Choosing a Web host provider for your site is no small decision. When you make a choice of a Web page host, you are actually placing your Internet business in the hands of your Web host provider. Choosing the wrong Web page hosting plan can cause permanent damage to your search engine placement.

Selecting a Web page host is like renting an office. You want to get it right the first time. It is always possible to move somewhere else, but it's no easy task to move your entire business - not to mention the damage that already could be caused by then. We are going to look at some little known facts about Web page hosting and how it can effect your search engine placement.

Did you submit your site over and over again without ever getting it indexed in the search engines? Or was your site indexed, but is nowhere to be found when you type your search terms into the engines? Your Web host provider might be the cause of that. As AltaVista states: "If being found via search engines is important to your business, be very careful about where you have your pages hosted. If the hosting service also hosts spammers and pornographers, you could wind up being penalized or excluded."

AltaVista is not the only search engine enforcing this policy against certain Web Hosting services. This is a common practice causing many sites to lose their rank. Choosing the right host for your Web hosting needs is of great importance if you really care about your search engine position. Here is a short list of things to watch out for.

Shared IP hosting

Many Web hosting services do not give out unique IP addresses to customers. The name-based system of virtual Web hosting allows multiple domains to be hosted by a single IP. This means several hundred domain names could all be using the same IP address. Are you sharing an IP address with people you don't even know? If someone else, who is hosted on the same server as your site, gets banned on a search engine, then your Web site will be caught and banned as well. This happens on a regular basis causing serious problems for those who are affected.

Downtime

If your Web host provider cannot keep servers up and running 24/7, people will not be able to find your site. The search engine spiders won't find it either. They will assume your site is gone and remove it from the search engine index. You will have to resubmit and wait weeks or months for the spider to re-index your site. If your site already is indexed and ranking well, it might lose its position altogether.

No matter what web host provider you use, it is highly recommended that you sign up for a free site monitoring service like EasyMonitor. This guarantees that you're alerted within minutes when your site goes down. This enables you to get to work immediately to solve the problem and dramatically increase the time your site is up and running. The speed and reliability of your Web host provider will depend on several factors. Look for a web page host with.

- A T3 connection (or better) close to a primary Internet backbone - Safeguards against systems, network or power failure - Several connections to the Internet (in case one goes down) - Backup power supplies and - "Uptime guarantee" with at least 95% uptime

No logs: Access to raw web log files is one feature often missing with low quality Web hosting services. Some Web host providers provide logs, but do not include referrer information. Others delete logs frequently, making it impossible to use them effectively. Make sure your Web hosting service gives you access to raw server logs, preferably in "Extended Common Log File Format", a standard that can be understood by most log analyzers.

The server logs will give you some valuable information for your search engine optimization work, including what search engines people are using to find your site, exactly which keywords do they type into the search box, and when the search engine spiders visit your site. This is crucial information. You cannot properly optimize your site without it. Other features include daily back up of your data, high bandwidth and, of course, the quality of their support services. In addition, you must consider the features offered by the Web page host. Some features to consider are.

- The space available for your site - Monthly transfer limits - POP mail server availability - Support for CGI, SSI, Perl, databases and FrontPage 2000 extensions - Secure server access 'SSL' - Anonymous FTP and - Shopping Cart Software.

Some Search Engines are case sensitive. This gives rise to a new dilemma for webmasters. Should they include keywords in both lower case as well as upper case, especially in Meta tags? Most webmasters actually do so. For instance, they would list the keywords as a set of all possible combinations of upper and lower case. Webmasters may feel that this is the safest technique to avoid losing potential visitors. However, such repetition may be considered by the Search Engine to be Spam! After all, higher the number of words, higher the combinations.

The best way to get around this problem is to list keywords in lower case only. Most surfers always search in lower case. There are very few cases where surfers use capitals even if the word is a proper name. Of course, you may run a very small risk of losing a few visitors who use upper case, but this risk is minimal. Besides, you do not want to be banned for Spam.

There is an abundance of search engine information available on the web - some of it valuable, much of it contradictory. Throughout the years some prevailing search engine myths have developed. Some of these myths are still encouraged. Others are based upon techniques that were effective years ago but no longer work. Still others come from simple misunderstandings that inevitably come with a relatively new medium. Here is a discussion on some of the most common myths around

Myth: Meta tags are the most important factor in search engine rankings.

Fact: Many search engines 'most notably Google' ignore meta tags completely due to constant abuse by webmasters. The only importance placed on meta tags these days is actually the meta description tag, which will appear as the description for the corresponding page on engines that use inktomi data 'such as MSN'. Meta tags are virtually irrelevant in the ranking algorithms of the top engines- but many people continue to believe that they are the only optimization strategy that they need.

Myth: It's impossible to do search engine optimization in-house.

Fact: It often is done in house, and done effectively. This is typically when a large corporation hires in-house talent that is largely devoted exclusively to promoting the website. However, it is unrealistic to expect someone with many other job functions to do a credible job of SEO. Much of the skills are acquired through experience- and it isn't usually desirable to have someone "experimenting" with the company website 'especially considering that certain techniques can get sites penalized on engines or banned outright'.

SEO isn't rocket science, but it also isn't something that can be learned overnight. When deciding whether to outsource SEO or do it in house, it is important to consider the actual costs involved. Often, when the necessary hours it takes to pay someone to learn on the job are taken into account, it is cheaper to outsource (and the results are almost always better). Only a careful evaluation of your goals and resources can determine the best course of action for your company.

Myth: Sites must be constantly resubmitted to retain rankings.

Fact: This is a scare tactic popularized by various submission services and software companies. In fact, it is a waste of money to pay to have your site resubmitted once it is already listed in an engine's database. It will not hurt your rankings to constantly submit 'or else people would submit their competitor's sites to get them penalized', but it will not help, either.

Myth: Search engine optimization is not as effective as "traditional" marketing.

Fact: In many ways, it is more effective. Companies often spend countless dollars on direct mail, television and radio advertising, and bulk email without a second thought. The common thread with each of these strategies is that the prospect is "approached" by the company, and that the company must reach a great number of people to find a few motivated prospects. On the other hand, search engines can deliver highly motivated prospects directly to your website- people who have already demonstrated, through their use of particular key phrases, an interest in your products or services.

Doorway or Gateway pages

Doorway pages are pages that have been designed for one purpose only, to rank high in the search engines for a particular keyword and then direct the arriving visitors further into the site. Usually their design is relatively simplistic and includes a lot of text, but contains very little graphics or other fancy effects.

Doorway pages focus on particular keywords and phrases targeted for search engines and serve as an entry page to visitors. These used to be a popular means to achieve high rankings with Search Engines, but recently, many Search Engines have started completely ignoring websites with doorway pages.

Because creating doorway pages used to be so easy, especially when using programs that can automatically generate hundreds or thousands of pages in a heartbeat by using a simple template and merely placing the keywords in the right places, many sites lost control and created enormous amounts of them.

The search engines initially tolerated this behavior, but as their databases started being filled with doorway pages they soon realized that these pages would quickly conquer the top ranking spots from normal content-rich pages. This would reduce the quality of their indices and lower the value of the search results, resulting in users abandoning the search engine.

Search Engines such as AltaVista began removing doorway pages from its index and in some cases even banning the sites that were using them. Other engines followed suit and soon it was safe to say that the age of doorway pages, at least in the form we used to know them, had passed.

Instead of focusing on doorway pages, you should focus on optimizing your actual content pages.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ken Mathie is a marketing consultant based in Darwin, Australia. His specialities include Online & Offline Business Development and Management, Training, Marketing and Software Development.

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