I don’t know about you, but in the past 10 years or so being online, I don’t know how many times I’ve changed hosting companies. It really has gotten so out of hand, that I cannot count on one hand the number of times I’ve moved websites.

I wish I’d known about the reviews you can find over at webhosting geeks.

Visiting their website today I was astounded at the number of hosting companies – not only out there – but listed in an easy-to-use directory. Yep, they’ve taken most of the work out of finding a decent one and posted it all there in black and white (and other cool colors) so you can select a hosting company just right for you.

A visit to just their front page immediately shows you:

o  The top 10 highest rated hosting companies

o  Features like how much space you get, how much traffic you can have without it impacting your bandwidth, and the price

o  Bonus features! Every hosting companies offers something extra (okay maybe not every one, but those listed in the top 10 certainly do) like a free domain forever, and marketing bonuses to get you headed on the right track for doing business online.

You also can easily click on any link for even more information.

But it doesn’t end there!

Down the left hand sidebar you’ll be astounded at even more ratings, the awards these “geeks” have won since 2004 (I love a website with longevity, that says a ton), along with links out to the Web Hosting Geeks’ Blog.

Loving blogs, of course I had to click.

Their most recent post (at the time of the writing of this post) is their April 14th, called Is Your Business Website Secure?.

Excellent advice to read, especially with the increase in attacks and hackers apparently with a ton of time on their hands. Why be sitting on hosting that does nothing to protect your hard-earned, hard worked asset – your online domain!

Here’s another post I found, that I think you’ll also find fascinating. It’s called Fantastico: cPanel’s Best Kept Secret.

Of course you’ll find even more information and stay up to date just by bookmarking the webhostinggeeks blog

If you’ve chosen the “lazy man’s (or woman’s) way” of creating a website, you might find your current hosting company short on this amazing feature. Fantastico is a wealth of ready-made, one click installations of a large variety of extra goodies for your website:

o  Forums
o  Shopping carts
o  Blog installations
o   Drupal (community building)
o  Wikis
o  and a whole lot more.

The great thing is you don’t have to know how to install a single thing, if your hosting includes Fantastico!

Frankly, I could spend hours looking around Webhosting Geeks at all the tools, resources, suggestions, and recommendation the folks over at webhosting geeks provide (and you should, too!)

Never, ever rush into choosing a hosting service. Always do your homework. And again, their website is the perfect stop to begin to make sure you choose the best hosting for your needs.

Enjoy!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Google’s page rank is finally meeting its (long overdue) end.

I don’t know how many pages I’ve visited of late that get decent (or boatloads of) traffic yet have no or very low PRs. In reverse, you’ve got the huge PR website, yet you can easily tell (via add ons, etc.) that no one knows they even exist.

For further proof, head to the Google search itself. Type in anything you want (I typed in “latest news google pr“) then start scanning and researching the leading results. For my particular phrase, front page results reflected posts and web pages posted last month to several years ago. I did check the “pr” and “alexa” for many of them. No surprise to find that front page results included sites without any PR at all – along with some with traffic so minuscule anyone would be shaking their head over “why the front page?” (Maybe our accompanying illustration helps reinforce the head scratching, mind boggling way this is all “determined.”)

It’s fact – while there are popular sites (depending on what you type) like WebMD or Amazon in your search results, you always find within those same front page results websites with no PR and a variety of traffic (low to high).

So I’m going to go further out on that limb to say that I think when it comes to choosing “traffic versus Google PR” that anyone in their right mind would opt for the traffic, right?

Boatloads of traffic!

The Google PR used to be a badge of honor, and many a webmaster or seo expert sweated bullets over this one. Maybe some still do.

However, even the folks at Google cannot or will not tell (or do not know) whether PR really means a hill of beans in the end.

What prompted this post was an inspection this morning of my ezine advertising website.

At one point in its so far 7 year history, it achieved a traffic rank of under 21K and held onto a PR 4 (for this type of niche this was outstanding). Then along came one of those infamous algorithm changes and now… well this morning on my end of the world there is no PR on the site. Zip, zilch, nada.

Now it could be the folks at Google are in some cycle doing updates again. Could be the poor thing just lost out in this latest round of bids for ranking. Be that as it may, thankfully it does sit on the front page for many of the distinct keywords necessary for folks to find it. And that’s what counts.

Google plays with their algorithm so much and so often, you could easily drive yourself insane figuring out your next move. Running around in circles trying to please or appease, you’ll not only get dizzy, but allow much of your competition to race right past you.

What should you be working on? Words. Content. And more importantly, in SEO terms, keyword content. You do have to know the difference between appropriately working those keywords into your content (and which ones are really going to be any use to you in the first place) and cramming them into metas and content like there’s no tomorrow. Do not be short sighted nor mislead by shady tactics.

The time is ripe for the rest of the world to just “do their own thing.” Work your website or blog the way you wish to work it (and start having fun for a change). Go for the gold, go for traffic. Let’s also hope that Google drops this antiquated ranking platform very, very soon.

Related articles

• 20 Factors to Better Google Rankings
• How Google Bowling Relates To SEO
• Article submission to boost SEO

So they came! Hooray! But are they staying?

Today’s discussion is about how to encourage people to dig deeper on your website and/or blog to get at the truth, value, potential of what you have to offer.

Website owners have the ability to quickly move us around their pages with simple click on links and a bit of code (shown below).

Bloggers have at their disposal a really simple (more…)

Four prior posts, to date, have discussed the advantages of using Jumptags as a social book marking tool for your website and/or blog.

These posts have included proof that just taking a few seconds of your time each time you make a post – or even add a new page to your website – to log into your Jumptags account means multiple links in the search engines extremely quickly (we’ve even got pictures).

So why am I returning today to talk once again about the beauty of back link building with this social media strategy?

First, because (more…)

Here’s another great way to handle much of your website social media marketing all from one central spot.

The Bloggers Choice Awards website allows you to enter your own blog (or get someone to do it for you) into their voting system. It also is a great one-stop spot for visiting other bloggers and leaving your comments and more (for backlinking where allowed or just building your standing in a social community by participating).

Visiting others and establishing relationships is what it’s all about

There are numerous categories and you can enter your blog into more than one. Choosing the best categories, of course, makes the most sense.

Then, after the approval process, you can log into your account, click on your blog, and “Get Code.”

You’ll notice in our right-hand side bar, in the same box as our Entrecard drop box, we’ve got a “please vote for us!” button.

For BloggersChoiceAwards, and most all websites like this, you do need to create an account. You can create an account even if you don’t have a blog you want to enter. Sign up just for the fun of it, and, of course, use it as a community to meet and greet others!

So… your assignment for today (lol!), please vote for us!

Yes, it’s all about numbers. The more votes you get the higher your information goes in their system.

But again, there is more here than meets the eye. Comment and voila! you’re getting traffic!

And, it doesn’t end there…

In fact, our blog was entered on March 18th. Yesterday, March 19th (!) for our website url return results in Google, the BloggersChoiceAwards link is already showing (with an indent to boot!).

Screenshot Showing Our YouTube In A Box, BloggersChoiceAwards, and BlogCatalog All Make the Front Page For Our Domain

List your blog at Bloggers Choice Awards! And please take the time to vote for us

Enjoy!