SEO Blog and Web Hosting News

Archive for September, 2011

Online gaming has become a burgeoning business.  No longer are online gamers relegated to just playing simple games online such as arcade games.  Today, online gaming is big.  In addition to the countless role playing games that many people are pretty much addicted to, there are also casino games.

Many gaming websites have found it necessary to get a gamers dedicated server.  When the gaming website first began, as is most cases, they may have used a shared server.  As the game grew in popularity, it became necessary for the website to get their own dedicated server.  As internet gaming is such big business today, those who design an internet website game are wise to switch to a gamers dedicated server in order to grow their business.

Gaming websites are not like ordinary business websites.  They are selling the idea of playing the game.  While some games become big hits on the internet, with thousands of players visiting the sites daily, others are not so popular.  Not every gaming website needs a dedicated server.

A dedicated server is different than a shared server in that it is “dedicated” to serving only your website.  You do not have to share the server with other websites that may impede traffic to your site.  There is nothing worse for your customers than the inability to access your website due to lack of bandwidth.

A gamers dedicated server is especially important for those who have a website that depends upon daily traffic.  Most internet gaming websites charge customers a certain amount of money each month to access the site and play the game.  It is imperative, therefore, that the customers be allowed to access the site.

If bandwidth, which directs the speed as well as traffic into your website, is not sufficient, you may have customers that are unable to access the website.  This can cause quite a bit of problems with customers, particularly in the gaming industry.  Internet games can be addictive and people who are paying to access a site every day are bound to be upset if they cannot get  to the site when needed.

Once your gaming website is well established and you see an increase in customers, start thinking about getting a gamers dedicated server.  Although this will cost more money per month than a shared server, it will be well worth it as it will enable you to retain your customers as well as attract more customers.  The amount that you will pay for the monthly fee will be determined by the type of service you want as well as the bandwidth and space on the server.

Your dedicated service provider will be able to help you with questions as far as maintaining your site and will keep you updated with the latest equipment.  By having a gamers dedicated server, you are actually hosting your own website.  This is the reasonable option for you if your internet gaming website has become a growing business.  You can even add more options to your website with your additional space that will attract even more customers and earn you a greater profit.

Link building in a nutshell, is the process of getting other web sites and web pages to link to your web site. These links will not only drive direct targeted traffic to your pages; but more importantly will increase your overall search engine visibility and rankings. Building a solid incoming linking structure for your site is one of the most effective techniques used by search engine optimization professionals to improve your search engine rankings and boost the overall amount of traffic any given web page receives. However the process of building incoming links to your site can be a daunting and tedious task when just getting started. The purpose of this essay is to outline the importance of building a strong linking profile for your site as well as offer a handful of key strategies that any webmaster regardless of marketing budget can employ to climb to the top of the search engine ladder.

1.) Purchasing Links & Sponsored Reviews

Paying other web masters to place a link on their site back to yours is probably the easiest and most straight forward way to generate links to your site. However the down-side of purchasing or renting links from other web masters is that it can become a very expensive venture, not to mention you need to pick and choose your potential candidates vary carefully. There are many services out there to help connect you with other web masters that are interested in selling links from their web pages, however you will save yourself a lot of time, and money by working directly with other web masters as apposed to paying a middle man to act as a link broker. Unfortunately there is no set standard on determining what any given link is worth: however you should pay careful attention to a few key factors before cracking open your wallet and spending your hard earned money on a paid link. These things include but are not limited to the number of incoming links the candidate site itself has, it’s overall page rank, the age of the site and finally the search engine saturation (number of pages indexed in the major search engines) of the site. When approaching a web master to purchase links from make your goals as clear as day – and ensure that he or she knows you’re interested in purchasing a link for Search Engine Optimization reasons. You need to ensure the link will not be cloaked (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make the link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

2.) Comment and Post on Related Blogs & Message Boards

Even a web novice can find a litany of blogs and message boards for any given niche or market to post comments and feed back . I strongly encourage you to register on message boards related to your topic or subject and include links within the signature of your posts and messages. The same goes for blogs and commenting. There are many blogs that will allow you to include a link back to your site either within the content of your message, or make your user name a clickable link back to your site. However there is a fine line between spamming and offering valid comments, posts and responses to community based web sites and blogs. Making obvious spam posts such as “Cool site, check my site out at …” will likely get your IP address banned from the web site or network, and can negatively impact the reputation of your brand or web site. If you don’t have a valuable view point, or comment to offer other readers of the site you’re posting on, you’re better off not commenting at all.

3.) Write User Testimonials & Product Reviews

Writing user reviews or testimonials is an under appreciated technique to create a wealth of back links to your site. Most often when you write a review for a product or service you’ve had success with, the web master will include a link back to your site in the signature of the review. This technique is simple and straight forward; if you’ve purchased a product or service write up a short 100 – 300 word review for the product outlining it’s strengths and your positive experiences and include your full name, and web site address in the signature of the review. Nine out of ten times the web master of the site you’ve written the testimonial for will be more than happy to include and activate the link when they post the review onto their website.

4.) Develop a Free Online Service or Software Application

Most people wouldn’t even consider spending their valuable time developing an application or online utility to give away for free. However the benefits of creating and distributing a free online utility or software application can create several 1,000 back links to your site very quickly. A perfect example of this is creating a small, easy to use Mortgage Calculator with javascript and offer the code to embed the Mortgage Calculator onto other web pages. Include a link back to your site within the coding of the Mortgage Calculator perhaps in a copyright statement at the bottom of the application and require the link as a condition for using your free application.

5.) Write Articles and Distribute Them Online

Assuming this isn’t the first essay you’ve read on improving the amount of links to your web site, you should be well aware that writing articles and submitting your articles to the popular article directories is a fantastic way to generate many back links to your web site. The premise is simple yet effective; Write a handful of articles geared toward your topic and subject matter and distribute them to the many article directories on the Internet. Often times when your article is posted on these article directory sites they will include an authors bio, or resource box. Within the authors bio area you want to include a little information about your company or product(s) as well as a link back to your site. Whenever your article is picked up by other web masters or syndicated across other popular web sites you will receive a free one way link back to your site. Repeat these steps over and over to build several 1,000 links back to your web site. This is an amazing technique as your only investment is a little time to write and submit an article.

6.) Submit Your Site to Directories

Over the past few years links from directories or web indexes has become less and less valuable. However there are still a handful of well trusted and high quality directories that you should consider submitting your site to. This will boost both your linking profile, as well as your page and trust rank. Some of the most notable directories to submit your web site to in no particular order are DMOZ, The Yahoo! Business Directory, JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, Linkopedia and Uncoverthenet. Though most of the directories l’ve mentioned here are not free to submit to, the cost of submission is well worth the price as the links you’ll receive from this investment are quality one-way links that carry a good amount of page trust and rank. When submitting your site to any of these directories, pay special attention to the category you are submitting your web address to, make sure that you are submitting your site to the most relevant, and related topic to the subject of your own web site. As this will ensure that you’re submission is not denied, or skipped by the directory editors once it gets reviewed.

7.) Exchange Links and Build Partnerships

Link exchanges or trading links with other web masters is another technique that has lost a little of it’s gusto over the years, however this method of generating back links does still hold a bit of value and should not be overlooked. Many webmasters dedicate a page of their site titled references or resources and use this page to link out to other web pages that have agreed to link back to their site. As mentioned above this technique is not as effective as it once was; however picking and choosing web sites that are well trusted and ranked by the search engines and that are related to the topic and subject mater of your own site promise to be well worth the effort. Finding other web sites that are prime candidates to exchange links with are those that are linking out to other relevant sites in your field or niche. Once you’ve found a web site that you’d be interested in swapping links with, contact the web master via email with your offer. When soliciting another web master for a link you want to write a personal email message and refer to specific content and aspects of his or her web site. Doing so will show the prospective linking partner that you’ve actually taken the time to give their site the once over before sending your solicitation; as a result you will be far more likely to receive a positive reply. As with purchasing paid links you want to ensure that the site you are requesting to exchange links with doesn’t end up cloaking it’s outbound links (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make your link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

In this article we’ve discussed 7 of the most effective, and commonly used methods to generate a massive amount of incoming links to your web site. With any luck, after reading this article you should have a handful of ideas and techniques in your tool box that you can employ to kick-start your web site’s model for success. Building links to your web site is by no means a set-it and forget-it facet of web marketing and requires time, dedication and ongoing analysis. You can never have too many quality incoming links to your site and once you’ve had a small taste of success with link building I’m confident you’ll be hungry for more.

Virtual hosting is a method which enables servers to host more than one domain name on the same computer, sometimes on the same IP (internet protocol) address. Simply put, one will possess his own identity, but he will not be required to maintain the equipment in the case of virtual web hosting.

Usually, there are two methods of accomplishing virtual hosting. The first one is name-based and the other one is IP-based. Name-based virtual hosts actually use multiple host names for the same web-server IP address. With browsers that support HTTP, upon connecting to a web-server, the browser sends the address that the client typed into the browser’s URL bar. The server is able to use this information to determine which website/page to show to the client. In the latter (IP address based), each site points to a unique IP address and the web server is configured with multiple physical network interfaces which can also obtain the address the TPC connection was aimed for using a standard API. There are no compatibility issues as the client is not involved in this process.

It becomes much harder to access a virtually hosted website if the DNS (Domain Name System) does not function properly. Normally in this case, the user could try and fall back to using the IP address to contact the system but the web browser does not know what host name to send when this occurs. Hence, the server is most likely to respond with a default website, often not the anticipated site of the user. It is not that useful for an average web user but may be beneficial to a site administrator while fixing DNS records. Adding the IP address and host name to the client system’s host file is a good thing to do in this case. At this point, accessing the server with the domain name is most likely to work again. The users, however, should be careful as any changes made to the true mapping between IP address and host name will be overridden by the local setting. Another problem with this kind of hosting is the inability to host more than one secure websites running SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Running IP aliasing or multiple web server programs is a pretty good way to handle this issue.

Virtual web hosting is commonly used in a greater magnitude in companies whose business model is to provide economical website hosting for customers. A big chunk of such web hosting service websites are hosted on shared servers using virtual hosting technology. Some businesses make optimum use of this technology by keeping different intranets and extranets separate from each other for internal security reasons.

Online virtual hosting packages are very common these days which offer a professional look for personal and small business websites. Usually, the monthly charges of these virtual hosting accounts range from fifteen to thirteen dollars. Additional fees are charged with the inclusion of advanced features such as SSL functionality or database software.