How to maximize your web hosting plan
You’ve done it, you have gone through the motions of purchasing a web hosting! Now what? That’s the question that a lot of people are asking. There are several routes that you can take, but which one is going to be the best for you? No matter what you decide to do with your hosting account, consider maximizing your opportunity. Let’s assume you purchased an annual account. You’ve registered a good domain name, and you have a hosting provider that has given you 12 months to maximize your web hosting. What do you do? Well, here are a few steps to help you get to the right arena.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
The first thing that you have to look at is how you’re going to update your page. There are a lot of options. You could feed your site through an RSS feed, XML, or you could work within content management systems. If you aren’t sure what these are, you just need to understand what blogs are. Ever heard of a blog? Ok, well you could use the software that has been powering blogs for years within your own domain name and web hosting account. Most major companies have 1-click installation for those. The most famous of these, of course, is WordPress. However, they are not alone in the content management world. It’s just the most popular.
Google Webmaster Tools
Go to Google, search for their webmaster tools and install 2 key pieces of code within your website. The first is analytics. Google Analytics will track your page, skim your content, and give you feedback as to what’s working, what’s not, and all other information that you could possibly want to know. Your web hosting account may have built in analytics, but this is going to directly communicate with Google, which is necessary. When you are friendly with the search giant, you will end up with a positive outcome in your ranking and more. Do not miss out on this. Focus on this and you’ll gain serious market share. The next is in regards to a line of code that will identify your domain name as your own. Claiming ownership of your domain name, and connecting analytics will show the search giant that you are a real person, not a bot.
A Shopping Cart
One of the most important things that you should look at when you have a web hosting is a shopping craft. Why? Well, this allows you to sell anything. Digital products included. If you want to sell something online, you need to have this in place. Tie this together with an SSL certificate, and you could very well compete with internet giants like Amazon.com. While you may not match their selection, you could funnel visitors to your items, inventory, and website through SEO. Of course, the cart doesn’t do all the work, you have to do some of it, but with 1-click installation options within major web hosting accounts, you can get started without much work.
Back Up System
The true sign of good web hosting will be whether or not you have one of these 1-click options. No matter how small or big your website becomes, you need to have a good back up system in place. This can be done manually through MySQL, but you have to know what you’re doing. If you do not want to do the raw coding, and dynamic editing, you should look at your control panel for a backup system to install. A good host will have several of this options, and will give you access to the database to customize the backups you do, and take out. This is important. While hosts can provide protection against issues overall, they may lose data, and if they can’t restore your most recent updates, you may lose business. Don’t risk it, get a backup plan in place from the start.
Paid Templates
Let’s say you aren’t grand at web design. If you aren’t savvy, and you don’t want to have a site that is lackluster, look into templates. A paid template may cost as little as $9 and as much as $2500 or so. This all depends on where you go, and whom you purchase the template from. Why should you buy this? Well, it will ensure that your design looks professional, and can be customized for your individual needs. Paid templates are not only easy to use, they can give your web hosting account a bit more of the bells and whistles that you need to succeed. Whether you have an e-commerce site idea or you just want to have a blog up, you can do so with these simple options.
