A Web Site and a Domain Name are two different things.
As a web site owner you will be dealing with a Web Hosting Provider.
In addition, Search Engines will have a huge impact on how well your web site ranks.
It’s important to understand internet basics.
What is a Web Site?
A web site is just a blank spot on the internet until you add files and folders to it. Once purchased through a Web Hosting Provider, an IP address will be assigned to it. The IP address identifies the location of your web site on the internet. It is made up of a combination of numbers separated by dots, for instance 145.435.302.567 Anyone who keys your IP address on their browser would reach your web site. This is where the domain name comes in. It is much easier to remember a name such as yahoo.com than 145.435.302.567. If you buy a domain name through the Web Hosting Provider, it will automatically connected to your web site IP address.
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What is a Domain Name?
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A domain name is an easy way of referring to your web site’s IP address. It can be purchased through a Web Hosting company or directly through an accredited Registrar. The alphabetical listing of over 1,000 accredited Registrars can be viewed at http://www.internic.net/alpha.html. Registrars are competing companies which keep records of the domain names they register, and forward the technical information to a central directory known as the “registry”. This registry provides other computers on the Internet the information necessary to send you e-mail or to find your web site. For additional information on domain names, please visit the InterNIC FAQ’s at this address http://www.internic.net/faqs/domain-names.html. How much Registrars charge to register a domain name is up to their discretion. When buying a domain name you usually have the choice of registering it for 1 year up to 10 years. If you forget to renew it before it expires then you would lose it. To find out who is responsible for a particular domain name, the information can be requested at http://www.internic.net/whois.html. A domain name is broken down in to three parts: |
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www – Called the Host, tells the internet to contact the world wide web. yahoo – Called the SLD or Second Level Domain is the name you choose for your business. .com – Called the TLD or Top Level Domain is the most widely used TLD and the one to choose when setting up your domain name. Other well known top level domains are .org .net .edu .mil |
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It is not unusual for Affiliate Marketers to have numerous domain names since it is important for a domain name to be relevant to the business being promoted. It’s more convenient to manage them if they’re all in one place. If you buy a domain name through a Domain Name Provider and have your site hosted elsewhere, it will be necessary to change the Nameservers information to point to your web host. Don’t worry, it’s easy. |
What is a Web Hosting Provider?
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A Web Hosting Provider is a company with a building full of web server computers that host web sites, have high speed connections, will allow you to place your web site on their server for a fee, will provide cart shopping software, will provide email addresses, and monitor your site for traffic and disk space usage. Web hosting providers offer various plans. Choose the plan that is best suited for your web site. A business that sells a lot of products would choose a plan offering their own unique server and a shopping cart while an affiliate promoting merchant products would choose a less expensive plan. When signing up for a web hosting plan, you’ll have the option of registering a domain name at that time, but you can pass on that if you plan on buying your domain name elsewhere. Once you have a web site, it can be controlled through the cPanel (control panel) to allow you to do certain things like add new domains, create sub-domains, setup email addresses, setup databases, and provide you with all sorts of free useful tools. This is where the domain name comes in. It is much easier to remember a name such as yahoo.com than 145.435.302.567. If you buy a domain name through the Web Hosting Provider, it will automatically connected to your web site IP address.
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| Top Web Hosting Providers |
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These are top ranking Web Hosting Providers which offer unlimited domains, excellent reliability and uptime, top notch customer and technical support services, quick tech response time, ease of use, a control panel, and useful tools to help you create web sites. |
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Hostgator is the Web Host that I use. If you decide to signup with Hostgator, be sure to get the “Baby” package. Any tutorials I give regarding web hosting will be done using Hostgator. |
What are Search Engines?
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Search engines create computerized algorithms that prioritize the information gathered by their Spiders and indexed by their software. The algorithms are based on what the search engine companies think the visitors want to see. The web pages that are designed the most closely to match a search engine’s algorithm gets closest to or on the front page of that search engine. Web Crawlers nicknamed Spiders are Small computer programs which surf the internet gathering information. Owned by the search engine companies, a Spider surfs the internet automatically, and works non stop in the background. A Spider clicks on all the links of web sites and keeps records of the information it finds on every single page it visits. Although spiders collect random information, much of the information collected is from people who have submitted their web site addresses to the search engines. All the information gathered by the search engines’ spiders are indexed. Each search engine has it’s own computerized algorithm for deciding how web pages should be ranked. The higher the ranking would place your web pages higher in the search return. Search Engine Consultants are businesses that specialize in figuring out search engines’ algorithms. Once they’ve figured it out, they sell the information to people who want to rank as high as possible. Your goal is to have your web pages displayed within the first three search pages. Be sure to submit your web site to search engines once your web site is filled with quality content and optimized as much as possible. If you wish you can pay a Search Engine Consultant to do it for you, but it’s expensive to rank high and it’s not guaranteed.
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