SEO

Recently I have moved one of my customer's sites here to TCH and have been very impressed with the service. To use a frequently used TCH forum term, the support team seems to really 'Rock'. I manage several sites and I have considered moving all of them to TCH. This has lead me to obviously consider the reseller program but I have a problem with offering shared hosting on a server that my customers could get directly for a lot less money ($4.00/mn vs. say $20.00/mn). Justification for the additional charge was partly satisfied by kW's and Lianna's comments on another thread. I agree with them that many small businesses do enjoy being 'spoon feed'. Thus offering services of domain name registration, redirecting DNS server names, adding email accounts, etc would justify the extra expense. However, in Megard's case (removing the service argument): Six domains at TCH directly would be $4.00 a month (300 MB disk space, 5.5 GB transfer per domain = 1800 MB of disk space and 33 GB of transfer). Six domains using TCH's reseller program would be 19.99 a month (550 MB of disk space and 8 GB of transfer to be shared by all 6). If by chance you need more 'humph', you will need to upgrade your reseller account and be over the 'savings' ratio. Is my math correct.... a $3.99 difference for a whole lot more?

For weather use: http://www.timetemperature.com/weather_content.html or http://www.wunderground.com/about/faq/weat...thersticker.asp Other 'free' content you can add: stock quotes, a live stock ticker (see http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/Ticker.asp?use=Cookie). Have fun!

Lianna is correct (no surprise!). This is exactly what happens for me on threads.

Dad-gum I hate dating myself but I am curious…, mad props???

I too am a fan of ws-ftp from IPswitch.

Food for thought: It would be in TCH's best interest to encourage the sites that you host to have an image or text link to TCH's index page. I think most people would be willing to add an image or text link if it is a bit more subtle then the present options. I would create a couple new graphics say in the 90 x 20 size range and make sure one has a transparent background. In addition, I would offer a simple cut and past text link ... either Total Choice Hosting or even as simple as TCH. I would also suggest creating a new content page, Client List or Our Satisfied Customers. This would be an alphabetical list (or by subject) containing links and descriptions of hosted sites. This would obviously be in their best interest as well. Further explanation of 'best interest' would involve a discussion on the complexities of link popularity and their associated importance with search engine rankings. Just a thought.

WhateverJames: A month for dmoz is not too long. Remember that real people (volunteers) review all the sites, this process is quite slow but I think worth it in that it is discriminating and thus creates a selective directory. This is why google puts so much weight on a dmoz link, because it is so selective. One thing to keep in mind, if you are confident that you submitted the site accurately to dmoz, do not resubmit. They work on the first in, first out principal. If you resubmit, you will bump your request to the bottom of your category queue and have to start the clock all over again. It is also worth noting that certain editors (the volunteers) have unbelievable workloads (the more competitive categories). If you fall under one of the competitive categories, it will obviously take longer to get included. There is also, variation in the number of sites each editor reviews in a given period. Some are slow and some are fast. Bottom line ... be patient. Good luck, D. Scott

I think that TCH's position is very clear. It is just that there is so much flexibility built into the awstat config file, which I (and others) would love to utilize. Besides the obvious (DNS lookup, SkipHost, etc.), I plan to reconfigure the appearance to give it more of a 'My Company' look (colors, logos, etc.). It would be nice if these changes were static (i.e. 444) ... you know save time. Maybe in the future you could post that an update is coming? That way we could all 'adjust'. Asking too much?

More kudos for Rick. Turns out that my changes using ws_ftp were not taking affect. Once I used the Cpanel's file manager, she worked perfectly. I still do not understand, everytime I looked at the config file with ws_ftp, the changes were there. Thanks Rick ... you the man!

Well I can answer you in theory ... but I am having difficulty in actual practice. Inside your tmp directory, you will find a directory called awstats (this is outside of your public_html directory). In here, you will see your config file (.conf) for awstats. If you look at this file, you will see there is good documentation on a number of good options including AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser, which is exactly what it says. Set this parameter to =1 (default is 0). Now that is the theory. Read the rest of the threads for potential problems ... not really problems but it seems that the config file gets rewritten each day. Again, read the other posts on this thread. Here is my 'in practice' problem ... the above sounds good (and apparently works for everyone) but I can not get the darn thing to change. I am using ws_ftp and I actually have two config files: awstats.conf and awstats.driedflowersdirect.com.conf. Now I have changed several parameters (e.g. DNS, Allow Update, Skip Hosts, etc.) and nothing is working. My stats are updated daily, the config files are changed and are stable (CHMOD 444) but nothing is taking affect. I just do not get it. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Food for thought: Having multiple domains pointing to the same site is considered spam among the search engines. If you are concerned with search engine rank, I would avoid this endeavor. If you have two domains pointing to different sites and the sites are duplicated is also considered spamming. The two sites must have a substantial differenece in content/layout to avoid penality. Example (actual): In one of the more competitive search phrases, one competitor buys mulitple domain names and point them to their competitors sites. Competitor sites get penalized and drop in rank (or removed from index). Viola ... no more competitor.

Modem Speed & Download Times 14.4k - 58.89 seconds 28.8k - 30.45 seconds 56k - 16.47 seconds ISDN (128k) - 8.40 seconds T1 (1.44 MB) - 2.57 seconds HTML document: http://discussindia.com/html/index.php Document size (Kb): 19.13671875 Total Images size (Kb): 77.66796875 Too big in my opinion, I have a high speed connection too (500-600kb) but most others are not like us. I would alter things (see below). You know, one jpeg file (the little black and white image) is contributing to over half the size: http://discussindia.com/html/modules/My_eG...llery/Art/1.jpg 41.8291015625 kb Also, adding HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes to your images and WIDTH attributes to your TABLE tags will help display ther page quicker. Hope this helps, D. Scott

I am not a Perl whiz-bang but I know several people who are, the O'Reilly series is the only books they recommend.

Thanks for the source. I will go check it out and wait to hear from the others.

Gotcha. Would enabling DNS Lookup globally be to taxing? I like the 'feel' of AWStates but it really needs to be able to resolve IP addresses. I was also looking forward to customizing the look (colors, fonts, etc.) which looked possible form review of the config file. I send stat reports to my clients and I was considering moving more sites here and that was a definite plus. Right now, I use Analog and Report Magic. Having it already on the server would save me time. Keep us posted. Again, thanks for your quick responses. I am enjoying it more and more around here ... and that is because of you'all! (Yes, you'all is a word ... and a dad-gum good one!)

Lianna: Thank you for the quick response. What does it mean to share SSL (specifically)? I guess I really do not understand how the encryption works ... never really though about it. D. Scott

Are these two statements not contradictory?

The site I recently moved here (www.DriedFlowersDirect.com) has on-line ordering and would obviously benefit from SSL. Lianna would you please elaborate on 'upon request'. Thank you. D. Scott Edited: oops, I just read where I was .... Pre-Sale Questions. Well I do have other sites which I maintain and I am considering moving them here too. So, maybe I am still OK???

Google does two types of crawls, a main crawl and a fresh crawl. The main crawl is done once a month and the fresh crawl is pretty much done all the time. The fresh crawl does pick up new pages along the way and will include them into search results right away. This is observed when new pages are 'quickly indexed'. In reality they are not indexed (it is in the 'fresh' index, not the main), as is the case of your site. Google is continually updating the 'fresh' rankings (remember they are crawling all the time), thus fresh rankings are very volatile (in rank and existence; here today, gone tomorrow). This volatility occurs until the page is included in the main index. The good news is that your page (site) is now 'known' and will be included in the next main crawl and thus added to the main index. It is believed that you must actually go through two main crawls before you truly get page ranked within the main index. That is the third part of the story, page rank …. what is refereed to as 'the dance'. This also occurs once a month and is quite an elaborate analysis of each page within the main index. Accuracy (if there is such a thing) is accomplished by multiple reiterations of the algorithm on the entire main index. As you can imagine this takes quite a bit of computing time (multiple days). It is during this time that indexed pages will 'dance' within the rankings. Different then the fluctuations you see with the fresh indexing. Here you actually dance within a somewhat limited range and pages do not disappear (well unless the page is penalized for spamming techniques). Each iteration fine-tunes the rankings, this is revealed by pages actually moving up or down in rank ... 'dancing'.

Sorry, typo ... AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=1 And still no IPs with names. I am doing something wrong. It is as thou it is not reading the altered .conf file.

What am I doing wrong? I changed my config file for AWStat (DNSLookup=1; AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0) and nothing changed. The changes are definitely made in the config file but no update button and no domain names .... What am I missing? Thanks for any help. D. Scott

Guidelines … not sure what you mean here. Let me try … for a new site: 1. Analyze keywords thoroughly (competitor sites, wordtracker, etc.) 2. Optimize with Google in mind (I consider the others too!). 3. Develop a link strategy, which is a continuous project (developed by me, usually implemented by client). 4. Test and Track (log analysis [Analog and Report Magic]), repeat step 2 for fine-tuning. Measurable variables … with regard to search engines, there are many stats available - wordtracker, onestat and a whole lot more. For instance present search engine search share is (please see side note): Google 35.11% Yahoo 32.79% MSN 12.08% AOL 9.01% AltaVista 1.74% Lycos 1.57% Netscape 1.10% Looksmart 0.59% Alltheweb 0.21% DMOZ 0.01% They can give you statistics on the total number of searches handled by the search engine, total number of people who use the search engine, or total number of visitors that search engine send to sites, etc. Are these numbers 'real' and what do they mean? From an individual specific site's point of view, I do not think a whole lot. It is something I watch but 'real' insight is gained from tracking 'real' numbers through individual, specific sites (i.e. logs). The beauty of a well designed site (this includes optimization in my eyes) is that the consumer is coming to you, a specific consumer. It is funny how so many people still view number of hits or page views as a significantly meaningful entity. Real success of site design is the number of 'interested' viewers or what I refer to as 'relevant viewers'. Search engine derived traffic to a properly optimized web site gives you just that, a much targeted viewer. I quantify this using 'relevant viewers' as calculated by the number of visitors who have used 'relevant' keyword(s) for that particular site. Then translate this into percent of actual sells per 'relevant visitor'. I also report the percent of 'relevant visitors' per total visitors. The higher the percent the better I feel I am doing my job. A side note Keep in mind that Google feeds AOL, Teoma, Netscape, Iwon, AskJeeves and Yahoo. Overture feeds Go, Altavista, Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, Lycos, Excite, IWon. Inktomi feeds Hotbot, LookSmart, Overture, Exicte. Yahoo recently bought Inktomi. DMOZ feeds Lycos, Google, AllTheWeb and Hotbot. LookSmart feeds Altavista and MSN. Fast feeds AllTheWeb and Lycos. Another side note A lot of the research being conducted on spider algorithms is actually still done at Stanford (remember Google's lineage?). One can dig for these publications and get insight into what is contained in the alogs of today and, more importantly, … what is coming tomorrow. Not sure that this is what you were after, but I hope it helps. Good Night. D. Scott

Dishman: I agree with a lot of what Junior has to say. This is true but I do not want you or others to misunderstand. To get into Yahoo's directory you have to pay them. High placement within that directory is determined by an analysis of the specific site. They do have a sponser listing which is determined by $ but the web listings are not (determined by $). Search engine ranking is somewhat complex … well as complex as the search engine spider's algorithms. These algorithms are continuously being altered in an effort to obtain better results for users. The analysis includes analyzing the meta tags of a site; the headers of a site; the site title; images of the site; compare keyword usage in the title, images, body text, first words, paragraphs, etc.; look at keyword density (the number of keywords compared to the total number of words); the number of links that point to your page; each link actually get a 'relevance score', the more relevant the better (i.e. a quantitative and qualitative link analysis); site depth and the relevance of those pages to each other; ... the list goes on and on. Now some individuals try to 'trick' the spiders and do what is called spamming. This can include such devious tactics as placing keywords in a color that matches the background (e.g. non-visual to the human eye but the spiders read them), submitting your site multiple times at a high frequency to the search engine (e.g. use of submission software), multiple URL's pointing to the same pages, ... again the list goes on and on. Therefore, the algorithms have increased their complexity to scout out such deviant acts. Spamming can result in mere penalties in scoring (i.e. lower rankings) or all out removal from the search engine directory. My recommendations (I do this for a living) is to first determine what actual search phrases will be used by potential viewers who will be looking for your site. Then, focusing on the keyword phrase(s), optimize your site. Optimize the site before you submit it. I have found that it is easier to obtain top rankings by submitting a site after optimization rather then 'climbing' from the bottom (or somewhere in the middle) and always submit by hand (i.e. no software or services). Actually, several of the search engines have set-up graphics that must be read visually in order to prevent non-human submission. Concerning where one should submit, Google is king (by far!). As Junior stated above dmoz is important, but the reason it is important is that Google views (i.e. 'scores') a dmoz link with greater value then most. Keep in mind that Google also feeds many of the other portals and search engines. My research (multiple years and multiple sites) would suggest that Google produces over 86% of search engine traffic. Concern yourself with all the top search engines but your main focus should obviously be with Google. Your goal should be top five; many people say top 10. I personally like… well number one! I too feel that PPC (pay per clicks) is a poor choice for both web site owners and search engines. The reasons being that the most relevant search rankings should not be based on the almighty dollar! In addition, if you can obtain top search rankings without paying per click (an obviously recurring expense) … why pay? D. Scott

I have the same question as Rickvz in reference to the www.driedflowersdirect.com domain. D. Scott

I use Toast.net to routinely check my high-speed wireless Internet connection (~500k throughput). D. Scott