Protecting Your Website

Posted by Alec Hess

____________________________________________________________________________________________

It’s amazing when you think about how much has changed for business thanks to the Internet. Profits have soared for many traditional firms thanks to online marketing and simply the value of people being able to find info on them at anytime.

Your business website is now a virtual requirement. In fact, some companies can't even afford to risk having their websites down for a few hours. That’s why you should make sure the company hosting your website has the best servers, with the smallest chance of downtime, can help you 24/7 with any problems you might experience, and provide the latest in security, spam protection and server redundancy.

This isn’t your father’s Internet. The good news is that there are numerous hosts out there that are great.

Choosing the Right Host

What does web hosting have to do with your website? This is where your website is located, using the server space that your host provides. There are a lot of hosting companies out there, so use these requirements to filter out the bad ones.

1. Accessibility: Believe it or not, some hosts like to make it difficult for you to make changes to your own website. So make sure you have access to the server.
2. Support: If your website could only work perfectly until the end of time, then support wouldn't be necessary. But as problems and glitches do come up, some even possibly disastrous, you want to know that you have someone that's ready to be contacted. Look for 24/7 support and customer service from your host.
3. Backup: Imagine if you deleted your whole contact directory on your website. Situations like those are when you will appreciate having a host that does backups on an automatic or regular basis.
4. Scale: In the future, you might be thinking of expanding your business. Of course, you would want your website to expand with you. Keeping this option open could prove handy depending on your plans.
5. Exiting: With this, just make sure your host will not make it hard for you to move elsewhere. The more confident the host is in providing their services, the easier it should be for you to make a change if needed.

Choosing the Right Domain Name

Your domain name is the address of your website, your url (Uniform Resource Locator). As important as it is, here are some tips you want to consider when you choose one.

1. Use your company or brand name. It’s what people think of when searching for your site.
2. Dot-com still rules. There are a number of other extensions such as ".org" or ".net", for businesses they pale in comparison with the popularity of the ".com". One thing to note here is if you can, buy the other extensions of your domain name so others won’t.
3. Short and sweet. Shorter URLs are easier to remember and easier to spell so more likely to be found. If it's a domain name that can be easily misspelled, buy the domain names of the misspellings so a keyboard typo won’t lose your company traffic.
4. Mobile. The number of smart phone and mobile device users continues to grow rapidly, so make sure you have a mobile version of your site that gives them a good expereince.
5. Don’t let your url expire. Sign up for an automatic renewal reminder with your provider.

  The bottom line is, build a good foundation for your online presence; choose a good url, and have it hosted by a trusted sophisticated hosting partner. On the following tabs we present some of the best. Now go forward and make your fortune.

Alec Hess is a marketer and small business expert as well as Principal of Full Voice Media and Vanguard Healthcare Products; and co-founder of BizSaves. His focus is on small business success and he has consulted, guided and advised many firms.
_______________________________________________________________

Some Other Great Articles On Hosting/Domain:

BrianWong.com: My Top Internet Marketing Tools In 2012 Entreprenuer: Choosing the Right Domain Name Entreprenuer: Picking A Host for Your Small Business Website (Infographic) Forbes: Why Defensive Domain Name Registrations Aren't a Good Deal for Small Business