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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Choosing your blog hosting arrangement

Setting up a blog may seem daunting but it really doesn’t have to be. However, the first step, how to host your blog, can be difficult if you haven’t done it before.

List of varous factors in choosing a web host

Some things to consider

So, here are some things to know and consider before making your choice…

  1. check out the various advantages to hosting yourself or through your blogging software
  2. if you already have a website, adding the blog to that site means you share the traffic, have only one URL to promote, can see combined statistics through your host and only have one host relationship to deal with
  3. think long term – what do you want from your blog? how do you want to manage it? Just because you don’t need a feature now shouldn’t be a major reason in your choice. For example, a hosted blog won’t let you add Adsense ads which may be something you want to do in 12 months when you’ve built up some traffic.
  4. how technical are you – or how much technical support do you have? While installing and updating the blog software doesn’t require html knowledge, some people find it challenging so a hosted blog has appeal
  5. what will your audience expect? Do you need to earn their trust? Seeing your blog on your domain and branded appropriately goes a long way to building trust and credibility
  6. minimise risk by choosing a reputable host which ever type of hosting you go with
  7. assess the different risks for your business

What other questions are you considering (or did you consider) as part of your decision?

Hosting location not important

Michelle of Shel Designs added an article to her latest newsletter about where your domain name is registered. She states that where your domain name and hosting are located are not important for your site’s ranking. In fact, she writes “Where it is registered or hosted will not affect the way Google (and other search engines) rank your site.”

I have had clients advised to change their registration and hosting to improve their rankings and it really annoys me when I know they could improve rankings easily in other ways instead of paying a lot of money to move without benefit.

The only ways I think hosting affects a website are:

  • great distances between a site visitor/user and the server can make it a little slower. So hosting a .com.au site in Australia or New Zealand would make no significant difference but hosting in the USA might load a little slower
  • time zones can make it harder to get assistance
  • a drastic event near the server can impact a distant site even though the event wouldn’t otherwise impact on it. For example, when the tsunami hit Asia a few years ago, a number of cables were disturbed under the sea. If your site connected to its server via those cables it may have been unavailable whereas an Australian server connection wouldn’t have been damaged. Obviously, this isn’t a frequent occurrence.

Next time someone tells you to move your website, remember that a reputable distant server/host is better than a close one you don’t know or trust. And it really doesn’t matter where you register your domain name, other than for your pocket (there is a huge variation in registration fees.)