Find Web Hosting and Domain Names

If you have a web site or need a website, then you will need to find the best web host for your domain name. Unfortunately, a lot of webhosts out there have a bad name. The industry is famous for lousy uptime and poor customer service. The good news is there are some diamonds in the rough. There are a good number of hosts that will trade you outstanding uptime and customer service for your hard earned money.

Just Starting Out - Buying a Domain Name

If you don't even have a domain name yet, here are some tips to help you choose the best one.

There are two main things that are important while picking a domain name. First is age. What? Yes, age. A domain name that has been around for a while will make ranking well in the search engines easier. So first see if a good domain name is for sale. There are even websites that sell expiring domain names pretty cheap. If there's one that has been registered for a while that has a keyword that your website or business will be about, then grab it.

Next, is what I just said... keywords. You want a domain name that has one of your main keywords in it. Do your keyword research to find the best keywords to target (ones with low competition) and then buy a .com domain name. By now, most of the best domain names are taken... or are they? I don't think so. What matters is that the keyword is somewhere in the domain name, so there can be an extra word before for after your keywords, that's perfectly fine. So... all of a sudden, lots of good domain names are still available!

Choosing a Web Host

ServersI'm a little biased when it comes to web site hosting but it's for a good reason... I've done it a lot (since 1995) and even have a small web hosting company myself. What you want are Linux web hosting servers. For sure. They run forever and don't need to be rebooted like Windows servers. If you're just using FTP to transfer files to your website, you're not going to know the difference. If your website is going to be developed in ASP or some kind of Windows programming, then you maybe should get Windows hosting. Most people want WordPress websites and webhosting, so Linux servers are easily going to be the best choice. Ask anyone.

One thing that's vital is bandwidth. Bandwidth is how much data you're transferring. So if cables were pipes, then data would be water. Bandwidth would then be the water meter. Whenever someone comes to your website, you're transferring data in the form of text and binary files, which are images, sound and video. You want unlimited bandwidth hosting so that you are not penalized for having a successful website.

Web Hosting Reviews

Here's where it gets tricky. If you search for web hosting reviews, you're going to get a mixed bag. Many webhosts have affiliate programs, so people will join then, write up glowing reviews in hopes that you'll like what's written, click on a link and get that hosting so that whomever wrote up that fake review will get paid. The smart thing to do is to look at several websites to try to figure out if a certain webhost is good or not.

Good luck with your search!