BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

How to Market Your Small Business Online in 7 Fast and Easy Steps

Without completing each of these steps successfully..the chances of marketing your small business online dramatically decrease. There will always be exceptions but these seven steps should be considered your building blocks to your online marketing success.

1. Your own Website.

And by this I don’t mean a corporate/brochure style site which bores visitors and has them clicking away in seconds. No. You need to entertain as well as educate your visitors.

To do this best I think it is essential to have a WordPress Website attached to your main business website…or even on a separate domain. Don’t just name it blog! Give it a keyword rich, benefit laden title…tell them how your will make their lives better. Use the common terms others use to search for your business in Google [and the other search engines].

There is lots of advice online on how to set up a WordPress site. If you are unsure you can hire someone from a site such as Elance or RentaGuru.

The beauty of WordPress is that it is so easy to use. Non-techie small business owners can add fresh content, offers, audio, and videos to their site without having to pay a webmaster every time. Small business profits is as much about saving money as it is about increased revenue.

Oh, and of course, Google and Social Media love WordPress as well. More free visitors is always nice.

2. Add a means of capturing the names and addresses of your visitors.

Unfortunately, buying cycles are getting longer and longer. This means that people are rarely going to buy from you the first time they come across you.

So, to get around this you will need:

an optin/squeeze page an autoresponder [e.g. Aweber] a series of emails in your autoresponder a free gift valuable enough that visitors will be prepared to give your their info

This may sound daunting if you’ve never done it. However it is easy to hire someone to do it for you…or even better, learn to do it yourself. These are very low cost marketing tactics with excellent results when done right.

3. Generate some visitors to your site.

You can either pay for traffic or generate it using your own time. Either way there is no such thing as free traffic…you pay with time, money or both.

Personally, I think a mixture of paid and self-generated is best. It will depend for you on your present skills and whether you are time-rich or money-rich.

Pay-per-click [PPC] is the fastest way to generate traffic. You can have visitors to your site within the hour. Sadly PPC can be very expensive and there is a learning curve. But don’t get me wrong…well done it can be a gold mine..just tread carefully and test and track your results.

Add new fresh content to your site every week. Make it fun. Make people smile as they learn new stuff and they will reward you by staying longer on your site and coming back for more.

Use photos and videos. Get them involved with competitions and surveys. My favourite tip is this…see what your competition is doing and do the opposite. No one ever got wealthy following the herd!

Other tactics to consider:

Social marketing ezine ads swapping links get all your past and present customers to sign up put your website address on receipts, signs, and all your other marketing banner ads post articles to article directories.

The more you do of each the more success you’ll have.

4. Build relationships with your prospects who have signed up.

The way to do this is to talk about their problems and offer solutions. That will get their attention!

Make sure your personalize your emails. Tell them about yourself, your family and your business. Get them to see you as a friend/trusted advisor: give them tips and tricks industry news free info

5. Make them offers

When your have their trust and they know, like and trust you…they will no longer regard your offers with suspicion.

Keep in contact regularly…you need to decide what you feel is right…but a minimum of once a week.

Make them repeated offers: vary them different bonuses discounts bundle products and services together make sure every offer has a deadline new products and services ask them what they want and need.

6. Keep doing more of the same.

The fact is you will probably lose 20% of your list a month. Make sure you keep doing each of the first five steps…this will give you a list of hungry, loyal buyers. Subscribers who look forward to hearing form you. Who want to hear your latest tips, news, and offers.

7. Never lose sight of where your focus should be:

“How can I offer more value to my customers?”

The moment you forget them and start concentrating on only yourself…they’ll know. It will come across in all your communications and marketing. Put them first, and they will stay loyal, and you will reap the rewards.

Link Popularity – Step by Step Guide to Attracting Inbound Links Through Google Site Maps, Part 1

Internet marketing today offers many methods to develop link popularity by using step-by-step guidance to attracting inbound links through using websites and tools such as Google Site Maps.

Having Google sitemaps set up for your websites can be very beneficial in getting more traffic from Google, because Google sitemaps help Google know about all your web pages and can, therefore, help all your web pages from all your sites get fully indexed in Google, which of course increases your chances of getting more Google traffic. It’s also a very useful tool for understanding better exactly what’s happening with your site regarding Google.

So, how exactly do you set up Google site maps for your website? I’m going to talk you through a detailed example here.

Follow these steps:

1. First of all, go to the Google Sietmaps website. And you need a Google account, a free Google account to use the sitemaps functionality. If you don’t have an existing account, you can easily set one up.

2. Log into Google Sitemaps with your own Google account.

3. So let’s start with adding sites. All you have to do is click on the add a site icon in the middle of the page to add your website address.

4. Next, you need to verify ownership of the site to make sure that this site genuinely belongs to you. So what you need to do is after the website address appears on the page is click on “try our new meta tag verification method.”

5. Okay, as you will more than likely see, the current verification status is NOT VERIFIED. So scroll down…and there are two ways you can verify your site: using the meta tag method, or upload a specific HTML file.

6. Using the meta tag method in this instance. If you have any problems with this there are full instructions on the page. Essentially, take the line of HTML code and add it in the head section of your website’s index page.

7. Selected it, right click and copy, and though to your ftp software. And on the right side will be listed your website, that is the site you are adding to Google Sitemaps. And what you want to look for is the index page. In most cases it will be listed as index.html. Download that, and open this, the index page, in Notepad so you can make the change.

8. Open up Notepad and there’s the index page on the desktop, so drag the HTML code and paste it into the head section, as Google instructed. So edit…paste. And there it is.

9. Scroll back and there’s the meta tag specifically for verifying this page.

Google will give higher link popularity to websites that have site maps. The more popular your website is on Google, which is the top search engine most people use, you will stand a better chance of having your site come up higher on search results that your target market is conducted. The higher your site becomes on the results you also stand a better chance of having people link to your site which will attract more inbound links for you.

If you are out to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about Internet marketing.

Personal Branding – Improve Your Google-Ability

Have you ever typed your name into Google? When you do, is it really you that comes up?

It’s quickly becoming a well-known fact that HR personnel and hiring managers at many companies will type job applicants’ names into Google before deciding who to interview. What comes up when your name is fed to Google could determine whether or not you get a job.

But even if you have your own company or are currently employed, branding yourself online is a free way of making yourself more marketable. For an entrepreneur it makes it easier for people looking for your good or service to find you. For someone currently employed it can help you establish yourself as an expert on what you do, which can help you get a raise or, perhaps even find another, better paying job.

You can improve your Google-ability in three easy steps. Here’s How:

1. Join social networking sites. If you’re already on them great; if not, join. And not just sites like Facebook and twitter, which, while they will come up on Google, are not really designed to present the user in a professional light. You should also join LinkedIn and post your resume. Sites like Meetup.com can show your interests, even smaller, niche social media sites like brazencareerist.com will help. Find sites with message boards where you can create a user profile and post content. The key is, when you do that, use your real name as your user name. That way, those posts or at least that site will come up when someone types your name into Google.

2. Comment on major blogs. Find a blog on the New York Times’ website, and comment on the issues that seem relevant to your career – media, if your interested in publishing; small business if you’re an entrepreneur; finance if you want to be a broker. Include your name in your posts (sign them, or, if you can create a “user name,” use your real name).

3. Google yourself – and when you do, go through the results. Click on the results you want to come up higher in the results list (that is, the results that are actually you). One way that Google determines search result rankings (the order that results are in) is by what links have been clicked on in the past when someone has searched that term. So, on a regular basis (monthly, or even weekly) type your name into Google and click on the results that are actually you and that you want to come up first.

Congratulations, you now know how to improve your Google-ability.

8 Tech Tools You Should Be Using To Grow Your Business

Every business has their own unique needs and tech requirements. Yet, with so many tech tools out there, how do you know which ones are the best for your business?

As someone who lives and breathes digital marketing, I’ve used various tools and programs to amplify my marketing tasks and keep track of specific projects. It can be overwhelming at times, but it also gave me exposure to various tech tools, allowing me to really narrow down my favorites.

I’ve selected some of my favorite tech tools to help me be more productive. Here they are.

Canva

The Canva concept was built on a vision to rival Photoshop and make design easy and accessible to anyone [even people without a Ph.D. in photoshop]. In a nutshell, Canva is a graphic-design tool website. It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals & is a great tool to create awesome content for your business.

Click Funnels

Marketing funnels made easy for your business. ClickFunnels gives you everything you need to market, sell, and deliver your products and services online! Use ClickFunnels to quickly create high-converting marketing & sales funnels for your business. They offer many integration options, hundreds of marketing templates & a wiki of free training. Get on it.

Zoom

Zoom is a leader in modern enterprise remote video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars – it is the perfect tool for Businesses to stay connected with their clients 24/7. Crystal clear video and audio for all of your conference, webinar, meeting or screen sharing business requirements. Its quick and easy to set up a conference and just as easy to join one from any of your devices – desktop, laptop, mobile device or tablet!

Google G-Drive

Back up and get access to files anywhere, on the go, through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more. Being able to store, sync and share documents and data with Google Drive makes it the perfect business collaboration tool. G-Drive starts you with 15 GB of free Google online storage – so you can’t go wrong.

Trello

Hello, Trello! Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process Imagine a whiteboard in your office, filled with colorful sticky notes, with each note as a task for you and your team. Now imagine that each of those sticky notes has photos, attachments & links from other data sources. There is also a space to comment and collaborate with your teams. Now imagine that you can take that whiteboard anywhere you go on your phone and can access it from any computer through the web. Hello, Trello!

Essentially, Trello is a visual, web-based, project management tool for your Business. Its founders started Trello with the hopes to solve some high-level planning issues businesses face on a day to day basis. Boom I think they are onto something.

Vimeo

Elevate your business video marketing with a powerful video marketing & analytics tools – Vimeo! Vimeo is a video-sharing website in which users can upload, share and view videos. It was the first video sharing site to support high-definition video. Vimeo promises more engagement, more collaboration & more growth for your business.

Transferwise

Does your business make overseas transfers? Banks charge a lot for overseas transfers. But, Transferwise doesn’t. Transfer money abroad easily and quickly with their low-cost money transfers. They only charge the Business transferring funds a fee, not the recipient! Excellent conversion rates and unbelievable payment turn around times. [Note: transactions are not always processed by banks over the weekend, so try and process payments on weekdays to avoid delays].

Powtoon

Powtoon is a business tool for creating animated presentations and animated explainer videos. Make amazing videos in minutes with Powtoon. Use their library of styles, characters, backgrounds, and video, or upload your own!

How To Earn Money Working From Home Online

The Internet is changing the way we do everything, and that included making money. The Internet provides an opportunity for anyone to earn money working from home online. In fact, if you did a search on Google you would find that there are literally thousands of ways to make money online.

In this article, I’m going to touch on two different ways you can make money working from home online. Let’s get started with one of the most popular ways of making money online, affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing – This is a great way to make money working from home online and the process is quite simple. You will be required to learn some Internet marketing skills which could be anything from writing articles, videos, PPC, or SEO. Affiliate marketing is where you sell someone elses products and you earn commission whenever you make a sale.

For an example, let’s say you want to sell a product about how to quit smoking. You will be provided with an affiliate link for that product (a unique URL specific to you) that you will be marketing. You then market that product to people that might be looking to quit smoking, and you can do it with articles, videos, PPC, etc… When someone purchases that product through your affiliate link, you make a commission. I would start a Clicbank.com which is the #1 place to find affiliate products to promote and it’s free to sign up.

Google AdSense – You have probably herd of this method before, and I’m sure you know what Google ads look like. Similar to affiliate marketing, you may be required to learn a bit of Internet marketing but instead of selling a product, you are going to be providing information and be like an affiliate to Google almost. Well, yeah that’s basically the process. I’ll give you an example…

Making money with Google AdSense is about providing valuable content on a specific topic. For example, let’s say you are into traveling. You can start a blog about traveling, share some of your experiences, give tips for people traveling, etc… On that blog you are going to place Google AdSense ads and those ads will be related to the topic of your blog. When people are on your blog reading and click on the ads, you make money. The amount varies depending on the ad, but you get paid every time anyone clicks on any of the Google ads.

Today I talked about affiliate marketing and Google adsense. These are only two ways of making money working from home online, however, if you take the time and put forth the effort necessary you can build a nice income over time. Just remember that when it comes to earning money working from home online, the possibilities are endless.

SEO Basics – 8 Key Strategies For Online Business Success

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) can be a big scary place for newbies. Most SEO professional companies charge astronomical prices that may or may not guarantee success.

The search engines are forever changing the way they rank websites and what is important to achieve a higher ranking. Even with these everchanging factors, there are 8 important points that you must use with your website that are not likely to change any time soon.

1. Domain Name

It is better to register a domain with a keyword in it, unless you are trying to brand yourself (think Coca Cola or Ebay). For instance, if your name is John Smith and you sell golf items you would be better off by registering a name like http://www.golfproducts.com instead of http://www.johnsmith.com.

Unfortunately with millions of website domain names being purchased all the time, finding a related domain name not already taken can be a daunting task. Still it is worth it in the end because it will carry more significance with the search engines.

2. Title Tag

This is an often overlooked place to input keywords. Have you ever been to a website and the bar at the top of the page just said ‘untitled’ or ‘homepage’? That reflects how little the site designer knew about SEO. Always put a descriptive title on EVERY page of your website. Put something like ‘Find golf clubs, golf clothes and the latest pro golf tips’, instead of ‘John’s golf shop’.

Make sure not to go overboard and just list 10 or more keywords or long sentences in a row or the search engines will think you are trying to spam them. Think quality over quantity. The title tag should contain one keyword rich descriptive sentence.

3. Meta Tags

The importance of meta tags in today’s SEO world is still being debated. It is still advisable to include a meta tag keywords and meta tag description in your code. A lot of times the search engines will pull your description tag to show in your websites search result. If nothing is there it may not show anything at all or it may pull the first sentence off of your page which might be completely irrelevant to your intended audience.

Do not, I repeat do not list 100 or more keywords in the keyword tag. This technique used to work years ago, but the search engines recognize this technique and will consider it spam. Place no more than 10 keywords in the meta keywords tag.

4. Link Strategies

Another important tip is to include keywords when linking to other websites or pages within your own site. For example it is better to have a sentence like this ‘Find out the latest professional golf tips.’ then to say ‘click here for the latest professional golf tips.’ This also applies to any outbound links to other related websites. Include keywords on the part you want the visitors to click on.

Same goes for incoming links to your site. If someone wants to link to your site give them the code to paste in their website instead of leaving them to do it on their own. Have something like ‘Check out John’s Golf shop for the best golf clubs, golf info and golf tips.” This is much better than ‘Click here for John’s Golf Shop’. Search engines also like longer more descriptive links than just one or two words.

5. Relevant Content

Make sure that you provide only relevant information to what your actually offering or selling. If you have a bunch of unrelated info on a wide range of topics than the search engines will have a harder time pinpointing exactly what it is your site is about. So if your selling golf stuff stick to golf content, don’t throw in articles or links about scuba diving.

6. PageRank

This is still a relatively new term and applies to an algorithm that Google’s search engine uses. Other search engines use similar strategies to Google’s PageRank also.

Basically PageRank is used to define how popular your website is. The more relevant inbound links you have coming into your website the higher your PageRank will be. Google also has a toolbar that you can download for free that will show you a site’s PageRank. The best way to go about getting inbound links is to find related websites with a PageRank of 5 or higher. Then asking them to include a link to your site (giving them the proper code to paste in).

Another way you can receive a higher PageRank is to have a ton of content on many different pages and then linking all the pages together in a way that will raise your PageRank. With that said this type of strategy will not boost your PageRank tremendously, so if your site doesn’t contain thousands of pages don’t stress over it. It is important though to link strategically with keywords between the pages of your site.

You can download Google’s toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/

This is an HTML header tag used to define size of text within the tag. Search engines place more importance on text that is placed within the H1 tag. It’s like telling the search engines that ‘hey this text is important to my site’. The problem is that it can look unsightly. There are ways around this if you know about CSS styles, but for this basic intro article just know that in the end most people won’t be bothered by how the heading looks, and it will make the search engines like you more.

8. Creating Credibility

An often overlooked part of free publicity for your website is writing free articles like this one that relates to your intended audience. There are many websites on the internet where you can submit your articles for other people to place on their websites. I even employ this same strategy for my website. It’s really a win win situation. They win because they get quality relevant content for their site and you win because your name and website info is included at the bottom of the article, driving traffic to your site.

You increase your inbound links (PageRank) and provide free publicity for your website. It gets your name out there branding you an expert in your field of expertise and provides free web traffic to your site.

Make Money Online From Home With Google AdSense

Google AdSense is one of the coolest ways to make money online from home. The fact is, there are so many people who want to advertise their products and services online. They will most likely use paid advertising methods to promote these products. This is good news for you because you can take advantage of this by signing up with the AdSense program.

Google AdSense allows you to make money every time someone clicks on one of the ads located on your website. You can even earn several dollars per click. There are many tactics you can use to ensure maximum earnings with AdSense. Here are just a few:

Place the ads just below the title of your page. A great way to increase your CTR (click-through-rate) is to place your AdSense ads right below the title. This will ensure that people see the ads right when they arrive on your website. If they are looking for something related to the ads being displayed, they will click on the ads.

Use text ads only. I have found that the best performing ads blocks are text. Image ads are too distracting. Keeping it simple is the best way to make the most money with AdSense. A good CTR to shoot for would be around 25%. This means that 25 people out of 100 will click on the ads.

Color combination is also very important. I find that using blue links and gray text is the best combination. This means that the titles of your ads should be blue, and the description of the ads should be light grey. My CTR has been as high as 80% using this color combination. Feel free to play around a bit. There is no secret to earning with Google AdSense. Follow a simple strategy and use Google friendly methods to get traffic.

Here’s how I do it:

Build a website around a product or service. Amazon is a great place to research different products to build your website around. For example, I have a website loaded with great articles about the Nespresso Aeroccino Plus. This is a milk frother. I get about $0.67 per click. This website took me an afternoon to create. It makes me anywhere between $45 and $70 per month. And the traffic I get comes from Google. So it’s free! What’s my secret? Well, I created great content for websites. Then, I started building back-links to websites to get it ranked high in the search engines. Then, I placed my AdSense ads on websites.

Affiliate Marketing With Over 100 Million Google Visitors

We all know that website or blog traffic is the only key to generating life changing kind of money online. And one of the preferred methods among super successful affiliate marketers is commenting because you can reach millions of visitors, you just need to look in the right places.

You will have access to 5 sites within the online marketing niche later in this article. Combined, they have over 150 MILLION Visitors per Month! But you also need to know how to do your own research because that will enable you to reach these kind of sites in Any Niche.

You need to know whether the particular site is in fact indexed in Google. You need to know the page rank and both the quantity and quality of visitors to that site. Visitor origin is extremely important, next to a product in demand (On Your Blog).

In another Blog Post I demonstrate a certain research method that will show you just How to “Look In the Right Places”. You need to research the sites you wish to comment on, and by using the simple tools as demonstrated above, I was able to come across sites with as much as 85.3 MILLION visitors per month.

But get this, they all allow comments and most even allow you to share your website and blog URL. Be careful though because the more professional the site, the less tolerance they will have to unprofessional conduct. This includes desperate sales pitches and a flood of random affiliate links, you only EVER share a URL to your own blog or website in any comments you make.

Most professional sites will provide you with one of 2 most used commenting options;

An On-Site Contact Form – That will allow you to share your URL by providing an option to do so, these forms normally require your name, email, URL and of course your comment.

Comments Feed Plugin – This is when you leave a comment by having to log into a particular social profile or Gravatar account to do so. And as these commenting options do not allow a special window for your URL, you DO NOT share any URL in these comments.

Within context however, you may want to suggest a certain idea and have other people respond to your comment. Should that discussion lead to an increased interest and request to view your site, then you share the link to your personal blog or website.

When You Comment – You always stay on topic, and blend with the discussion at hand. That can only be done by actually reading the particular post you wish to comment on. Don’t just barge in with a desperate sales pitch or offer, it mirrors desperation. Keep your comments as professional as possible, and you will never have to write another sales pitch.

Professional commenting (And Actually Getting results) is a time consuming exercise and must never be done hastily. Apart from researching the sites you wish to comment and even guest post on, you also want to read other comments. Find what a particular audience is looking for so that you may be able to offer a suitable and obvious solution (That Actually Works). And make sure this offer is available On Your Blog, preferably with a proper discussion because you want to inspire your visitor to want to Know More.

The purpose of your comment must be to get the visitor to your own blog or website, you then need to ensure your content is interesting and useful enough to keep your visitor there. A great way to check this is to pay attention to your visitor/view ratio. Your visitors should be less than the views because it indicates that you’re on the right path, it means you have returning visitors.

Now I did promise to provide access to my personal 5 commenting favourites, but I strongly advise you master that research method we discussed earlier.

Moz– This site offer an On Site Comment window that allows you to share your URL as a Hyper Link. Do not enter a raw URL (And Especially an Affiliate Offer URL) anywhere, because this is also a great way to get Moz to recognize your Blog or Website. Share the link to your personal site by means of the Hyper Link option provided.

Once signed up and inside your membership, you need to visit the Moz Blog to be able to comment and share your thoughts. You will also be able to answer questions because this is a site that offers great engagement, I can tell you that.

The Penny Hoarder – This site uses a Facebook comment plugin. You will need to login with your Facebook credentials to comment here, so be sure your profile is as complete and professional as possible. You will not have to register an account with the Penny Hoarder, only Facebook login to comment. And remember to only share the link to your blog or website when asked to do so.

Pro Blogger – And this is a perfect example of the on-site comments window where you have the option of sharing your blog URL. Once your comment is approved, your site will be accessible to reader when they click on your name in the comment. Pro Blogger, like Penny Hoarder requires no registration.

Money Talks News– Another high value site that does not require any registration. Like The Penny Hoarder, Money Talks too uses the Facebook comments plugin so the same rules apply. Only share the URL to your blog when asked to do so.

Always remember that content is the King of sales conversion, and unique content is what will have your site stand out. Content is the single most important part of actually generating money online, and endless research is the only way to be able to provide your audience with the relevant content. You must do the research, so your reader does not have to.

And that is how you can now leverage commenting to your profitable advantage.

Getting a Google AdWords Coupon For Your Online Business

Upon establishing your presence in the internet by creating your website, the next thing to do is promote to have higher ranking and better popularity. There are many ways to promote a website: you can have the organic way of acquiring traffic like using different SEO strategies or paid advertisements.

If you are want to get visible results in no time, then Google AdWords is the one for you. It is a pay per click (PPC) platform developed by the popular search engine to provide better ad placement services to advertisers.

Basically, Google AdWords is composed of text lines for an ad copy that usually appears on the right side of related search result pages. It easily boosts your website’s popularity as your ads are easily visible.

It might cost you a bit as you pay for every click made on your ad copy but other online marketers who are using this platform for quite some time now have a technique on how to save on the marketing cost. And this is by availing a Google AdWords coupon.

A Google AdWords coupon is a voucher that offers discounted or even free services that let you save big time on the PPC program. Usually, the banners that are regularly used will be replaced by keywords.

To avail a Google AdWords coupon, all you have to do is find websites through the use of search engines that give away such coupons for free.

However, these websites give the coupons for free but along with a purchase so you will still be spending some money. But if you find the product interesting, then you can do some calculations and when you have proven that you can still save with what the site offers, you can do the purchase and enjoy the Google AdWords coupon.

You can also join a business network that uses Google AdWords. Being a member of such network, you can also avail the incentives that Google provides to the whole network.

To utilize your Google AdWords coupon, you must ensure that your site is interesting and worthy of visit. If it is, then you can offer Google to use several parts of your site to be used as advertising space.

But make sure that your website has been established for quite some time now and has already earned a number of followers so you can assure them that the ads posted will get good number of clicks. Moreover, having an interesting website can lure more people visiting your site thus making the ads more visible – remember that people become interested once you are able to stir their curiosity.

Now, acquiring a Google AdWords coupon that can save you from expensive operational costs is easy.

Web Hosting Reviews Offer Useful Feedback From Customers

Imagine this scenario: You’re a small-sized online business hoping to find a reliable web hosting service provider that could help put your business on the internet map. You Google one up and immediately sign up on the first reasonable and affordable web hosting plan you find. Months later, your business is in shambles because the attractive hosting plan you trusted turned out to be a mess. You blame yourself because no one told you about the pitfalls of signing up on an unknown host provider. Moreover, because you never thought of using web hosting reviews to check up on customers’ feedback about that host you eventually choose.

This scenario is not as uncommon as you think. It happens a lot in the competitive and cutthroat industry known as web hosting. You put up a website about an important work or research only to wake up one day to discover that your website has been obliterated from online view because the web hosting provider you hooked up with was an unreliable service provider.

Hosting reviews are important because they serve as a road map that could safeguard the integrity of your work, and the long-term profitability of your business. Most importantly, web hosting reviews offer a wide selection of reviews and comments that could help you pick the right hosting company. Besides helping you establish the honesty and level of support from the hosting company, a reliable host review can give you a step-by-step guide of what a good host should look like. It can give you details, even a short list of honest web hosting companies you might like to do business with.

What an honest host review does not do is favor other hosting companies that are widely known as bad apples by everyone who’s in the hosting industry. A good host review is something that encourages customers to other places where they can find other reviews from credible customers.

Host reviews are written by commissioned reviewers who like to rank hosting companies in the top 10 or top 20. Since many of them are commissioned by the hosting companies themselves, it won’t be difficult to understand that most, if not all of them, are unreliable and untrue.

The best web hosting reviews should be updated often, and should carry information, even quantitative data, culled from web reviews on various web hosts. It’s not enough that a host review ranks one hosting company as “having really good customer service”. A reliable host review should go one-step further and compare host providers, even give customer’s criteria on response time, reliability, and customer service.

The best web hosting reviews even gather current information on hosting web sites and breaks down their typical one-year package based on pricing, storage space, and bandwidth. After that, the data is then summarized and at least two independent reviews included in the final results.