Web Optimization Strategies

The host you choose should provide your business with a strong foundation on which can you build on in the future.

In essence there are two kinds of hosting:

• Shared hosting. This means that your web site will be sharing space with a number of other sites. The host manages the service, but it is your responsibility to maintain your site. The major problem with this scenario is that if one of the other people sharing the site experiences heavy traffic your site could go down as your host tries to accommodate the heavy load of visitors.
• Dedicated hosting. In this scenario you lease a server from a host. You'll pay more, but because you're not sharing, traffic with other web masters you don't have to be concerned about your site suddenly appearing to degrading or disappearing. This option is sometimes divided into unmanaged hosting, which provides limited support for lower fees, and managed hosting, which costs more but provides higher-level support, maintenance, security, and services.

Free web hosting has some MAJOR disadvantages, especially when it comes to search engine optimization that I should mention here.

Robots and Spiders Hate Pop Up Advertising

One of the main reasons to stay away from free web hosts is that search engine spiders and robots hate the pop up advertising that free web hosts always use to subsidize the cost of allowing you to use their space. Many search engines and spiders won’t read these pages for content at all, especially if they contain a lot of pop up banners or images which are merely read by the bots as blank space.
Some hosts require you to place a banner on your pages; others display a window that pops up every time a page on your site loads, while still others impose an advertising frame on your site. It is also typical for the web host to add an increasing amount of pop up sites and web banners to your page to get you so annoyed that you finally

spring to pay for a “real” URL. It is also not unusual for your web site to contain big pieces of copy that have been cut off by the site’s bandwidth using up all of your available memory to support a banner or a pop up frames. Why bother writing SEO copy if it is going to keep disappearing from your site.
The presence of pop up frames also cause big problems when it come are not recommended as they may cause problems when you submit your web site to search engines. Google, Overture and Yahoo search engine spiders, crawlers and bots may not even bother to crawl a site with pop up frames.
Usually they will simply ignore your site rather than list it in their directories.
Also if you are planning to exchange links with another site or become part of a multilevel program such as Clickbank, you may not be allowed to join. This is because a pop up or pop under often prevents a person from backspacing to a previous page which is crucial for acceptance into a program like Clickbank.

You Can’t List A Split Domain Names

Web sites that offer free hosting usually offer you what is called a split domain name. In fact some web hosting sites will still stick you with a split domain name even after you have paid for hosting so be careful.
It is absolutely essential that you have your own domain name or very little of your SEO (keywords and keyword phrases) will be picked up by the search engines.
What’s the difference between an owned and split domain name. An example of an owned domain name would www.healthywealthyandwise.com. If you choose a free hosting service your domain might change to look something like -www.freesitehosting.com/healthywealthyandwise.
When people search for your site they will probably be led to a page that advertises freesitehosting.com (a fictional company) rather than your site. Then they will have to search for your site within the free server. You can lose a lot of potential business after they give up trying to enter your business name into yet another search engine in another useless attempt to find you.

No Presence in the Search Engines

Another big drawback of the split domain that comes with free web hosting is that most URL submission services simply will not accept it as a URL or only accept it as a short version. This is because when you try to enter a split domain name into a URL submission service anything after a slash tends to be cut off.
So let' say for example that you decide to enter www.freesitehosting.com /treasure chest into a search engine submission tool. The next thing you know, when your site is listed in the search engines, your full domain name is list, but when you click on it, it leads you to some strange portal or information about how to register a domain name with your host. Even worse it sometimes informs the person searching that your domain name is for sale, which of course makes it look like you have gone completely out of business! More often then not this sad scenario ends up in the total loss of your domain name or a stranger trying to sell it back to you for a pretty penny.

A Shortage of Band Width

All web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your web site can receive per day and per month. This means that if your site attracts visitors beyond a quota that is based on what you are allowed in terms of traffic during certain time period, the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps sends you a bill for the hosting of the excess traffic). Of course if your website is free or very cheap there is even more chance of your website shorting out when it comes to bandwidth.
It is hard to recommend that a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors you expect to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page yet that is exactly the amount of bandwidth that most free web hosting deals offer.