Optimal WordPress Website Hosting For Your Blazing Fast Online Business
Three years back an old friend and mentor taught me that having my own website could be very rewarding experience. The reality is the Internet is a goldmine that could make your life very prosperous if you use the right tools. One great way to capture some of the value is to launch your own website and start an online business. Today we have WordPress which makes it very easy for people with no coding experience or much technical knowledge to create their own websites; sometimes within minutes.
In order to create your WordPress website, you will need a Domain Name System (DNS) and a hosting service. Think of a domain name as an easy to remember telephone number that you can use to find any website of your choosing. For example, https://steemit.com/ and https://www.yours.org/ are the domain names of two awesome communities dedicated to creating and curating valuable content.
When it comes to hosting companies there are many you can use but not all of them offer the same value. When I created my first website, for example, I signed up with HostGator because I was following a tutorial on Youtube and part of the process was to purchase a hosting service. After finishing my website (a simple landing page), with a few plugins installed, I proceeded to test my website with multiple tools. I found my website was loading at a crawling slow 5 seconds.
You can also use these free tools to test your website:
By the way, this is a link to that simple landing page. If you choose to fill the form to get your new NetSpend card keep in mind there is a $1 fee for each signed transaction. You should share this offer with your family and friends once you have your own member affiliate ID or use the card to buy an Amazon gift card for $59 and then close the account. They charge a fee of $9.95 if the account is inactive for 3 months.
The reality is nowadays online visitors expect a website to load under two seconds. In general, the faster the website speed the more engaging the website becomes. More engagement also results in more sales, happier customer/user experience, and more followers. The latest updates to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithm introduced by Google ranks faster websites on top. Read these articles for more information why you need a faster website and how to improve your SEO ranking.
kissmetrics.com/speed-is-a-killer/
neilpatel.com/the-ultimate-google-algorithm-cheat-sheet/
I tried to optimize my website as much as I could to make it load faster. Some of the actions I took to improve load speed was to use image optimization tools for the web and WordPress plug-in for caching my website. Image optimization tools have the goal of decreasing the size of an image while maintaining its quality and integrity. This results in lighter websites which load faster. Caching can help improve website load speeds by storing relevant data in the computer of the user requesting it. The next time this data is requested less information will be fetched from the server, reducing the access time to load the website. Even using these techniques my load speed was still over 3 seconds.
I used this review by Waseem Abbas to determine Tiny PNG was the right tool to customize my chosen image for the web:
enviragallery.com/9-best-free-image-optimization-tools-for-image-compression/
I cached my WordPress website by using this great tutorial I found on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aorwdzO2kEs
My goal was to improve my website load speed to under 1.5 seconds. Earlier this week I revisited this goal of mine since I had been so busy working. I realized that the wordpress.org website recommends:
1- BlueHost
2- Dreamhost
3- SiteGround
For top WordPress web hosting choices. Then I found so much great information provided by Pat Flynn about BlueHost that I decided to make the switch. Patt Flynn is one of the best sources to learn about online marketing and building an online business. The same can be said of Neil Patel and Stefan James who are two other giants of the industry.
Here is a great tutorial on how to switch to BlueHost if you are using another hosting company:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw56zwHg6E8
If you don’t yet have a host (or a domain) you should use this database to find expired domains that are relevant and easy to remember:
https://www.expireddomains.net/
Try to pick one which ends in .com and doesn’t have too many backlinks (anything over 500) because is highly likely it was previously used for spam and under the new SEO updates that means it will be harder to rank. I would even recommend picking one with 0 backlinks. This way you know for sure you will not receive any negative impact from spam-related activities. I don't know if is true but I have read at least twice websites ending in .com are still preferred over any other top-level domains. Some claim .com websites also rank better. Keep in mind BlueHost will offer a free domain when you sign up with them. This will save you $10-15 per year. BlueHost also offers 24/7 customer support and a strong money back warranty. BlueHost powers over 2 million websites and is considered by many the ultimate WordPress platform with an easy 1 click install. Click the link below to check the offer:
www.bluehost.com/track/optimalhosting/
Use this set of tutorials to get your website up and running. This tutorial series also gives lots of useful information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ-eL7zH6rQ
If you want to check out the other hosting companies for comparison you can use this links to navigate to the offers available. I know hosting companies every now and then offer promotions so is worth checking and comparing.
PS:
I want to note SiteGround is not as big as BlueHost but they have been growing steadily. I learned they offer SSD shared hosting which means even faster websites since solid state drives (SSD) perform faster write and read speeds than clunky mechanical hard drives. They also have top-notch customer support and as of right now are currently matching the price offered by BlueHost in a limited time offer. While this offer is available you should definitely join SiteGround. Below is information as to how you can install WordPress using SiteGround. I believe they also offer the convenient 1 click WordPress install which made BlueHost so popular.
https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/wordpress-installation.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfafR5qhIc
By the way, if you are planning to go on a trip to Spain you should check out this website:
http://www.casadamarspain.es/overview.html
That’s the website my friend Marco made. He has put together an amazing itinerary detailing all the local attractions! Make sure to reserve early because some months reservations fill up very quickly. The views from this house are truly wonderful. Check the gallery of pictures if you don't believe me.
If you want to do online sales without hosting, and multiple other tools you will need in order to succeed then you can use ClickFunnels. Try it 14 days for free:
http://bit.ly/Click_Funnels_14DayFree_Trial
ClickFunnels makes it very easy to sell online. The software comes with built-in shopping carts, timers and cleanly designed templates you can use to promote your sales. The biggest downside to ClickFunnels is it has become so popular that their templates are starting to be easily recognized. It just doesn't look good when there are too many offers out there like yours using the same template with different text. Either way take advantage of the free trial and put this tool to work for you if you are already doing online sales!
Watch this two videos posted by Jason Whaling which highlights the strong points of ClickFunnels as well as the weak ones.
In my opinion, ClickFunnels should be a tool to use at the start. Once you are ramping up in sales and can invest more in your online business then you can hire a professional website developer at Fiverr (for very affordable prices) and have them create your dream website. Tatiana Buree, for example, created her dream website for $300 using Fiber some years back. She is now generating income of $50,000+ monthly. If you are curious to see the website the link is below:
https://www.luxxhealth.com/about/
Nothing beats having your own domain. Imagine ClickFunnels suddenly stopped providing their awesome service and you had build the entirety of your online business using their software. It's very likely all those links to your landing pages will become dead. To be safe don't put your eggs in one basket and have multiple strategies in place.
Hello & Cheers!! I'm a content detection and information bot. You are receiving this reply because a short link or links have been detected in your post/comment. The purpose of this message is to inform your readers and yourself about the use of and dangers of short links.
To the readers of the post: Short links are provided by url shortening services. The short links they provide can be useful in some cases. Generally their use is benign. But as with all useful tools there are dangers. Short links can be used to hide all sorts of things. Quite frequently they are used to hide referral links for instance. While not dangerous this can be deceptive. They can also be used to hide dangerous links such as links to phishing sites, sites loaded with malware, scam sites, etc. You should always be extremely cautious before clicking on one. If you don't know and trust the poster don't click. Even if you do you should still be cautious and wary of any site you are sent to. It's always better to visit the site directly and not through a short link.
To the author of the post: While short links may be useful on some sites they are not needed on steemit. You can use markdown to format your links such as this link to steemit. It's as simple as
[steemit](https://steemit.com)Unlike short links this allows the reader to see where they are going by simply hovering over the link before they click on it.Alright beerbot, I start using markdown. I use short links to track traffic can your steeamian markdown alternative do the same? ... Anyone?