You have seen the deals out there all of your life.  They are for “a limited time only!” or “the special weekend offer”.   These are what I would call “today’s special” marketing pitches to your customers or soon to be customers.  I am amazed though that more web hosts are not taking advantage of this type of deal.

It offers a unique service for one.

Think about it like this, if you are comparing two web hosts and one has a special offer for you only good for 24 hours and the other has nothing special going on, which one excites you more?  I have said it time and time again, to get “buzz” in the hosting world we live in you have to strive to be different and unique in every way.

This is a way you can make yourself stick out like a sore thumb in a good way.  Not like that time you wore the sombrero to your high school reunion.

The first place I saw doing this was GoDaddy.com.  They have a special “Today’s Offers” section that is well worth checking out if you are needing some inspiration.  Last marketing tip for the day would be to also use this to pitch offers and specials to your current customer base too.  Try to find something you can offer them that is new and they would be happy paying for.  Perhaps you give them a special deal for being current customers or yours?  Now you are thinking along the “today’s special” line of marketing.

What makes a web host a great place to host a blog? Well these days just about any hosting account is ready, will and able for a good ol’ WordPress install or two.

Easy One-Click Installs?

Look at what scripts and software they have ready to install on day one. Do you have one click install access to WordPress, b2evolution, Nucleus or others. These are some of the more familiar names you might see tossed in with Fantastico, and addon for cPanel that gives you easy one click access right from your hosting control panel.

Disk Space and Bandwidth for Blogging?

Next thing you will want to check out is the disk space and bandwidth limitations. If your just starting your blog out - do you have enough room to grow? If your blog is already established then do they have enough disk space and bandwidth to support you for a long period of time.

Server Resources for Peaks in Traffic

Server resources also come into play when it comes to blog hosting. Just in case your article gets dugg on digg.com or hyped up on any of the other big social news and link sharing sites, can your web site take the punch in traffic? This is something you should discuss one on one with your web host - but it most cases (unless the host isn’t that established) you should be OK in this department too. If using WordPress there are also addons that will make sudden growths in popularity more bearable, such as the WP-Cache addon.

Truth be told, you might have to suffer through a few web hosting lemons before you find the web host that is best able to deliver you the best blogging experience. It never hurts though to have a check list like the one above before you start shopping so you know what it is you should be getting.

From coast to coast, and all around the hosting world we all have times where we contact support and they say that nothing is wrong. Today I’ll show you how to paint a better picture for support of your hosting problems as well as…

Well a lot more hosting podcast goodness right here on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 148!
Running Time: 16 minutes | File Size: 7.10 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• DemoWolf Introduces Subscription for Flash Tutorials!
• Learn to Gather the Right Info Before Contacting Hosting Support!
• cPanel Releases a Virtual Private Server Edition?
• Find a Web Host that is Perfect for Your Blog!
• Hosting Spotlight Shines on Dan “W3Counter” Grossman!

I really do appreciate you listening to episode 148, and this week we have tons a various content on board and ready to go so that you too can learn to become a better web hosting guru. From experts to novices, everybody is welcome because I think all can get something out of today’s broadcast.

Well this most recent Easter break kicked my butt as far as time goes, so afraid my time to do a podcast this week was cut a little short.  However I was able to go through the segment archive for all the past segments we have done on this show and organize them a ‘bit more. 

This is one complaint out of many I hope to give worked on this next week or so.  As you can see on WebHostingShow.com I have things divided up into:

• Backend Stuff
• Beginner Help
• Commentary
• Downloads
• Free Hosting
• Hosting News
• Online Tools
• Shopping Advice
• Web Design
• Web Hosting Tutorials

If you have any other suggestions for the podcast or the podcast web site, please feel free to let me know.

I got a question from a Web Hosting Show listener last week about how to do a traceroute. Now this might be hosting help 101 for some of us out there, but it never hurts to get a ‘bit of a refresher course.

Here is how you can do a trace route from your PC (Windows XP, Vista):

1. From the Start menu, select “Run…”
2. When the run box comes up, then type in cmd
3. When you get the command prompt, enter tracert yourdomain.com
4. Hit the “enter” key on your keyboard and wait.

For the Apple people in the crowd, you can follow these steps:

1. Double-click the Hard Drive icon > Applications folder > Utilities folder > Network Utility program.
2. Select the trace route tab and enter the domain name
3. Press the “enter” key and wait.

Hope that helps. Doing a traceroute can be very helpful when figuring out if your web site is down or if there is some bottleneck between yourself and the server you are hosted on keeping you from pulling up your web site.

On this week’s show I am going to give you a run down on some of my favorite search tools to find files hosted for free on the services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload and more. Also tune in to hear about the basics of traceroutes for both Window and Macs as well as a lot more hosting goodness packed into one awesome podcast.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 145!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.33 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Best of the Rapidshare and Megaupload Free File Searchers!
• Web Hosting Basics - How to Traceroute?
• Is The Domain Up, or is it You?
• Answers for out Listeners Seeking Plesk on Shared Hosting!
• Learn to Spot Top 10 Web Host Scams!

If the web hosting industry was Gotham City, I guess that would make me the defacto Batman. Here to right wrongs, and help you with your web hosting troubles. Actually not much of a Batman fan, always like the Green Lantern more myself.

Search engine optimization (otherwise known as SEO) is not as difficult as some may make you think. Honestly, if you use a little common sense, and you learn the basics then you should have no problem at all at making the search engines fall head over heels for you. Here are 10 tips I think anybody could use to make the search engines give you a little more love.

1. Don’t overuse or “spam” the meta keywords or description with content that is not related to what is on your actual page.

2. Contact other webmasters that deliver content much like your own and get them to link back to you. The social aspect of Web popularity can not be forgotten about. Chances are if somebody like something you do - they will link to it to share with others.

3. Make sure your title tag changes depending on the page you are viewing.

4. Make good use of your headlines, and keep them in order. Your main headline should be h1, then go to h2, and then to h3. Also toss a couple (one or two) keywords in your headlines.

5. Use common sense. If you hear about an awesome SEO tip online somewhere, and it sounds kind of fishy - don’t do it. I’ve never met anybody who made it to the top of Google and said it was all thanks to his free 101 SEO dirty tricks handbook he bought of a page that looks like it was designed in 1995.

6. Create a XML sitemap and learn to keep it updated. Many content management systems offer plugins for creating them too. The best one for WordPress is Google XML Sitemaps.

7. Use relevant keywords in the content of your web page, but do not go overboard. If you try to go over the top with the keyword usage - you are often labeled by the search engines as a “keyword stuffer” and that can hurt more than help in the long run.

8. Use Google’s webmaster tools and also submit yourself to Yahoo’s site explorer. Both offer ways to submit and watch your status in those two search engines.

9. Keep tabs on the search for your web site’s name. I often search for “web hosting show” just to keep tabs on who else is showing up for that search phrase.

10. Get use out of title tags for links and anchor text for images. Use them to describe where they go and what they are though.

Be patient, your search engine rankings are not going to change in a day. As long as you are delivering good content that is relevant to your topic of choice the search engines should love you.