Web Hosting blog from Just Host

Just Host proudly announced today that we’ve just signed up our 150,000th web hosting customer. This follows reaching the milestone of 100,000 clients back in August, four months earlier than predicted. We have doubles our email and phone support teams since August and put a heavy emphasis on the billing phone team which is based in the UK. In those four month we won 11 web hosting awards for an array of features including our prices, support services along with multiple Best Web Host awards.

To have reached 150,000 clients before the end of 2009 is a dream come true for us. Our work ethic has always been to put in 200% and believe that anything is possible. We set our sights on being the best web host in the world and it’s so encouraging to know that 150,000 people now believe that.

Our obvious next target is 250,000 customers which is set for May 2010 and I’m so proud of our whole team who have made this figure a reality. We work so hard on providing our customers with the best and most relevant features for their websites. We want to see them make the most of their sites, which should ultimately help propel their business or see them rank at the top of the search engines under their key terms.

Sophy / Marketing Manager

Backlinks are essential for your website if you are hoping to receive free visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. A back link is counted when Website A links to Website B. Search engines recognize when one website links to another and therefore considers that website more worthy of appearing within your search results.

So to sum up, with the more back links you have pointing to your website, search engines will reward you with higher rankings.

How do I get back links?

Gathering back links (or link building as it is known) sounds complicated but there are many ways you can obtain links to your website with very little effort.

- Free Internet Directories

Before there were search engines the web was filled with directories, people browsed these directories to find the website they were looking for. This has left thousands of directories on the internet such as Dmoz and Jayde, many of these are still in business and accepting new links.

The majority of these directories all work in the same way, you choose the most relevant category that suits the nature of your web site then you suggest your URL to be included. Once your link has been approved your listing will go live and you will have just achieved your first back link. Use Google to search for free website directories, there are hundreds out there.

- Link Exchanges

A link exchange describe 2 websites linking to each other, so Website A links to Website B and Website B also links to Website A. This is a great way of quickly gaining back links, a free link exchange service is a good place to start.

- Article Directories

Article directories allow you to write articles and publish them within the website’s directory, in exchange for your hard work you can include links to your website within the article. Ezine Articles is the most popular of all but there are plenty more free article sites on Google.

- Link bait

Link bait is a term used to describe articles or pages on your website that are intended to attract back links from other websites. Controversial subjects, useful tools and free resources are just a few ideas, the art to bait link is about being creative – go in at an angle never thought of before.

Link bait is the most difficult form of link building but since the back links are 100% natural, the results are very rewarding.

These are just a few ways you can increase the number of incoming links to your website, there are literally hundreds more. SEOBook.com has compiled a list of 101 ways to build link popularity, the article offers some interesting ideas.

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manager

Google is the most widely used search engine in the online world and took over 84% of online search queries in October this year leaving Yahoo with just 6.68% and Bing with only 3.49%. But we often forget that Google is not just a search engine, Google offer a handful of other services (mostly free) which can be extremely beneficial to webmasters.

So we talked before about the caffeine update from Google, changes to Google’s indexing infrastructure that should produce even more results per query, drastically faster with the inclusion of real time news headlines as and when they happen.

Matt Cutts today announced on his blog that the first stage of the caffeine update will be rolled out after the holidays starting with just one data center and as feedback is collected, Google will begin rolling out the update to other users. Google’s now closed the official sandbox tools so if you didn’t get a chance to try it you are going to have to wait until it goes live.

So why all the fuss? The big hype came when Google engineer Matt Cutts hinted at the possibility of some minor changes to Google’s algorithm. Their algorithm determines the importance of each website within Google’s index in relation to your search term. SEO experts worldwide face losing some big rankings with an update of this size. Initial trials of the Caffeine update through Google’s Sandbox tool revealed little changes just as Matt Cutts had suggested. That said, it isn’t too late for Google to through a few surprises at us as they roll out the entire update on their infrastructure.

Right now all can do is wait and see how the update affects each of our rankings.

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manager

At Just Host we just don’t seem to be able to stop winning awards at the moment. This month we’ve been awarded WebHostingReport.com’s November 2009 award for Best Cheap Hosting. We have been awarded this because of the way we’ve “established [ourselves] as a leader in the web hosting industry by offering quality hosting features, reliable uptime, and top-notch customer service all at a price that is one of the most reasonable in the business.”

We have also been ranked the #1 web host by TenHostingReviews.com for November. They explain the reasons for their choice are “due to [Just Host’s] high stability, excellent service, quickness throughout the month and [our] fast responsive to assist [our] clients. Through TenHostingReviews.com, we have received good customer experiences and that’s why we recommend Just Host as our #1 ranked Best Web Host November 2009.

Thank you to both WebHostingReport.com and TenHostingReviews.com for awarding Just Host these top web hosting awards. As we are constantly striving to improve our services and are always adding new features to ensure our customers get the best service possible, getting recognition like this from such sites means we must be making the right choices and really appreciate the support.

Sophy / Marketing Manager

Our friends over at Template Monster launched a promo yesterday with a prize pool of 5 free website templates and 10 free web hosting accounts from Just Host. In-line with Halloween, Template Monster are asking their blog readers to name their favorite Halloween website customizations for a chance to win.

The results are being announced early tomorrow morning so be sure to get in their quick with your suggestions! So far, readers have nominated a handful of websites for their festive efforts such as a UK chocolate retailer, a UK theme park and online Gadget shop, IWOOT!

Template Monster themselves have joined in as usually with two different logo’s, one on the Template Monster homepage and one on the Template Monster Blog.

Be sure to check it out!

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manage

Every now and again we are approached by independent web hosting review site’s requesting an interview with one of the team here at Just Host.

This month I was fortunate enough to speak with Daren from WebHostingDeals.org who spoke with me about our data center, how we are protecting our customers from hackers, spam and phishing scams plus I reveal some insider news on the future of Just Host!

To read the interview in full, head over to the Just Host interview page.

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manager

Anyone who has followed Just Host over the past 2 years will know that we are an extremely competitive company. We work hard to ensure our service exceeds our customer’s expectations and we regularly make changes to the web hosting plans we offer so that we continually lead the way for other web hosting companies within the industry.

One of the most important decisions a web host makes is the price they put on their hosting. Something as simple as the price can have a big impact on the overall service so it’s important it’s done right and is in no way rushed.

After weeks of discussion we have finally come to an agreement and are happy to announce that as of today Tuesday 20^th October, web hosting from Just Host is available for as little as $3.45 per month!

I would just like to thank the entire Just Host team for making this possible, thanks to you operations within our data center are running smoothly, accounts are being setup in minutes and response times in the support department are at an all time low! If it wasn’t for each individual here, the price change would still be a long way off.

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manager

Anyone who follows all the latest from Google will have heard of the new Caffeine update that is being rolled out over the next coming months. Google engineer, Matt Cutts confirmed in his blog that this update isn’t going to shake up our search results too much although we may notice some minor changes with Google’s algorithm. You can try the new update for yourself here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Instead we expect to see a vast improvement of speed, more search results per keyword and more importantly, Google will react in real-time capable of delivering breaking news within your search as and when they happen. Google had been expected to announce this for some time after both Twitter and Facebook announced they were launching real-time search engines.

After testing the new Google caffeine update it’s obvious that Google’s algorithm has been affected more than Google have made out.

Anyone who knows a thing or two about SEO will understand the importance of back links, you will also know that keywords within a back link can drastically affect which search terms will display your website. For a great example of this in action try a search for “Click here” and you will notice the first result is from Adobe (get.adobe.com/reader/). Notice that this page does not have the words click or here anywhere on that page and neither in the URL. Therefore the only factor influencing Adobe’s listing is the links pointing to it. If you analyze these links carefully you will notice that there are over 500,000 links pointing to the adobe page with the word’s “Click Here”.

When compare this with the new caffeine update you will notice that Adobe no longer hold their number one placement on the term, instead clickhere.com, a marketing agency have gained the top spot.

This may not seem like anything major but ClickHere.com has less than 30 links pointing to it in comparison with over 500,000 pointing to Adobe. Going by what SEO experts know about Google’s ranking algorithm, Adobe should dominate the number one position without doubt.

Google have either made dramatic changes to the importance of keywords within a domain name or more likely, Google are changing their back link algorithm in quite a drastic way. My guess is that Google has either found a way to detect “spammy” links from services link Text-Link-Ads or back links have taken a step back and now other factors are playing a more important role in the ranking algorithm.

Luke Kendall / Affiliate Manager

After being awarded webhostingsearch.com’s prestigious Best Support award back in August, Just Host are thrilled to be awarded their Best Services award this month! In their own words, “To be able to receive this award, the provider must have excellent performance. Even though the award is given for a specific month, [Just Host] has proved to us and our visitors that they have outstanding uptime, response time and reliability for the last six months.”

The support that webhostingsearch.com has given Just Host over the last year has been incredible and we’d like to say a massive thank you for this great award. Couple this with the fact that Just Host is now ranked as the #1 web hosting provider on the review site shows just how much they recognize the quality of service that Just Host provides.

To be the top ranked web host on such a highly competitive web hosting review site is a real honor and I’d like to say congratulations to everyone who has worked so hard at Just Host to create a service that is so highly recommended in the industry.

Sophy / Marketing Manager