it temporarily offline. In either case, you don’t want that happening with your blog. You want people to be able to find your posts at the moment they’re ready to read them. Otherwise, they may leave your website and never come back. We’ll discuss the answer to the first issue in a section below on types of web hosting, but for the latter issue, the answer is to find a web hosting company that consistently delivers on uptime. Look for a web hosting provider that promises at least 99% uptime, and check their claims against what third-party sources say. All of HostGator’s web hosting plans promise a 99.9% uptime, a claim that has been tested and confirmed by independent reviewers as well. 2. Speed Website speed is an extremely important part of user experience. Many visitors won’t stick around if your blog takes longer than a couple of seconds to load— especially on mobile devices, which are making up a bigger portion of internet use every day. While there are a few different steps that bloggers can take to keep your blog loading as fast as possible for your users, one of the biggest factors in website speed is your web hosting. You need both the right web hosting company and the right plan to make sure your website consistently performs at the kind of speeds your visitors expect. Make sure you choose a web hosting platform that can promise speedy loading times, and continue to test your blog out over time so you’ll know sooner rather than later when your traffic levels are slowing things down so you can upgrade to a plan that delivers the speed you need. 3. Security Hackers are always looking for opportunities to steal data or otherwise use a website for their own purposes. Bloggers that don’t plan to monetize their blog may think they don’t need to worry as much (and certainly, any bloggers that do set up the site to accept payments need to give security extra priority), but there are a number of different ways that hackers can cause problems for you—all of them troubling: They can take over your website and turn it into something to promote their own scams—or worse, use it to try to blackmail you into sending them money. They can slip spammy links into your website that hurt your authority and potentially lead your visitors to dangerous other websites. They can hijack your website’s traffic and redirect it to other spammy sites. They can load malware to your website so that it infects the devices of your visitors. They can steal visitor information that’s been submitted through forms on your website (e.g. names and email addresses) Most serious of all: if you do accept credit card payments for donations, information products, or blog subscriptions, they can steal your customers’ financial information. Look for a web hosting provider that has a good reputation for security, offers SSL certification as part of their web hosting plans, and works with reputable security software like Sitelock . 4. Ease of use Most new bloggers don’t have a ton of technical skill, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you choose the right web hosting platform. You will probably need to learn some web hosting 101 stuff about how to use your web hosting company’s cPanel ,  loading your files with FTP , and using the main features your web hosting plan provides. A good web hosting plan for a blog will make most of that pretty intuitive and provide a number of resources to help you learn the ropes when you get started. Take some time to peruse a web hosting provider’s support resources and customer reviews to get a feel for how they fare when it comes to ease of use. Selecting a web hosting platform that’s easy to use will save you time and trouble in getting your blog up and running. 5. Customer service Even if you find your web hosting provider’s setup easy to figure out, you may need to get in touch at some point to get their help. As in any industry, your experience with a web hosting company can change completely based on the quality of their customer service. If you have a hard time getting ahold of someone when you need their help, or if they don’t provide the help you need once you do, you’ll end up frustrated and dissatisfied. Look for a web hosting provider that offers 24/7 customer support . And do some research into the company’s general reputation for customer service. If other customers have had issues getting the answers they need, then you may well experience the same. 6. Backup features The more work you put into your blog, the worse it would feel to lose it all in one fell swoop. Just like your computer or mobile devices, your website needs to be backed up  regularly to save you the trauma of losing all your work. Many web hosting providers offer automated backups as an affordable add-on to your web hosting service, so you can focus on your blogging, confident that all your work is saved and easily accessible if something happens.   7. SEO tools If you want readers to find your blog, then doing what you can to show up in search engines for relevant keywords should be an important part of your blogging strategy.  Taking a few basic SEO steps can make a difference in how discoverable your website is, and the right web hosting platform can offer tools or features that make those steps a little easier. Namely, you want an easy way to customize your URLs, fill in meta descriptions, and submit your website to search engines. Even better is a web hosting plan that offers SEO analytics and reporting features to help you track your SEO progress over time.   8. Monetization features Many bloggers hope to reach a point with their blogging efforts when they have enough devoted followers to start making money from their blog . If that’s your goal, or something you want to at least keep your options open for, then you need a web hosting provider that offers the proper features for accepting payments down the line. That means proper security features (although, as previously discussed, you should want those anyway), ecommerce features if you’ll be selling products, and compatibility with common payment processing options such as Paypal or Stripe. 9. Website builder You’re ready for your blog to be up! You don’t want to spend weeks building it before you can publish your first post. The easiest way to get your blog ready to go without having to hire a professional or spend a lot of time learning how to code is with an easy-to-use website builder. While there are many website builders you can subscribe to separately from your web hosting, you can cover two needs at once by going with a web hosting provider that also sells a website builder. A good website builder for blogging will include a number of responsive blog templates for you to choose from, easy drag-and-drop functionality, and handy multimedia and SEO features. It will help you get your blog looking just how you want it without a big time commitment, so you can get straight into sharing your thoughts with the world. 10.  Affordability While some blogs will reach a point where they start to make money, for most bloggers, making a profit is unlikely. That means you probably want to spend as little as possible to get your blog going and keep it maintained. Web hosting services bill on a subscription basis, so you can expect to pay either monthly or yearly for the length of time you have your blog. Consider both the upfront costs of a web hosting plan and the ongoing costs. If you start with basic shared hosting, also take a minute to research the cost of upgrading with your web hosting provider down the line. Sticking with the same provider will make your life easier, so you want to know that if your blog takes off you can afford to switch to their cloud or VPS plans.   The Different Types of Web Hosting for Blogs We’ve touched on the different types of hosting briefly in the previous sections, but new bloggers can benefit from having a better understanding of what the main types of web hosting for a blog are.   Shared hosting Shared hosting is the most affordable web hosting plan and usually the one that makes the most sense for someone just starting out. As the name suggests, under this type of plan you’ll be sharing a server with a number of other small websites. Since none of the sites sharing the server have just a huge amount of traffic, the server should be able to easily host all of them. If your website starts to see a significant increase in traffic down the line though, you’ll want to upgrade to a hosting option that’s better equipped to handle it.   WordPress hosting WordPress is the most popular blogging platform out there. It’s easy to use and perfectly designed for blogging. A WordPress hosting plan is designed with features that will make it especially useful for any bloggers using WordPress, such as a WordPress cloud interface that’s more intuitive for WP users than a typical cPanel might be, one-click scalability for when you experience traffic spikes, and faster load times. If you’re building your blog with WordPress, consider a hosting option that’s specifically designed with your needs in mind. In order to have a successful website down the road, you need to find web hosting for WordPress sites that works with you and can adapt to your goals.   Cloud hosting Cloud hosting moves your web hosting into the cloud, which makes your website instantly more scalable and faster. If you expect (or at least hope) that your website traffic will grow quickly and want the flexibility to grow with it in real time, cloud hosting is a good option. It typically costs a bit more than shared hosting, but can manage higher traffic without slowdowns or interruptions.   VPS hosting A virtual private server, or VPS , is the next step up from cloud hosting. When you invest in a VPS, your website will no longer be sharing a server with as many other sites. You’ll have a much bigger share of the available bandwidth. That both means your site can handle more traffic, but also that you have more storage to work with. It’s worth noting that there is one more option beyond a VPS, a dedicated server , but most bloggers are unlikely to need that level of web hosting when just starting out. Usually dedicated servers come into play for enterprise businesses or especially popular media sites. That said, if your blog does become an internet sensation, it’s an option you may want to consider down the line.   Get Web Hosting for Your Blog No matter what, to have a blog you need web hosting. Web hosting is an important element of any website. Which provider and plan you choose will depend on your particular needs and preferences, but making the right choice now will make building your blog and keeping it running for years to come easier. If you have any questions about how to choose the best web hosting for a blog , HostGator has skilled support staff available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Get in touch and we’ll do our best to guide you toward the right decision for your blog. 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How to Create a Forum for Your Website

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Hosting

The post How to Create a Forum for Your Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . Whether you run a business website or a personal blog, one of the main reasons to build a website is to reach other people. If you want your website to become a place people regularly want to visit, then your goal should be to build a community around it. That’s a big goal, and you can help achieve it and even go a step further by creating a forum for your website. By enabling communication that goes more than two ways, a forum can create an active online community that not only engages with your content – but also allows users to interact with each other. In essence, a forum can become a valuable part of achieving your website goals. 5 Benefits of Creating a Forum For Your Website A forum does require extra work, so you want to be confident it’s a good choice for your particular type of website before diving in. If done well, creating a forum for your website can yield some significant benefits.   1. It provides a place for a community to grow. Having a website that gets visitors is nice, but if most of what you learn about your visitors is what you see in Google Analytics , then there’s a lot you still don’t know. Getting visitors isn’t the same thing as having a community. A community is active and engages with your website on a regular basis. The members of a community feel like they’re a part of something when they come to your website. They have a higher level of investment than someone just passing through. That makes them valuable partners in the overall success of your site.   2. It gives readers a reason to keep coming back. Many websites struggle with turning one-time visitors into regular traffic . Anyone who participates in your website’s forum cares about what others in the community have to say. They’ll want to see responses to the posts they make and follow conversations on topics they’re interested in. To stay a part of the conversation, they’ll keep coming back.   3. Your readers can learn from each other, as well as from you. You work hard to provide valuable content to your visitors. As your community grows, you’ll have a difficult time answering every single question they have. And sometimes, other people in the community will have better answers anyway. Giving community members direct access to each other can be especially useful for any business that sells complicated products. Your customers can help each other do general troubleshooting, offloading some of your customer service burden while still resulting in satisfied customers. We see this at work in the HostGator forums . When one web hosting customer asks a question, another often chimes in with the answer. Newer members get the help of more experienced members, and long-term participants are able to distinguish themselves as helpful and knowledgeable in the community.   4. You can see what your followers are talking about. If you do content marketing , then you know that coming up with relevant topics your audience cares about is an ongoing challenge. But even if you don’t, any glimpse into the questions and issues your audience has can translate into useful feedback on your website and products. Businesses frequently spend money and time on market research to try and figure out what their audience is thinking. When you have an active forum, all you have to do is follow the conversations your members have there to gain the same information. The forum in Carol Tice’s subscription community for professional writers helps fuel her blog posts. She can reference forum conversations and answer common questions she sees members ask. Because of the discussions in the forum, she knows the topics her audience cares about and can make sure her website provides the answers they’re looking for.   5. An open forum can improve SEO. Private forums can make sense for businesses that want to create a subscription community or membership website, but if you go that route you do lose out on this benefit. If you create a forum for your website that’s accessible on the open web, then every new conversation your community members have creates a new page to be indexed by search engines. Not only is regular fresh content good for SEO, but as your forum begins to cover more and more topics (using the language of your audience, no less), those forum pages and user-generated content could begin to show up for search terms you haven’t covered yet on your main website.   How to Create a Forum on Your Website Ready to set up your website forum? Here are three steps to get started.   1. Choose the right web hosting plan. If you’re ready to get started and create a forum on your website, then one of your first steps is to evaluate if your web hosting provider is up for the job. If your forum accomplishes the goal of bringing a community of regular visitors to your website, then you can expect an uptick in traffic. Make sure the web hosting plan you have now can support the forum software you choose to use and the increase in traffic likely to occur. If your current plan isn’t going to cut it, take time to figure out a better option before you start building your forum.   2. Choose the right web forum software. Next, you’ll need software to create your forum with. Many of the most popular options are free and offer open-source software. A few of the top solutions to look into are:      phpBB      MyBB      Flarum      Simple Machines      bbPress Spend some time researching the different software options to get a feel for which will work best for you.   3. Create your forum. The right forum software should make this part relatively easy. The software you choose should offer resources to help you get started. Use them to get up to speed and start getting the basic structure of your forum in place.   How to Make Your Forum Successful For your forum to achieve your goals, you need to approach it with a strategy. These seven steps can help your forum go from a promising idea to a successful community-building tool.   1. Clarify your forum’s themes. What is your forum going to be about? People need to know what they’ll be joining before they can decide if it’s right for them or not. Before you launch your forum, clarify the primary themes and topics that people will be discussing there. When you launched your website, you (hopefully) took some time to figure out your unique positioning statement – what makes your website different from similar ones and why your visitors should care. Now you’ll need to do the same thing for your forum. Think about why it’s valuable from your audience’s point of view. What topics and issues will they want to discuss? Why should they do it on your website’s forum? Obviously, your forum’s themes should relate to what you cover on your website. Beyond that, get more specific in working out what the forum’s purpose and focus will be.   2. Create a structure. Now turn the themes you settled on into a clear structure. Decide on the main categories and subcategories to divide your forum into. Your URL structure should be intuitive. Organizing discussions into a few main topics will make it easier for your members to find the information they need. So again here, have your target audience top of mind. What categories will make the most sense to them in helping them find what they’re looking for? The structure you create in the beginning doesn’t have to be set in stone. As you see how people interact in the forum over time, you may find that adding new categories or re-arranging how they’re organized works better. Know that your forum structure can evolve as needed, but do your best to make it intuitive and clear to begin with.   3. Develop clear rules. You may hope your target audience consists of nothing but the most pleasant and respectful people on the internet – but it is still the internet we’re talking about. When people can interact with others anonymously behind their screens, some inevitably show their worst sides. You can’t just launch your forum and hope for the best. You need to start out planning for the worst. Think about what you want your forum conversations to look like, and explicitly what you don’t want them to include. For that latter question, a look at active comment sections around the web will show examples of what you want your members to avoid. Spend some time reviewing the rules of other forums around the web as well. Their rules can serve as a jumping off point for you to develop yours. As an example, some rules you may want to include could be:     Be respectful to other community members, even when there’s a disagreement     No slurs or other discriminatory behavior     No name calling     No links to or recommendations of illegal items or activities in the forum     No NSFW (not safe for work) material     No spamming Make sure you post the rules at the top of the forum where everyone will see them. Add a note that everyone who participates in the forum is agreeing to abide by the rules. And develop a process for what you’ll do when someone breaks the rules. How many warnings will you provide before banning a user? Are there steps a banned user can take to be reinstated? Your rules won’t be worth much if you don’t have a system in place to enact consequences when people break them. Write out what that system will be and make it accessible to your users in advance to avoid issues later.   4. Promote your forum . For discussions to happen, people have to show up. Create a strategy for letting people in your audience know about your forum. Many of the same online marketing tactics you use for your website will be valuable for promoting your forum as well. Announce the new forum to your email list. Create content promoting it on your website and other sites around the web. Promote it on your social media accounts. Consider investing in PPC or social media advertising to get the word out. Once you have a decent number of members, this step will become less important. But it should make up the brunt of your efforts in the first days and weeks your forum is available.     5. Create some good discussion topics to get the conversation started. You know when you’re at a party and everyone’s hesitant to get out on the dance floor until the first brave few souls start dancing? New members of your forum who are still getting a feel for the place are unlikely to jump right into starting discussions. It will be your job to get the ball rolling on the first few conversations while people get comfortable. Have a few discussion topics in mind and start posting them with encouragement for others to chime in. Some forums also have consistent weekly discussion threads that can bring people together at an expected time to get talking. Consider basing a weekly thread around industry news, new member introductions, or other topics you know your audience cares about.   6. Moderate the discussions. Moderation is a big part of the job of running a forum. Without moderation, your forum can fall prey to spammers and trolls. If the forum messages are dominated by people trying to promote scams or a toxic culture of insults – no one’s going to stick around. In the early days of your forum, you may be able to do all the moderating yourself. Keep an eye on all the active threads and react quickly to any that break the rules. Don’t be afraid to delete inappropriate comments and issue warnings and bans to users when needed. Over time, if the job becomes too big, you may need to hire someone or recruit active members of the forum to help with moderation. Be warned that moderation can be tricky. If people feel like they’re being deleted or banned unfairly, you may face dissension within the community. That’s what makes having clear rules so important. As needed, you can point back to the guidelines everyone in the community agreed to by choosing to participate.   7. Solicit feedback and improve as you go. Running a forum can get complicated and you’re not going to be able to plan for everything in advance. You can’t predict what your members will do or want, or what issues will arise as the community grows. So be willing to actively ask your community for their input and listen when they give it. Conduct surveys or start threads in the forum soliciting people’s suggestions and complaints. Even if your forum starts off strong, there will always be ways to improve it. Do your best to find out how you can make it better and improve the forum experience over time. Ready to start building your forum? Choose your forum hosting plan today and start creating a forum for your website . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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The Ultimate Guide to Building a Successful Website

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Hosting

The post The Ultimate Guide to Building a Successful Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . You’ve got an idea for a web property – whether it’s for a business, to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, or to simply find and connect with other people who share your passions. The challenge now is to build your website . If you don’t know anything about web design or HTML, then building a website can seem like a daunting prospect. But getting all the elements of a successful website into place is just a matter of knowing the right steps to take and tools to use.   This guide will cover all the main things you need to know to get started. Step 1: Determine Your Website Goals. You’re starting a website for a reason. What is it you want the site to accomplish? Before you actually start working on the website itself, sit down and really work out what you want your website to achieve. If it’s a business website, your main goal will be increasing your business profits, but you’ll want to break that down into more specific and transitional goals as well, such as raising brand awareness or driving traffic into your store. If you’re hoping to write blog posts about what you love and eventually monetize your blog , then your goals will be based on driving traffic and building a community.   Even if you just want to use your website to put your thoughts out into the world or share your creative projects, you probably want other people to find and connect with them. Successful website design depends on what you want to get out of the website. Whether you want visitors, sales, subscribers, fame, community, or something entirely different, you have to start by clearly defining and writing out your website goals.   Step 2: Pick a Domain and Hosting Provider. While you can take each of these steps separately, they’re lumped together here for a reason. Most hosting providers include a domain name (or multiple) in the cost of hosting, so you can save yourself some money by registering a domain through the hosting provider you go with.   Picking Your Domain Name Choosing the right domain name can be challenging. You need to pick something that makes sense for your websites, is easy for your visitors to remember, but that’s still available. With millions of websites already out there, a lot of your options are already taken – especially if you want to use a .com option, which is recommended since it’s what your visitors will automatically type in when looking for you. If you have a business name already, you’ll ideally want to come up with a domain that matches it or is at least similar. If you’re still figuring out what to call your brand or blog, then you have some more room to get creative here.   Brainstorm different keywords and concepts that you like and that are relevant to what you’ll be offering on the site. Put together different combinations of terms that you like the sound of and check the availability with HostGator’s domain name search until you find an option you like that’s available. Some domain registrars, including HostGator, allow you to bundle your domain purchase with your hosting plan. Let’s review how to choose a hosting plan next.   Choosing Your Web Hosting Plan When you start looking at , you may find it all overwhelming at first. The main things you need to cross off your web hosting checklist are: Does the provider have a reliable server? Research a web hosting provider’s uptime to make sure you pick one you can be confident will keep your website consistently active. Can the plan handle your traffic? Unless you have an established brand, your website probably won’t get that much traffic to start. But you want to make sure you choose a plan that can handle the amount you plan on getting. Is the plan compatible with your web design needs? If your website will be on the simpler side, then you don’t have much to worry about here, but if you have a developer that insists on using a specific type of programming language or software, you may need to choose your web hosting plan based on compatibility. A good web hosting provider will have salespeople that can help you navigate the differences between the various plans they offer and customer support that will help you learn the ropes when getting your website set up. If you’re considering HostGator for your provider, our staff can help with any questions you have and most of our plans come with at least one domain name included.   Step 3: Plan Out Your Site Organization. A successful website design requires proper organization. You need the website to be intuitive to users. And if you care about being easy to find, you also need it to be organized well for SEO . Before you work on the website design itself, sit down to figure out the main pages and categories your website will have. The most important pages should go in your main menu, which should be included on every page so it’s easy for visitors to navigate to the most important parts of the site. If your website will just have a few main pages and be pretty basic, figuring out your site organization won’t be too difficult. But if you’ll have a bigger site with a lot of different pages, categories, and subcategories, then it’s even more important to get a plan into place for how it will all be organized now. Think first and foremost when planning out your site’s organization about your future visitors. What are the categories that will make the most sense to them? What site structure will make it easiest for them to find what they’re looking for? You’ll be doing some guesswork at this point (and your analytics after you launch will show you if you got it right or need to make changes later), but do your best to put yourself in their shoes now.   Step 4: Develop a Successful Website Design. Once you know the main pages you’ll be creating and the way you’ll be organizing the site, it’s time to design your website. If you’re not adept at web design yourself, you have two main options here:     Using a website builder     Hiring a professional web designer   Option 1: Using a Website Builder You don’t have to learn coding to build a success website anymore. Now you can turn to website builders that make creating a website on your own much easier. Website builders usually offer a number of templates you can choose from to start with and let you make tweaks to personalize the site from there. You can load your own images and copy, easily change out colors, and drag and drop images and other page elements to where you want them on the page. For someone without coding skills that has a limited budget, sticking with a website builder is worth it to keep things easy, while still producing a website that looks good. And if you chose HostGator to be your web hosting provider in step two, we offer a free website builder with many of our web hosting plans, so you won’t have to spend any additional money to get started. Here are just a few of the websites designed using our free templates: Option 2: Using a Professional Designer For more complicated websites, a website builder may not cut it. If your website will have a lot of pages, include a difficult-to-build feature like creating a forum , or if you have a really specific vision in mind – then you’ll be better off hiring a professional to design your website for you. Research the design firms and freelance web designers in your area and set up interviews with anyone whose style you like. In each interview, make sure you discuss your main goals for the website and clearly describe what you’re looking for. Pay attention to the questions they ask you and the tips or suggestions they provide – that’s how you’ll get a feel for their level of knowledge and whether they’re a good fit. Developing a successful website design with the right professional will ultimately be a collaborative effort, and finding the right person to hire is the most important step of that process.   Step 5: Write Your Website Copy. The design’s important, but one of the other crucial elements of a successful website is good copy. Website copywriting is a skill set in and of itself and, especially for business websites, the words you choose will make a big difference in how successful your website is at achieving your goals. For many websites, your best bet at this step is to hire a professional copywriter who knows what kind of writing works well on the web and can help you clarify your business positioning and messaging so that it resonates with your target audience. If your website is more of a passion project than a business website with a profit goal, then it might not make as much sense to spend money on a professional copywriter. If you’ll be writing your website copy yourself though, take some time to read up on web copywriting best practices .   Step 6: Optimize for SEO. If you want people to find your website, then you need to be thinking about how to design your website for search engines as well as people (although people should always take priority!). That means learning the basics of SEO and optimizing each of the pages on your website before you publish it. Search engine optimization is a big topic, but to give you the short version, it includes: Performing keyword research to learn the terms your audience is using (and how competitive they are) Including relevant keywords in your URL structure , title tags , headings, image meta tags , and copy. Adding meta descriptions for every page on your website. Including natural internal links on your web pages using relevant keywords in the anchor text.   Start doing this before your website goes up on the web and keep doing it for every new page you add over time.   Step 7: Plan for Marketing. A successful website doesn’t start and stop with a good design. You also have to plan on taking steps to promote your website. SEO is one part of that, but you may also want to consider using tactics like paid advertising, social media marketing, and content marketing to get users to your website. New websites often need an extra push to get those first visitors. If gaining an audience is important for you to meet your website goals, then you’ll benefit from creating a marketing plan even before your website launches.   Step 8: Review All Pages for Any Errors. With your web design and website copy in place, you’re so close! Now you just need to make sure everything looks good before you actually put your website out on the wide web. Take time to read over every page and look for any errors. Make sure all your links point to the right place and all the information is accurate. Check how it looks on mobile devices and in different web browsers. This is a good phase to bring in some outside eyes. Have a friend go through the website as well to see if they find it intuitive and everything looks good to them too. You’re so close to it that someone else will have an easier time spotting usability issues than you will.   Step 9: Launch! Once you’re pretty confident that everything looks good and you have exactly the website you want, publish it to the web. Make sure to set up a Google Analytics account and add the tracking code to your website at this point (or before) to help with our last step.   Step 10: Monitor Your Site. No matter how hard you try, you won’t come up with the perfect website design on the first try. To fully understand what works on your website with your audience, you’ll have to wait and see what they do once your website is out in the world. Pay attention to your analytics and use the data to find opportunities to improve your website’s design, your copy, and the marketing tactics you use over time. A successful website is only a little bit about what you do when you’re building it (although all that matters!). It’s much more about what you do after it has launched. Make sure you build the best website you can, but also have a plan for what to do beyond launch day to achieve success. 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Google Ads: 7 Pros and Cons for Small Businesses

Posted on September 24, 2018 by Hosting

The post Google Ads: 7 Pros and Cons for Small Businesses appeared first on HostGator Blog . Small businesses desire to promote their products, and Google Ads can open doors to doing it the right way. Understanding potential consumers’ needs and interests helps your advertising efforts. Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel elaborates: “When people go to Google, they’re looking for something specific. That means they have intent. They’re actively looking for something to buy. They’re literally telling you what they want to buy by typing out words around your products and services. That’s why Google AdWords is so powerful (and profitable).” Before you get started with Google Ads , you’ll want to weigh the pros and cons. Check out what we found below. Google Ads: Pros for Small Businesses You want your small business to thrive. Here are a few benefits of using Google Ads.   1. Target Specific Audiences When marketing products, there’s value in talking to your ideal customer. Your brand will be more attractive to these buyers. The key to advertising is knowing the habits and behaviors of your target audience . This insight helps you pinpoint where and how to communicate with potential customers. Google Ads gives you the opportunity to narrow down who you can reach during a campaign.  By using a specific term or phrase, you can advertise to consumers actively researching products like yours. Figuring out who not to target is just as vital. For instance, if your product is a hazard for kids under five years old, you probably can rule out adults raising toddlers. Filtering out unlikely consumers improves your campaigns.   2. Set Up Quickly As a small business owner, time is a precious resource. The more time you spend on a task means you may neglect another responsibility. Therefore, when it comes to setting up your advertising, you want to get started quickly (without any unnecessary hassle). Google Ads wants you to start as soon as possible. Aden Andrus , director of content marketing of Disruptive Advertising, explains: “Google wants your money, so they make it pretty easy to set up an account and start advertising on AdWords. All you have to do is visit Google AdWords and hit ‘Start now.’ From there, you’ll be asked for your email (preferably a Gmail account) and the URL of your site.” Unlike other platforms, where you may have to call a sales representative, Google Ads takes you through easy-to-follow steps. Now, you can focus your time on building a worthwhile campaign.   3. Stay Within Your Budget Like most small businesses, you’re probably strapped for cash. Between paying for operational costs and unexpected fees, your budget isn’t always ready for an additional marketing cost. The landscape of advertising rates has changed drastically over the years. Back in the day, you had to pay thousands of dollars for a billboard or a newspaper ad. Now, with online advertising, more options exist, alleviating a lot of the financial burden. Google Ads works within your budget. You choose the daily campaign budget based on your advertising goals. Plus, you can change the budget at any time. By staying in control of the budget, you can map out where to allocate funds. Let’s say you have two campaigns running simultaneously. If Campaign A isn’t performing well, you can stop it immediately and move those funds to Campaign B. Google Ads gives you more flexibility with your budget.   4. Design Multiple Ad Types Every customer isn’t the same. Depending on your product, you may serve young hipsters as well as joyful senior citizens. Despite the differences, it is important that you engage each buyer in the manner they desire. Courtney Danyel , a digital marketing and business writer, agrees: “Businesses can choose from several different ad-types that appear around the internet. But if you want to make the most of the selection, you should choose the one(s) that offer the most value for your business and target audience.” Google Ads equips you with multiple ad format choices, including search, display, video, and app. Search ads pop up when a consumer types your designated keywords in the Google search engine, while video ads appear on the YouTube platform. This ad versatility supports your goals to connect with more interested buyers. Your ads become part of their normal shopping experiences, instead of an annoying distraction.   Google Ads: Cons for Small Businesses Every tool won’t be perfect. You’ll want to scope out the flaws before you make a 100% commitment.   1. Expert Management Knowing the basics will only get you so far. If you want to get the most from an advertising platform, it will require expertise. Some small business owners learn the hard way. They try tinkering with a new tool over a period of time and end up getting little to no results. Google Ads isn’t a platform you can learn in a day. So, you may need to hire an expert to consult with your team. Paying an expert may cut into your initial campaign budget, which means less money to target customers. But with their knowledge, you can make your marketing dollars go much further toward reaching new customers.  Interested? Check out HostGator’s expert PPC services.    2. Competitive Segments Today’s market is very competitive. Companies, big and small, are all vying for attention from consumers. That competition spills over into Google Ads when selecting similar segments. When businesses target the same keywords, Google expects you to pay more to advertise to that audience. You can get tangled into dishing out more money. “Google AdWords is one of the most challenging platforms when it comes to monitoring your success. You can quickly spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and see little to no return on investment. The metrics are tricky to establish, and you could find yourself with $0 fast,” writes Brad Smith , contributing writer at AdEspresso. As a consequence, you may have to choose secondary keywords . Even though they may cost less, it may not meet your advertising goals. It’s a hard decision that every small business must evaluate.   3. Strict Policies When you’re using an advertising tool, you’re obligated to play by their rules. No matter whether you agree or not, their policies will protect the platform. Before jumping into any advertising space, you’ll want to assess their requirements. Then, you’ll have a better understanding of how to proceed. For example, with Google Ads, the company has policies that prohibit certain content. You can’t advertise counterfeit goods, dangerous products, or offensive content. Google also has editorial guidelines that restrict how you appeal to consumers. Your ads can’t be overly generic or use gimmicky language, like FREE. They only approve relevant and useful content. So, if Google deems your ad as unsafe, you can’t promote your campaign.   Moving Forward with Google Ads Advertising is a real challenge for any small business. Google Ads may be a good option to get your products in front of potential customers. Consider the pros and cons of the tool. It’s easy to set up with your team; however, you may need to hire an expert to manage the day-to-day operations. Learn what works for your small business. Explore Google Ads. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions?

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Hosting

The post Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions? appeared first on HostGator Blog . What’s the Key to More Email Conversions? It Might Be Your HTML How’s email marketing going for your small business? If hardly anyone on your list is opening your emails and even fewer are clicking through, you’re probably wondering if your subject lines, copy, and images need work . They might. But there’s another possibility: You may need to improve the code that makes your emails work. Without the right code, your emails can show up in your subscribers’ inboxes as a jumbled, hard-to-read mess or a blank page, even if you’re using an email template. Of course, most small businesses don’t have an email code expert in-house to fix their issues. So I reached out to one to learn more. Anne Tomlin is the founder of Austin, TX-based  Emails Y’all and a self-described email geek whose enthusiasm for her work is contagious. She shared her knowledge about what happens when code goes wrong, why off-the-shelf templates work until they don’t, and how small businesses can diagnose, fix, and avoid some common email coding issues.   Look Good or Get Deleted The first thing to know is that email marketing is challenging because not everyone receives your emails in the same way. Different people use different devices to read their mail, and they may be using a variety of email clients that all have different rules about things like downloading email images. Most businesses know they need to use responsive templates for proper display on mobile devices, but the range of email client rules can trip them up. “A lot of email clients don’t download images automatically,” Tomlin said, giving Outlook as one example. “You can work around that, but a lot of businesses send emails that feature one big image. When those emails are opened with those clients, they’re just blank.” Consumers won’t tolerate that. Tomlin said she recently heard a conference presenter say that about 30% of Millennials immediately delete emails that don’t render properly. Those recipients won’t follow a link to “view this email in a browser,” wait to see if images load, or try to figure out how to read it on their screen. They just delete your carefully crafted message or decide they don’t want to hear from your business again. This is high-stakes stuff in terms of conversions and subscriber retention, but Tomlin says “even major retailers make this mistake.” One clothing retailer sends her emails that are blank, because “the email content is one big image with no live or alternative text” and Outlook doesn’t show it. Another apparel chain sent an email with lots of images that didn’t display, “and the alt text for every image was ‘turn on your images.’” What’s the workaround when you’re sending image-heavy emails? “A good coder can style alternative text to match your brand. Stitch Fix uses alternative text really well, and it’s stylized to fill the image space if the images don’t load. With proper coding, using live text or well-designed alternative text… maybe the recipients will download the images.”   Pros and Cons of Off-the-Shelf Email Templates If major retailers are tripped up by email coding, you can bet smaller businesses are, too. I asked Tomlin whether pre-made HTML templates from email marketing services can help SMBs avoid these email rendering pitfalls. “Most off-the-shelf templates work just fine” for businesses that are starting out with an email program, “but they might not work for every audience.” Tomlin mentions accessibility for customers with disabilities as an example. “Most templates were developed a while back” before accessibility for people with low vision, hearing loss, and other issues was given a lot of attention, and many “aren’t up to date yet with accessible code.” Another potential issue with pre-fab templates is simply the pace of change in the email industry. “Things change weekly, sometimes without any notice. Say Gmail decides to change something on their end, and that may totally screw up the rendering of your emails on, say, a certain type of phone,” but senders don’t realize that’s now a problem. “ Any good developer will keep tabs on the latest changes, notify clients, and update the code” as quickly as possible.   Best Practices to Avoid Email Coding Issues I asked Tomlin what steps small businesses can take to avoid code-related email issues. The first is to format your emails to look good with or without images. “Using one big image with text” in your marketing emails “is not good practice. A properly coded email will have live text that shows up whether the image loads or not.” Other best practices include: Test your emails before you hit send. Most email marketing service providers will show you how your emails will look on a variety of devices. Know your audience’s email habits and clients. “Use those analytics that your email marketing service provider collects. For example, if people aren’t opening your emails in Outlook, you can code some crazy awesome stuff to reach them” or hire someone to do that for you. Know when it’s time for professional coding services. Tomlin cites three scenarios. “When your conversions plateau or drop” or if your email program just isn’t hitting the targets you set, it’s time to look under the hood to see if rendering issues are part of the problem. “When you gain a larger, more diverse audience, say, new customers from other countries,” an email code expert can ensure your new audience sticks around and opens your emails, regardless of the many devices and clients they use. “When your emails don’t look right” even when you’re using a template. For example, Tomlin sometimes sees text-heavy emails with badly aligned columns or copy that gets truncated because it’s too long for the template. When you decide to hire a professional, Tomlin suggests careful vetting. Look for developers who ask lots of questions about your audience and who share information to help you reach your goals. Email coding isn’t just using off-the-shelf templates. “A good coder will build your emails from the ground up and tailor them to your needs.” Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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