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Many people don’t understand how crucial domain names are to effective search engine optimization. A domain name is capable of changing the entire fate of an online business, and this has never been more true than in today’s highly competitive keyword driven market. A good domain name could mean the difference between a page rank of 10 or a page rank of 1.

Search engine optimization can be a very complicated process to try and master, especially if you are relying entirely upon on-site optimization. Although populating your site with high quality content is definitely a good way to get a high ranking in the search engine, there is nothing more effective than good old domain name keyword targeting.

How Do Domain Names Affect Search Engine Optimization?

This question may seem basic to some, however the answer is a lot deeper than most would expect. If you want to fully understand why and how domain names affect the search engine optimization of a site then you need to understand how the search engines think. Search engines base their search results on the usefulness, relevancy and popularity of a site. Now first and foremost if your site is brand new then it cannot be very popular yet, so we can eliminate that form the equation. However, your site does not have to have any daily visitors to impact the relevancy category of search engine optimization. In other words -you can rank highly in the search engines based on just your domain name alone. By having a domain name that is similar or identical to the keyword or phrase you are targeting, you are automatically guaranteeing yourself a  high ranking in the search engine for that keyword.

How to Find the Right Keyword for Your Domain

This is perhaps the most challenging part of picking your domain name. If you are searching for a domain name that targets a keyword, it can be very difficult to find one that is even similar to a valuable keyword. It is however possible, and with the right researching skills you can easily make it happen. The key to finding a good keyword for your domain name is targeting long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are basically long spin offs of the main keyword. For example, trying to register a domain name with the keyword “loans” (loans.com) would not be plausible. However you could target the keyword “bad credit car loans” (badcreditcarloans.com) and you may be able to secure this domain. If you can get a domain with that name, and place content on it that pertains to that niche, then you will find yourself at the top of the search engine for that niche in a very short period of time.

Optimizing your Keyword Targeted Domain

Once you have your keyword targeted domain, you will need to fill the site with content that is relevant to your niche, and then submit your site map to Google so that it can be indexed. Simply find a few articles that pertain to your niche and rewrite them or write a few unique articles yourself. Once you have done this you’ll being to see consistent traffic to your site on a regular basis, based on your domain name and very minimal work on your behalf.

Siteworx is a web hosting control panel geared toward apprentice web hosting clients. With various easy-to-use settings and features, Siteworx makes any basic task through their user-interface, simplified. The main page features administrative settings such as databases, email, domains, account statistics and files. Also, the interface displays a summary of all settings as well as important links.

As previously stated, the primary advantage to utilizing Siteworx is the user-friendly interface. Each time the user logs in, the current status of bandwidth, disk space, email accounts, databases, ftp accounts and domain names are displayed. Also on the main page is a sidebar that displays the services available.

Additionally there is a main navigation panel that allows the user to jump to any area of the control panel. This interface is clearly built to assist new users in creating and managing their website.

Despite these helpful features, there are two areas where the Siteworx interface fails. These three issues could move Siteworx from an above-average control panel to an excellent control panel. The two concerns including:

• Lack of tutorials and add-ons
• Simple statistics

The first shortcoming is the lack of tutorials and add-ons available for the Siteworx control panel.  Siteworx does not offer a frequently asked questions area or any text/video tutorials to help the user with various functions. Any advanced features must be deciphered by the user which can be tedious and time consuming.

It’s almost as if this control panel was only built for beginners with basic needs. There are no scripts, content management system attributes or other types of add-ons available. Since there are no additional or add-on features, the control panel starts to become dull after many uses and is just your run of the mill control panel.

The second area in which Siteworx is lacking is the simple statistics available. In normal maintenance of a website, statistical analysis is extremely important for tracking. Siteworx offers colorful graphs and charts that are ascetically appealing but don’t hold merit. Users need logs and statistical numbers that help them draw conclusions and obtain pertinent information.

In summary, Siteworx is a good program for beginners. Once beginners learn the basic functions and reach the novice level, the control panel becomes dull and lacks many needed features. Users that need the most basic functions will find Siteworx a helpful interface, but any advanced necessities will be lacking.

Content management systems like WordPress are loved by the web community for their ability to simplify virtually every aspect of website building and management. Instead of learning the ins and outs of web design, a user can now simply download an attractive theme and then upload it into their WordPress admin for quick integration with their website.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of this process is the ability to keep your site’s content the same while changing themes. If you were to try this with a standard HTML site then you would need to change the design of each page individually, and it would take a very long time in comparison. There is only one problem that most people have with using WordPress themes – there is only a limited amount of them. This means that the theme you are using has probably been used by someone else before, which can create a bad image for your site if you are trying to remain strictly professional.

Creating a WordPress Theme the Hard Way

WordPress is based on a simple programming language known as PHP, which has quickly become the web standard over recent years. PHP basically tells files what to do and how to interact with each other. If you wanted to convert a regular site into a WordPress theme you would need to do several things to make this possible, and the average person would not be able to accomplish it. You would need to learn HTML and PHP, and then you would need to learn how WordPress themes are built. Now for the average business this is not even plausible because there is simply not enough time in the day. Luckily there is a program called Artisteer which you can use to create custom WordPress themes using a drag and drop interface similar to Paintshop.

Creating a WordPress Theme With Artisteer

Artisteer is an incredible graphic program that lets the user build a template using a variety of drag and drop tools that bring all of the features of the theme together with ease. The user can select the background image, the header, the layout of the page, and virtually every other aspect with ease. Once you are finished building your theme you can export it into a WordPress theme and then upload it to your site using an FTP client.

Artisteer and Business

You can also sell WordPress themes to people for a hefty price. In fact you could use this program to build websites for other people and then start a web business doing just this. The beautiful thing about Artisteer is that it not only builds WordPress themes, it also builds Drupal themes. Another feature that everyone seems to love about it is the random theme button that will automatically generate a random theme for you to work with. If you would like to minimize the time spent on site creation and make your site look professional and unique at the same time, then I would most definitely recommend Artisteer.

It’s been a great journey but it’s all over now. Read the full story here.

95^th percentile monitoring is a collocation technical term that relates to bandwidth. This method of monitoring logs 30 days worth of traffic samples every 5 minutes. This log is then sorted in descending order, placing the largest traffic spikes at the top of the list. These top 5% traffic spikes are thrown out.

This remaining top value, within the 95^th percentile, is the bandwidth usage for the month. Colocation hosting providers often use this method to bill their corporate customers. Most collocation hosting companies feel this is the most fair and effective method for conducting business with corporate clients.

This method of billing is only really seen in peering arrangements between corporate networks. Since internet service providers need consistent data rates for planning, this method is far from appealing to them. Most sites generate the bulk of their traffic on Mondays. Therefore, Monday practically determines the billable rate for the entire month.

The primary advantage is the user can accumulate up to 36 hours of peak traffic that will be ignored on that month’s bill, regardless of the height of the spikes. Unfortunately this bill method attracts a few criticisms.

For instance:

• Potential to pay for unused bandwidth
• Inbound and outbound traffic calculated separately

Although the primary advantage is attractive, it works both ways. Users can potentially pay for unused bandwidth. For example, if a website only uses 2Mbps for 5% of the time and nothing more, the client would be billed as if they had utilized 2Mbps for the entire month. If this were the case, the cost could be driven down by sending data reducing the bandwidth to the 95th percentile thus knocking the 5% off.

Another criticism is the split calculation of inbound and outbound traffic. Since these are calculated separately, the highest value is used for billing and not the total sum. This is another issue that could cause for a surprising bill. Critics of this method prefer the flat rate billing system, the average amount of data transferred or billing per byte.

Web hosting providers offer many different types of billing. Some colocation providers even offer a 90% billing method to attract those with inconsistent bandwidth usage. There are so many different steps to getting a website up and running and ever-increasing options to keep it maintained. 95^th percentile monitoring is a fair and effective billing method, but it’s generally more useful for individual users to find an alternative with a better fit.