When it comes to running an online business, most people will quickly drop services that don’t produce results.  If their SEO company isn’t providing high enough rankings they will find a new company to use.  If their website is poorly designed, they will find someone to redesign it.  If their content creators or social network experts are not meeting expectations they will find someone else.

In spite of that, however, web hosting providers seem to get a pass.  Most people feel that moving their website is a difficult task, which is why they hesitate to change their hosting company, even when they think that a change should be made.  In most cases, the question is no longer is the hosting company meeting expectations, but rather the question is whether or not the hosting company is doing poor enough to justify the change.

When trying to decide if it time to switch hosting providers, there are a number of different variables that you can look at, however there are certain ones that tend to be the most important.  The most important issues all fall under the same general category, which is often referred to as “the basics”.  The basics are the things that almost every hosting provider highlights on their sales page.  This would include things like allowed bandwidth, disk space, uptime, and software compatibility.  If your hosting company is currently failing to meet your requirements in any of these categories then making a switch should be considered a priority.  If your website is down more often than it should be, then you need to make a change.  Most of the top tier hosting providers offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which means that your website will be down a maximum of a few minutes per month for maintenance.

If you find that your hosting provider is not compatible with key pieces of software then you should definitely make the change as well.  There is no point in sticking with your current provider if they are preventing you from using tools that will increase your profits.  For example, let’s so that you have a piece of software that will convert 5 additional leads per month and at least one of these leads will convert into a sale.  If you pay a high end programmer to move your entire website, it should still cost less than $100.  This means that economically, paying a professional to move your website to a more compatible hosting service will be a more profitable move in the long run.

If your web hosting provider does meet all of your basic needs, then it is time to look into the extras.  If you are only considering making a switch because of “extras” like unlimited video hosting or a reduced monthly rate then it could be a little harder to decide whether or not to make the switch.  It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.  If you will save more money in the long run, or increase your level of profits then making the switch should be a no-brainer.  However, if you just want to try out a new piece of software that they are offering or feel like they are just a better choice then the decision could be a little more difficult to make because it becomes more of a judgment call.

In the end, there are two different potential categories to decide whether or not you should switch hosting providers.  The first category is “the basics”.  If your reason for considering a switch falls into the “basics” category then deciding to make the switch should be automatic.  When your hosting provider does not offer you everything that you need to be profitable, then you should definitely move on.  On the other hand, if your reason to switch hosting providers falls in the category of “extras” then making your final decision can be a little more difficult.  It comes down to deciding whether or not it is a good long term decision.  If you aren’t sure, you can always set up a smaller “test” account with the provider that you are considering.

To your success,

P.S.  Click here to Learn How to Build your Business Online like never before!

PPC or Pay Per Click marketing has been popular for a long time and is one of the best ways to generate targeted buyers on a consistent basis.  The primary drawback to PPC marketing is the cost.  If you set up a campaign that prove to be ineffective then you can quickly find yourself way behind.

On the other hand, if you set up a campaign that has a high conversion rate, then you could end up with better results than you ever expected.  It doesn’t matter if you PPC marketing budget is couple of dollars, hundreds of dollars, or thousands of dollars, these 3 tips will help you get more out of every cent.

The first thing that you need to do is to take another look at where you are buying your ads.  If you have done any PPC marketing, then you have already looked into the big name options like Google, Bing, and maybe even Facebook.  However there are a wide range of other options that are available if you are willing to search for them.  For example, many of the larger websites run their own PPC or advertising program.  Recently, the ESPN website become a part of this trend.

There are also blog networks and website networks that run their own independent PPC programs.  In most cases, not only will your ad stand out because your competition likely isn’t advertising on them, but the cost per click is much lower.  By taking the time to find the right websites or networks to advertise through, you will not only pay less per click, but will also be able to connect with your target audience more effectively.

The second thing you need to do is test your ads.  It doesn’t matter if you are advertising on one network or 20 networks, if your ads don’t convert then you will blow your budget with very small results.  Keep in mind that your ad is not only your actual PPC text, but your landing page as well.  There are two separate elements to creating a conversion – getting the customer to click on your ad and getting them to sign up for your list or make a purchase.  It is also important to remember that your conversion rate is the only way to determine how effective your campaign is.

Without conversions you are not effectively advertising.  It is similar to running a television ad when your target market is sleeping.  Additionally, different ad networks may have a different “type” of user which means that your best ad on one network may be your worst ad on another – the same is true for landing pages.

The final way to stretch your PPC marketing budget is to take advantage of different methods that you can use to lower your cost per click price.  For example, Google has a score for each campaign and the better your score, the less you will have to pay per click.  This means that by making more targeted ads you can stretch your advertising dollar.  Other networks give discounts based upon how much you spend.  For example, if you get $50 a purchase of $200, then it is better to pay the $200 rather than $100.  In the end it all comes down to your cost per click.  Anything that you can do to minimize this cost will help you stretch your marketing budget.

To your success,

P.S.  Click here to Learn How to Build your Business Online like never before!

It can be frustrating to put so much effort into your SEO strategy without seeming to be able to grab that coveted number one position on the search engines.  It is surprisingly common to see people get stuck at number five or six in the rankings.  If you have done everything that you can think of to get ahead in the rankings game, but still aren’t at the top, here are 4 quick SEO tactics that might be able to help.

The first is pretty simple, but most people overlook it.  Take a look at what your competitors are doing and “steal” their keywords.  See what keywords they are using in their title tags.  Find out what keywords they are using in their anchor text, especially the ones that are pointing to their money pages.  Some will even include their keywords in their meta data.  However, keep in mind that savvy webmasters will actually put dummy keywords in their meta data to keep people like you off their scent.  This might sound like a shady idea, but only because it is called “stealing”.  Think of this way, call it learning.  All you are really doing is learning what they are doing and then doing it better, if possible.

The next thing that you should do is put a lot of effort into getting a double ranking.  The first thing that you need to do is find two pages in your site that are both ranking in the search engine results for the same keyword. Ideally both of these pages will already be in the top 20.  Now that you have your two pages ready to go, it is time to optimize. The first thing you need to do is place reciprocal links for the keyword you are trying to double rank for between both of those pages.  That will help search engine spiders tie those pages together.  Next, you need to make sure that both of those pages are optimized for the same keyword.  If you still can’t get a double ranking, then focus a little more SEO time getting backlinks with the right anchor text.

Another important SEO tactic, if you are having trouble boosting your ranking, is to take some time and create a short list of high value backlink sources.  Ideally they will come from related sites and authority sites.  A few additional high power backlinks could be exactly what you need to bump your website up those last few spots.  If you aren’t sure whether or not your links are going to be powerful enough, use a tool like LinkScape to calculate your MozRank.  This will tell you the quality of your incoming links, whereas other tools will focus on quantity.  Having this information will be able to tell you what to do next.  If your competitors have a higher MozRank, then you need to improve yours.  If your MozRank is higher, but you still cannot rank above them, then you probably have issues with either on page optimization or poor anchor texts.  Either way, you will find out what needs to be improved upon in your overall SEO strategy.

The final thing to do is use Google Webmaster Tools to do your own site diagnostics.  A lot of people will use 3rd party sources to do a website audit, but none of these sources knows more about how search engines are seeing your website better than Google itself.  You should check the following at minimum: make sure that you have a sitemap submitted, find duplicate tag and descriptions and fix them, find out if you are creating an issues for spiders, find any 404 pages, and you can even tell Google how to index your images.

All of these tactics will be a great addition to any SEO strategy and could be exactly what you need in order to get to the top of the search rankings.

To your success,

P.S.  Click here to Learn How to Build your Business Online like never before!