Hosting a website on a Virtual Private Server, or VPS for short is a good way to enjoy the benefits of your own domain name and large amounts of server space for all of your valuable content. Now that we have SSD solid state disks offering even more speed than a 7200 RPM conventional hard disk and with a choice of Linux distributions to host your website, this VPS service has a hosting solution that is just right for you. It is very good to have a choice of what Linux distribution you wish to use, some might have the right feel or a certain way of doing things that is just right for the particular customer. Everything is on the web these days, and businesses that are not constructing a web presence will be left behind by their web-enabled competitors. Starting a blog is easy on a blogging website like Blogger, but having your own web space allows you to create a more personalized website as well as the other benefits from having your own domain name. The other benefit from having your own space on a conventional shared hosting or a VPS service is the Cpanel software that includes many useful features such as PHPMyAdmin for managing your MySQL databases very easily and quickly. I started out with a blog on Blogger.com and I loved it, but then I moved to a shared hosting account when I had outgrown the Blogger service. Sure, on a service that I am using now, I have to update the blog software often and manage more of the day-to-day running of the website myself more than with Blogger, but the rewards are worth it.
The Linux, Apache, MYSQL & PHP platform or LAMP, is the most popular service for hosting your website. Linux offers far more security and stability than a Windows Server platform, the Apache web server is very secure as is the PHP language that software such as WordPress is programmed in. Therein lies the need to keep your software updated to take care of security issues that may pop up from time to time. Blogging software such as WordPress will automatically alert you when the software or a plugin needs updating and it is important to take care of this as soon as possible to update to the new code. The Cpanel software your hosting provider will have available will allow you to use the Attracta.com service within the Cpanel and offer a wizard to make submitting an XML sitemap of your website to the major search engines to help greatly with your SEO requirements. having the URLS of your WordPress website formatted thusly: www.example.com/?p=3125 is not the best idea when you are wanting to target the search engines and get many visitors to your website. A better way is to configure the website to use this URL structure. www.example.com/hosting-your-website-on-a-vps-for-extra-speed-and-security that provides a line of keywords as your URL and is much more search engine friendly than a simple postid number.
I use the Headspace2, WordPress SEO and Jetpack plugins for WordPress that offer many powerful features for search engine optimization. Submitting your website to the dmoz.org website directory is also another way to get more traffic, and any other directories that are related to your websites` particular niche. 90% of my traffic comes from Google and Yahoo, as well as some other search engines, that shows the importance of optimizing your website for optimal performance and to rank highly in the search engines. The most important way to get your website ranking and to get traffic is CONTENT. That is the most important method for getting an audience. The search engine will index your website and then your content will get noticed. Just stay away from those companies that promise thousands of backlinks to your website for a certain price to increase your page ranking. It is best to create a lot of content and then you will get many people linking to your website. You can comment on other blogs with your website address in the URL field and this is a good way to get your URL noticed. If another website links back to you in the body of their post, then it is certain that it will not be a nofollow link and you will gain from that. Most websites have the comments URLs nofollow to combat affiliate links spam. That is the major source of the spam that websites have to deal with.