Optimizing your website for search engines is crucial nowadays to get found on the search engines. We all know the higher you rank, the better exposure you get, which could mean potentially more business. So you go out and hire a company to optimize your website, and slowly find (if they did it properly) that your website now begins to show on the first page or second page of Google for your main keyword. “Excellent!” you say proudly. Since you’re now ranking on the first or second page of Google, business will begin pouring in and you’ll soon be a multi-millionaire, right?

Well… not necessarily. After you website has been optimized, you need to determine how effective the optimization strategy is. This is done not by simply going to Google and searching your keyword, but by monitoring your website statistics, or traffic. I get at least 20 emails or phone calls a week from people who are totally confused by their website statistics, and believe with all their hearts that their traffic is excellent and they have every reason to feel happy and proud of what the optimization company has achieved for them. This is always the part I hate… having to burst their bubble.

When reading your website statistics (or traffic report if you will), you need to first understand what you’re looking at. Most website statistics programmes offer colourful charts and graphs which is great, but don’t get distracted by them; look at the actual data in the tables. These are some of the main things you need to look closely at:

1. unique visitors
2. total visitors
3. most popular pages
4. visit durations (how long people spend on your website)
5. external links to your site (other websites that had a link to you, that people clicked to arrive at your website)
6. which search engine robots or spiders are visiting your site, how often, how much bandwidth they used
7. what keywords people typed into a search engine to find your website

One of the main misconceptions I hear every day is “look how many hits my website got this month”. THIS IS IRRELEVANT. I cannot stress this enough. A “hit” on your website (or web page) measures how much content was downloaded when the person or visitor arrived at your page. Here is a simple example: You have 1 page that serves as your website. This 1 page consists of 4 images and of course, the HTML page. When I visit your website, it will be counted as 5 hits- 1 hit for each image that was loaded on the page, 1 hit for the page itself. This has nothing to do with traffic itself, does not give you any information on how popular your website is, and most importantly, DOES NOT MEASURE VISITOR TRAFFIC! I know of a couple of dishonest search engine optimization companies that will report traffic “increases” to their clients by sending them a report of “hits”. Hits always look more impressive as this figure is usually in the ten’s of thousands for a proper website, if not more. This misleading figure is usually misinterpreted as visits of traffic. I’m sure you’ve heard many people throwing around the term that their website got thousands of  ”hits” this month- unless they’re actually talking about visits, they have been mislead to believing this is actually the number of visits.

Which website statistics programme should you use? This is always tricky because there are so many excellent ones out there for free. Google Analytics is a simple enough one to use, but it requires javascript code to be entered in the footer of each page you want to track. I highly recommend a programme called “AwStats” . Awstats also requires installation if your hosting provider does not already offer it, but it is well worth it. It is 100% free to download and install, and shouldn’t take an experienced developer more than 10 minutes to install on your hosting package.

In short, make sure you understand your website statistics before jumping for joy at all the new traffic and visitors you’re getting, and most importantly, don’t confuse hits with visits!

Many people who are having a website developed for the first time do not realize there is more involved than just getting a website- you need hosting!

Hosting a website basically means once you have a completed website, the files that make up the pages of the website need to be connected to the internet, so people can find the website by typing in the domain name. What is a domain name you ask? Domains are ‘www.website.com’, for example. You need to have a domain name to go with your hosting package, so people can type in the website address and find your website. Proper hosting companies will arrange all this for you, but you should have some basic information in order not to get ripped off:

Hosting companies offer a variety of hosting packages to suit your needs, anything from a basic “starter” hosting package to full blown “Professional packages”. What is the difference between the packages and why do they cost different amounts?

Simple. Different hosting packages will include different features and functions on the server which you will have access to. The more included, the more it costs. However, there are 3 main things you need to look for when choosing a hosting package:

1. Bandwidth
2. Disk Space
3. Databases (how many and what kind?)

Bandwidth is one of the most important features to consider when choosing a hosting package. Make sure you have a minimum of 15GB per month of bandwidth, to ensure your website is always online. Many hosting companies penalize clients for going over the allocated amount of bandwidth, and do different things when this happens. A good company will increase your bandwidth for the month and monitor your bandwidth more closely next month. If they find you are regularly surpassing the quota, they will contact you and ask you to upgrade your package, or charge you separately for more bandwidth. A bad company will suspend your website so it is no longer on the internet, and put a placeholder page asking the owner of the company to contact them. This is simply bad business, as it could effect YOUR business if the website is down…

Remember: do not get drawn in with useless features like ‘unlimited email accounts’. As a hosting provider, I can tell you it is a simple matter of a few clicks for a hosting provider to increase the number of email accounts for a client’s hosting package. Some hosts like to boast ‘unlimited email accounts’ and bump up their prices to justify this. Fact is, you will never need unlimited email accounts! 

Finally, how much should a normal hosting package cost? This depends on the provider. A commercial hosting company will always give you the best rates, as that is their sole business and they have rooms and rooms full of servers, so they benefits from economies of scale. While their prices are good, their customer service may not be… always remember a commercial hosting company will NOT assist you with website problems, only issues related to the server. Some may offer help, at an additional charge.

Smaller firms (like us) offer hosting as well, but cannot benefit from the same economies of scale as the commercial hosts, as we do not need rooms of servers. Evolution in DesignZ, for example, rents a server from a commercial host, and offers hosting. The packages may be a little more expensive than the commercial hosts, but you receive personalized service with smaller firms. For example, my clients can call me directly (anytime, and yes, even weekends) if they have an issue or even a question about hosting. If they have a problem with their website on our server, we fix it free of charge! The point is you get personalized service and the security and convenience of dealing with one company for everything.