Weekend SEO - Practical Guide - Buying a domain & Hosting

Keyword rich domain is available, What next ?

Once the Keyword rich domain name is available then it is the time to buy a domain & hosting package. These days most hosting packages comes along with FREE domain as long as you have the hosting account with the registrar.

Are you a first timer in buying a domain or hosting package ?

Yes, Then I suggest you to read the following articles to get educated before you become the proud owner of a website:

• Internet Network Marketing - What's in a Domain Name?
• Choosing the Right Domain Name For Your Website
• How to Buy a Domain Name
• How to Buy WebSite Hosting
• Choosing the Best Cheap Hosting Tips
• Learn the Quick Tips During Domain Name Registration
• Buy Domain Names and Web Hosting at Low Rates From a Reliable Provider

Also these articles serves as a good reference for the experienced people too!

Who is the best registrar to buy domain and hosting package ?

According to me, the best way to find the best registrars is to use the SEO technique i.e. search for the following keywords:

• top 10 web hosting
• top 10 web hosts
• best hosting 2010 [keep changing the year accordingly]
• best web hosts 2010 [keep changing the year accordingly]
• best 10 web hosting providers
• top 25 best hosting providers
• web hosting top 10
• top web hosting reviews
• best unix hosting
• best windows hosting
• best domain registrars 2010 [keep changing the year accordingly]
• compare top web hosting companies
• compare hosting companies
• compare web hosting providers

Note: Top 10 hosting providers keeps fluctuating quite frequently. Also there is no official top 10 hosting providers list so Top 1 in one hosting review website may differ from other hosting review website.

I suggest you to pick 3 to 5 hosting providers from the list. Later read reviews about the chosen hosting providers. Obviously you'll find both good and bad reviews over there. This should help you determine a best hosting company that suits your needs.

Key factors in selecting a best web hosting provider ?

Key factors you should consider before buying a Domain / Web Hosting package from the chosen web hosting provider are as follows:

• 24/7 Support via Phone, Mail & Chat
• Customer Reviews
• Disk space [Max 500MB is more than enough for a personal blog or site] - These days most web hosting companies provide more space than you could possibly use but this is still an important factor pay attention to it. If you're planning a business web site in which data grows exponentially then do the proper estimate and choose the disk space which is nearer to your requirement. This is upgradeable as your business grows.
• Monthly Data Bandwidth. This is upgradeable as your business grows.
• 24/7 FTP access, FTP over SSL (FTPS)
• No. of FTP Users (Limited / Unlimited)
• E-mail accounts (No. of addresses / Total Email Storage)
• Domains - DNS Management
• Domains - Multiple websites, External Domains & Sub-domains (Limited / Unlimited)
• Databases - MySQL (version, No. of databases, Total MySQL Storage, Backup & Recovery)
• SSH Access (Secure Shell)
• Raw Server logs
• Site statistics
• Firewall Protection
• Control Panel (preferably cPanel)
• Customizable Error Pages
• Cron Jobs
• File Manager
• Language support - Perl with CGI/FastCGI, PHP4/PHP5 (including support for custom php.ini), Python, Java/JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, Flash support, etc
• 1-click apps (preferably Fantastico scripts) - Gallery, Blogs/CMS, E-commerce, Advertising, Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Miscellaneous
• World class data centers
• Extensive Knowledgebase
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Money back guarantee
• FREE site promotion - Ad credits from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc

My personal experience w.r.t buying a domain & hosting package ?

As I live in Bangalore, India, initially I thought of buying a domain or hosting packages from the local registrars but most of them are resellers in which we'll be using the shared resource it seems. I found few hosting providers with their own data centers but I felt they're expensive after doing some research on the web. I started finding the best registrar and most of them were listing GoDaddy.com as #1 registrar despite of few bad reviews.
FYI, Go Daddy is currently the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, and is three times the size of its closest competitor. [Source : Wikipedia]

Finally I decided to go with GoDaddy.com but initially I had lot of doubts or clueless about the following as I was the first timer 3-4 years back :

• mode of payment
• linking domain with my hosting account
• using control panel
• installing an application like wiki, CMS, blog, etc.
• managing domain & sub-domains
  and many more

Before buying a domain or hosting, I sent couple of queries to support team and I got the response within a day.

At the time of writing this article, I have 10+ domains and Deluxe hosting package at Godaddy.com.

As of now, I'm happy with the Godaddy's service.

By the way, I helped one of my friend to buy a domain + hosting package at IXWebHosting. It is one of the top web hosting provider too and it is easy to use.

Most recently I helped one of my friend to buy the domain and hosting at JustHost.com.au as the multi-year purchase is very cheap with loads of features FREE of cost (includes FREE for life domain i.e. domain is free as long as you maintain hosting account with them). Also it is appearing in top5 hosting providers in couple of web host review websites.

Be smart while buying domains and hosting package !!!

Here are the few tips and tricks that I'm sharing based my experience to help you save some money while buying a domain or hosting package :

• Most hosting providers has special offers
• Hosting / Registrar coupon codes are available on the web.
  Example: web hosting coupons
• Join some webmasters discussion / forum and ask for the discount coupons to buy cheap domain / hosting and definitely you'll get lot of response within a short period of time. Ensure you post your neatly framed question under the relevant category.
• Don't go to the web hosting registrar directly. Instead go via Google / search engines. Example: Search for hosting provider name say GoDaddy or JustHost and click on the sponsored ad on the top or on the right pane that takes you to the chosen registrar which automatically applies the discount coupon and you can confirm whether the discount has been applied or not at the time of checkout.
• When you're in a hosting provider website, look for the words "Offer", "Today's Offers", "Special Offer", "Discount", "Secret Link", etc to get additional discount.
• If you're existing customer, then the web hosting companies send the special offers via mail quiet frequently. Use those coupon codes to get a good deal.
• Try closing the window before you fill the credit card details OR completing the checkout process, some pop-ups will arise in couple of web host providers site offering a good deal if you click Cancel in order to buy it now or today itself. This is not applicable to all web host providers.

Plan properly, read reviews, Take right decision. Enjoy and be a proud owner of your domain + hosting :-)

"Weekend SEO is a unique place to share the experiments that I did w.r.t SEO". - Nanda Kishor