Increase visits with these tips.

There are many important aspects of running a successful website, from SEO Optimization, to Link Building, and even the content itself. One more you can add to this list is effectively promoting your website.

Its a lost art that people often either don’t have the time for, or aren’t prepared to start. Use these top five helpful tips for promoting your website:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Working to improve SEO isn’t a fast fix for your website, but for the long-term, it is absolutely essential to your site’s success. Improving your SEO will allow you to climb in the rankings for specific keywords in search engines, and give your site a better chance at being found in searches.

2. Good, Fresh Content

This sounds easy, but depending on your website or product, it can sometimes be very difficult. Creating fresh content can take a lot of creativity, and actually putting it out for your reader takes time and effort you may not always have. Regardless, sacrificing a little time to come up with content that is clean, fresh, and as unique as possible can only help your site. The more fresh content you have, the more chances you have of being circulated in search engines, and new, relevant content can also catch the eye of other blogs and websites.

Creating this new content also gives you something of value to plug via your social media, email newsletter, or even through a press release if the event is important enough.

3. Social Media

As mentioned above, using social media to plug content is a great way to do free promotion for your site, although you can use social media to your advantage in a variety of ways. Website and content updates via Facebook and Twitter should go without saying, while creating a unique page to be found on Stumbleupon or a potential viral video to be discoverd on YouTube are two examples of maximizing your site’s value through social media. The more interesting content or features you have available to the world to share in social media, the more chances your website will get visits.

4. Contests and Promotions

This is pretty self explanatory, but actually a pretty key method of increasing your viewership and keeping your readers engaged in the site. Contests that offer up tickets, books, money, or even specific creative prizes can be very attractive to people, even if they aren’t consistent readers of your website.

5. Paid Advertising

The above four ideas are things you should be looking to do as often and as much as possible, as they are all free and have a solid reach potential. Whether or not they are as effective as you want them to be, however, paid advertising could eventually be a path you’ll want to stroll down.

You’ll want to be careful for any shady deals, scams, or simply getting taken advantage of in pricing and value, but if you find the right deal, paid advertising can be very beneficial. Weigh all of your options if you go this route, and consider (among other things) taking ads in search engines, forums, blogs, and marketing emails.

Ultimately, the success of your website and/or product is going to fall on you. You can do the dirty work yourself with steps 1-4 above, pay for advertising, or get someone like us here at NoCoastHosting to assist you. Whatever you decide, you’re off to a good start if you use these tips as a starting point.

Maximize Social Media on Your Website.

In today’s fast-paced business world, its no longer enough to simply create a website let your product do the talking. Now its all about remaining open, connected, and fluid. If you’re not engaging with your customers and/or readers, then you’re not meeting them on their level.

In order to keep up with the times, every new website needs to figure out a way (at least to a certain degree) to implement social media within their website. Whether its connecting to social media from your website, creating pages or profiles about your site on social media sites, or sending/delivering messages, it is extremely important to utilize social media and maximize your efforts in doing so.

To give you a head-start on how you may want to conduct business with your site in accordance to social media, here are five helpful tips:

1. Start ‘Tweeting’

One of the most important social media websites is Twitter, so by all accounts, you should dive head-first into the 140-character world that is Twitter, and use it the best you can. After you create your website’s own profile and start the process of networking, make sure you also add your Twitter Feed to your website or the site’s blog. Next, you can also grab a Twitter widget and place it on your site to allow visitors to immediately follow you on Twitter by clicking on “Follow Me”.

If you really want to take Twitter and your website to the next level, you can even offer visitors the ability to access their Twitter accounts directly from your website, allowing them to share, tweet, and scour your website all at once.

2. Connect With Facebook

Just about every business that is serious about reaching their target audience and selling their product is using social media in promotion, and most websites often start by maximizing the use of Facebook. However, it doesn’t have to end with a company profile, page, or group, as you can actually bring Facebook (and the reader) together right on your site.

Having Facebook Connect allows your audience to log in to your website without wasting time and energy creating log-in credentials. Instead, they simply click to connect, and they can access features regular log-in members do via their Facebook account. This extremely accessible and attractive feature can increase sign ups and can often lead to repeat visits.

3. Share, Share, Share

This is the simple idea of making any and all content on your website easily accessible and available to as many social media websites as possible. The further your social media boundaries can stretch, the more chances of your website being stumbled upon. And yes, that pun was absolutely intended.

Giving the reader the option to immediately share articles, videos, and other forms of media to Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, and many other social sites opens your site’s doors to the rest of the world and can only mean good things for your site’s success. Make sure these options are out in the open and easy to use, and you’ll see the benefits.

4. Reader Engagement

What’s better than linking to social media or giving endless social media options to your audience? How about showcasing media or events that allow your readers to socialize right on your site. It may sound a bit odd depending on your website/product, but if done the right way, it can be extremely beneficial.

From live steaming videos and audio, to member chat rooms, photo galleries, website contests, there are plenty of ways to gather your readers together to interact and enjoy your website even more than usual. The more you engage with your readers, the more they will come back and feel the urge to tell others about your website.

5. Keep Searching

New fads are starting every day. They don’t necessarily see that dramatic spike in popularity at that rapid of a pace, but when it happens, its huge, and you don’t want to be late to the party.

It is difficult to fathom a social media site trumping what Twitter and Facebook can do, but the possibility is out there, and even if they can’t best the top social sites, there are ideas forming as we speak for complex copy-cats. The important thing to remember is that in this age of social interaction online, no website is too miniscule in the grand scheme of your website’s outreach.

Try to keep yourself open-minded about social media, search the top social media sites a few times a month, and pay attention to how your visitors are using the social media so you can be aware of new trends, community involvement, and what you can do to make your site better through adding or subtracting social media outlets.

Link Building Tips.

In a day and age where social media, SEO, and online marketing appear to be delivering the biggest blows to your time and effort when starting a new website, common link building remains one of the simplest, and most important methods of improving the value of your site.

Obviously over time any site will receive more incoming links from other sites or directories. You can strike up partnerships, do basic link swaps, and even exchange content with other websites. But what do you do if you’re a fledgling website and you want to get the ball rolling?

Here are five helpful tips that can help you build links to your site and improve its value. Remember to keep in mind that the higher quality the incoming link is, the greater value that link and site reflect on your site or the page that is being linked to.

1. Credible Directory Submissions

Submitting your website to online directories comes in first on this list because it is so easy to do, can really be beneficial when utilized correctly, and also because there are probably directories that your site’s genre can fit into all over the web.

If you submit to the right directories, you can improve your SEO, Link Building, and also increase the likelihood of being discovered by internet users searching directories in your genre.

The number one thing to look out for is paid scam directories, along with less than credible free directories that can sometimes limit your ability to control the links going back to your website.

Once you test the waters a bit and feel comfortable with submitting your site, be sure to scour the internet for credible, well respected directories that match up with your website’s genre, and start submitting.

2. Optimized Press Releases

If you’re kicking off your website’s business or simply getting started with new content, a great way to get the news out about what you’re up to is to create and publish a press release. A quality press release at a respectable press release site can offer solid SEO and Link Building, and also gives you the chance of getting noticed through other sites and publications for the topic or topics your press release is attempting to get noticed for.

It is usually best to get the most out of your press release (especially if it is paid), and try to send out press releases that unleash a new message, information, or product. The more unique your message is, the more likely it gets noticed across the internet. However, at the very worst, solid SEO press releases can give you boosts in SEO rankings, while they can also supply quality links back to the pages of your choosing on your website.

3. Blog Links

Utilizing blog links can be very beneficial to Link Building for your new website. You can either contact prospective blogs and exchange links, or you can play by the honor code and link to any sites of interest at random, and grant them the freedom to decide whether they want to link back to you.

4. Social Media Links

Social Media shouldn’t be new to anyone launching a new website, but just because most of us are aware of its existence doesn’t mean we completely understand the magnitude of its presence. Social Media is constantly growing and changing, but one thing that remains the same with several different social media websites is that you are able to link back to your blog or website from your bio section, various profile sections, and your personal page, depending on the site.

Facebook allows you to link back to your website/blog via Facebook Pages and your personal profile, while other sites are slightly more limited but still offer at least one link. Utilizing social media is a must for most websites in general, but making sure you take advantage of the link building aspect of any social media site you use is key in maximizing your exposure and internet productivity.

5. Forums/Misc

Much like on social media sites, you can use public and private forums to your liking, as many allow live links of your choosing in your personal profile and/or your signature in the actual forums. You should always try to be respectful and follow anti-spam rules in any forums you’re a new member of (to protect your reputation), but if the moment is right, you can also post links in the actual live forum. Depending on how the specific forum allows link posting, you can utilize this for SEO, Link Building, and basic promotion.

To a lesser degree, you can also try non-profit sites that correlate with your site’s main topic, and you can even search for local businesses that match up with your genre, as well.

These five basic link building tips are a great way to start promoting your site and helping to improve your SEO and Link Building right away. The best part is if you search around, you can find credible, respectable sources to provide links, and all for free of charge!

The benefits of your business being found online are obvious, but the challenge of getting there can be daunting. There are thousands of companies that provide different services promising results, and if you don’t have a background in the latest & greatest methods, tools, or technology, it can be confusing on how to best spend your marketing dollar.

Online marketing services can be difficult to buy if you don’t know exactly what you need. Some services (like directory submissions or link-building) could actually harm your websites credibility. Other services are obsolete and provide no value because they are no longer relevant (ex: submitting your site to 100′s of search engines that nobody uses).

The challenge is to provide a simple service that works, and fits into your online marketing budget. NoCoast has been looking to supply value to your business’s online marketing needs in the same way that we help with hosting and web development. We wanted the service to be easy. Easy to buy, easy to understand, and easy to track the results.

The new product offering is called “GoogleBump” (all one word so we don’t get sued). GoogleBump is an SEO/SEM service all rolled into one, always custom, and managed with your monthly marketing budget in mind. Your marketing spend is then divided into two top level groups: Consulting Time & Marketing Spend. You’re paying for an actual person to call you, review your needs, and form a plan to accomplish the goals you’ve set for your website. The rest of your monthly budget is used to purchase the unique services you need from GoogleBump’s vendors. Everything is upfront and transparent.

For more information on Googlebump, visit googlebump.com or Contact NoCoast Sales.

Let’s get started, Domains 101 | TLD’s, MLD’s, & ccTLD’s

As the internet exists to today, every domain name is made of two parts – the Mid Level Domain (MLD), and the Top Level Domain (TLD).

The Mid Level Domain is the “NoCoastHost” in NoCoastHost.com, or the Google in Google.com. This part of the domain name can consist of up to 63 characters in .com, .net, or .org domains. Only letters, numbers, or hyphens are permitted; excluding underbars, exclamation marks or periods. The Top Level Domain refers to the .com, .net, or .org part of the web address. There are also country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD’s) such as .ca for Canada, .fr for France, or .us for the United States. In most cases, you will need or want to reside in that particular country if you wish to purchase a ccTLD.

Picking out your domain name can be critical to the success of a website. Internet users remember websites by their domain names.  The domain you choose could also affect the anchor text of inbound links; and your ranking in search engines. This brings up the question of whether you should decide on your name with a focus on the Keywords for SEO, or the “Branding” of the domain.

Domain Branding

The world’s most popular sites usually don’t use keyword domains. These online businesses have chosen to go with a completely original domain, and brand it. A few examples can be found by reading a list of today’s most popular website by traffic:

1. Google.com
2. Facebook.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Yahoo.com
5. Blogger.com
6. Baidu.com
7. Windows Live.com
8. Wikipedia.com
9. Twitter.com
10. QQ.com

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these companies don’t know about search engine optimization. It’s more likely that they are simply putting more emphasis on creating a brand name around their business.

Keyword Branding

Keyword domains are chosen to take advantage of search engine traffic. When selecting a domain that matches a keyword search, you’re able to rank higher for targeted keywords and thereby benefit from added traffic and more potential for sales. For example, if you were a New York realtor, you might want to target the search phrase “New York Realty” by choosing the domain New-York-Realty.com.

Some businesses that we’ve worked with have elected to utilize a mixture of both; a centralized branded domain and several keyword-rich domains to support their promotional efforts and get the best of both worlds. Overall, it’s best to have a unique name that people remember, but it’s important to consider the option of a keyword rich domain when making the choice.

6 Helpful Domain Buying Tips:

1. Keep it Short: The rule is that the shorter and easier to spell the domain is, the easier it will be to brand.

2. Keep it Simple: Avoid .ws, .tv, .biz, etc. In general, more credibility is given to .com, .net, or .org domains.

3. Keep it Cheap: Don’t go and buy a “Premium Domain” that costs thousands of dollars because you think it will “make” your business.  Your money is better spent making an effective website and getting visitors to it.

4. Keep it Broad: You don’t want to disqualify visitors based off of your domain name alone. Avoid including a specific location, unless you serve only that location. Don’t mention only one product in your domain name if you sell two.

5. Keep it Together: You want to have your domain registered with a reputable full service provider. One of the best places to buy domains would be the same place you plan to host the website. Bundling is both a form of organizing and most hosts, Like NoCoast, will pay your domain fees for free with an annual hosting commitment.

6. Keep it Secure: Both from the standpoint of avoiding Cybersquatting, and to maximize your online presence; buy up all of the TLD’s and some of the MLD’s that you may want in the future. For example, if you’re the New York Realtor, you might want newyorkrealty.com, .net, .org and newyorkrealtor.com, nyrealestate.info, (or any other combination of the TLD/MLD’s). Look for plurals, different name combinations, etc. Some companies often even purchase common miss-spellings of their desired domains, but that’s a different post altogether.

Our Vendor's Server Room

Usually when people compare hosting companies they look at two primary factors; price and service. Service is mandatory when it comes to important technology that your business runs on. Price is also very important, as every business looks to cut cost with the current economy.  However, the speed of your hosting environment is often overlooked.

Google recently announced that your site performance, or the speed at which your web pages load, comes into the algorithm which affects your website ranking. This is a fact that online marketing professionals have known for awhile, but it’s now officially confirmed on the Google Webmaster central official blog.

Google’s primary goal on the search front is to provide users with a good experience. We’ve all waited impatiently for a page to load and that’s why pages that load slower are less important in Google’s eyes.

This important metric is on the radar of any competitive webmaster. Quarterly, NoCoast Hosting reviews our customer’s websites to make sure that they’re within an acceptable specification. This is probably not the case if you’re hosting elsewhere because of the extra costs involved to take the time and look. If you want to check your load time, call us, or download a free tool available only a quick search away.

Why do pages load slowly?

The most common reason is the bandwidth allocated to the server hosting your site. Most shared web hosting solutions don’t usually tell you how many sites are on the same server as yours because there’s no reason from them to do so, and most people don’t know to ask. Over and above missing this important consideration, it’s rare for a hosting company to diagnose your site’s hosting speed.

Hosting isn’t the only reason pages load slowly, but it’s definitely the most common. Other reasons your page is loading slowly could be how the site is coded, how much information is being pulled in with each request (picture sizes, files, etc). Having a really popular or dynamic site can impact load time, as well.

So, if you are experiencing slow page load times, first check your code and make sure it is not the website itself, before looking into your web hosting solution. Most of the problems with code or file size can be adjusted and optimized by your development team, but if your site is hosted on a slow server all of their hard work is pointless.