So you’re thinking about hosting a website but you’re not sure how much disk space you’ll need? That depends on what type of website you’re planning on hosting.

Multimedia Intensive Websites – These types of websites frequently house hundreds if not thousands of multimedia files such as images, MP3’s, & MPPEG’s and require the most amount of disk space. If your website falls into this category, you’re going to want a URL hosting plan that offers ample disk space. I would suggest starting out with a plan that offers a minimum of 5 GB of space.

Note that entertainment sites are not the only websites that fall into this category. Certain types of businesses frequently share files with their business partners & clients and require a fair amount of space too. Printers, accounting firms, architects, etc, frequently fall into the category. If you plan on sharing a large number of files with your site visitors, you might want to consider choosing a plan that offers several gig of disk space too.

e-Commerce Sites –Commerce sites that house a large number of product images, digital products, or product specs will generally need between 500 MB – 1 GB of disk space. Most e-commerce site are more database intensive as opposed to files system intensive so you’ll want to be sure the hosting company you’re considering offers plenty of database space too.

Informational Websites – The vast majorities of sites on the internet today fall under this category and include small business website, blogs, personal sites, etc. These types of websites usually consume less than 100 MB of disk space. If you are still uncertain how much disk space you’ll needs, I would suggest starting out with the smallest plan as you can always upgrade if need be.

In order for your site to show up in the Google search results, you need to have backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that point back to your website. It is believed that the number of backlinks provide an indication of the popularity of a website; the more backlinks a site has, the more popular the site, and the better the search engine rankings. So how do you go about generating backlinks? Here are a few simple ideas:
 
• Contact various website owners and as if they are interested in doing a link exchange where you add their link to your site and vice versa. Many site owners will be more than happy to swap links. Feel free to contact Laneware at http://www.laneware.net.contact.aspx if you would like to swap links with us.
 
• Add your site to web directories. Web directories are sites that categorize and link to sites that deal with particular topics (i.e. web hosting, web design, etc). The easiest way to find directories is by searching Google for something like “intitle:web hosting”.
 
• Posts some comments, questions, & answers to some forums and blogs that you like to follow. Most sites will let you post a signature which can include a link back your site. This is a really quick way to generate links.  Just make sure that your posts are relevant or you could get banned.  
 
• Write and post an online article. Again, most sites will let you post a signature which can include a link back your site.
 
You can track your progress and check to see how many backlinks you have by visiting http://www.online-utility.org/webmaster/backlink_domain_analyzer.jsp.

My personal experience suggests that there is no quick and easy way to generate backlinks. While it is a long and tedious process, it is worth the effort in the end. Remember, slow and steady wins the race.

Many web hosting companies offer Linux and Windows hosting plans. What is the difference and which should you choose? Well that really depends on what technologies you used to build your website.

Some technologies require a specific platform. ASP.net for example requires a Windows platform to run (I’m intentionally leaving Mono out of the conversation for now). If your site was built using a platform-dependent technology such as ASP.Net, then the decision is really made for you. You need to select the plan that meets your application requirements.

If on the other hand you are using a platform-independent technology such as PHP, then your application will run equally well on either platform. In these instances it really boils down to a matter of preference.

Linux advocates claim that Linux out-performs Windows and vice versa. Without getting caught up in the performance battle, I can say that Linux plans frequently do offer more in the way of features (i.e. SSH, Telnet, etc.) and generally costs a few bucks less due to fact that the ISP doesn’t incur any licensing costs.

Windows plans on the other hand generally cost a few dollars more per month due to licensing fees and don’t include as many bells and whistles. Windows does however provide developers with consistent and stable application platform. While there are dozens of flavors of Linux, most ISP’s are using either Windows 2003 or 2008. So you can be pretty confident that your application is going to behave in a predictable manner.
 
If you don’t need all of the bells and whistles that are included in the Linux plans, I personally recommend going with a Windows. The performance is excellent and generally worth the extra money.    

I have had the opportunity to speak with dozens of website owners over the past several months and I was surprised to learn that most site owners fail to actively employ proven SEO techniques. Simply building a website and submitting the URL to Google doesn’t ensure that people will find your site. You need to proactively design your site with search engines in mind. Having said that, here are a few things you can do to really improve your website search engine rankings. • Identify several keywords or keyword phrases that explain what you do and what your website is all about.

• Setup each web page to target a specific set of keywords or phrases. I would recommend targeting 1-2 keywords per page.
 
• Include the keywords in the page header and description tags. This is frequently overlooked and can provide the most bang for the buck.
 
• Make sure that the pages contain the keywords in the page content. Content is king so the more content the better!
 
• Use anchor links to internal pages where possible.
 
• Use keywords in the h1 header tags.
 
• Use keywords in your page names (i.e. WebHosting.html).
 
• Get as many external links back to your website as possible. These “external links” are generally referred to as backlinks. I’ll touch more on this topic at a later date.
 
• Once you’ve re-worked your site and you are ready to go, don’t forget to resubmit to the search engines for re-indexing. It usually takes 3-4 days for the changes to show up on Google.

I’ve personally had the opportunity work on several SEO projects where I used each and every one of the above techniques and I can safely say that the effort really paid off; Some of the sites went from not being listed anywhere on Google’s SERPs to showing up on the first page!

Hosting companies offering business web hosting often charge a few dollars more for their services for a variety of reasons. Why pay more? Is it worth it? Decide for yourself.

Business class website hosters often limit the total number of websites hosted on each server to ensure fast web page load times. Limiting the number of sites increases overhead costs. On the contrary, large providers will pack thousands of websites on each server to reduce costs.

Business website hosting companies are often staffed by very technical individuals who demand higher salaries. These folks are often experts in their crafts and can be instrumental in helping with everything from complex programming issues and CSS design to SEO and HTML layout. You’re not going to get this level of support at a big box provider.

If performance and support are important to you, then you should consider paying the extra money and going with a business website hosting company. It might be worth it in the long-run.