With some sensible planning and diligent work you can lift your site high in the search engines’ rankings. But make a few crucial mistakes, and your site may never leave the bottom. There are a few common mistakes that people make when optimizing their websites with on page SEO. So here are four examples of what NOT to do:

1. No Alt Tags

Perhaps the most common mistake people make with on page SEO is leaving alt tags out of images. The alt tag is the text that shows up when a cursor hovers over an image. It’s also displayed when an image fails to load, so visitors have a good idea what the image is. Best of all, an alt tag is the perfect place to optimise your keyword, because alt tags count as text to the search engines.

2. Duplicate Titles

A web page’s title is one of the most important factors of on page SEO, yet so many people use the same title for multiple pages. This practice will hurt your site’s chance at ranking high. Search engines hate duplicates. Also, a page’s title is the perfect place to optimise your keywords, so take advantage of it. Always include your main keywords in your titles.

3. Keyword Stuffing

In the old days of the search engines, you could achieve a high ranking for your website just by stuffing keywords into your content as many times as possible. This maneuver no longer works. In fact, it will likely achieve the opposite effect — a drop in rankings. Even worse, your site might be blacklisted. So avoid keyword stuffing and only use your keyword naturally.

4. Overusing Flash and JavaScript

It’s tempting to enhance the appearance of a site by using Flash and JavaScript. They can make everything look fancy and professional if you know what you’re doing. But too much Flash and JavaScript will slow your website down, and they won’t help you in the least if you’re trying to optimise your site for the search engines. Neither Flash nor JavaScript uses text that can be read by search engines, and reviewing a site’s text is how a search engine ranks the site. So if you do choose to use Flash and JavaScript, use them very sparingly.

After spending a lot of time and hard work on a website, it would be a shame to let a few mistakes sabotage all your efforts. Especially if the mistakes are easy to fix. When you’re optimising a site, always keep factors like alt tags, titles, keyword density, and Flash and JavaScript in mind. Once you learn to identify SEO mistakes on your site you can take measures to correct them, and give your site the chance at a high ranking it deserves.

To find out more about the services offered at Digital Pacific including web hosting and domain names, visit our website or give us a call on 1300 MY HOST for a friendly chat.

SEO Tips is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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To setup your copy of Mac Mail, do the following:

1. Start your copy of Mac Mail from the dock.

2. The Welcome to Mail screen will appear.

• Enter your name, department or business name in the Full name field. This is what people will see when they receive email from you.
• Enter the full email address and password in the corresponding fields below.
• Click on the Continue button

3. The Incoming Mail Server screen will appear.

• For Account Type select IMAP.
• For description enter a short summary of either the name or purpose of the mailbox.
• For Incoming Mail Server enter the name of your mail server “mail.yourdomainname.com”.
• For User Name enter the full email address.
• For Password enter the current password for your email account.
• Click on the Continue button.

4.  A Verify Certificate window will appear.

You can safely ignore this message. Click on the Cancel button.

5.  The Outgoing Mail Server screen will now appear.

• For the Description enter the name of your mail server “mail.yourdomainname.com”.
• For the Outgoing Mail Server enter the name of your mail server “mail.yourdomainname.com”.
• Check the option “Use only this server”.
• Check the option “Use Authentication”.
• Ensure that your full email address and password are listed below.
• Click on the Continue button.

6.  You will now see the Account Summary screen.

Click on the Create button.

7.  You will now be taken back to your inbox in Mac Mail.

8.  Select the Preferences option from the Mail menu.

• Click on the Accounts icon.
• Click on the Advanced tab.
• Turn off the “Use SSL” option. The port number should now change to 143.

9.  Click on the Account Information tab.

Click on the Outgoing Mail Server drop down menu.  Select the name of your mail server “mail.yourdomainname.com”.

Click on the Advanced tab.

• Leave “Use Default Ports” turned on.
• Turn off the “Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)” option.
• Authentication should be set to Password
• For User Name enter the full email address.
• For Password enter the current password for your email account.
• Click on the OK button.

10.  Close the Preferences window down by clicking on the red circle in the upper left hand corner. Mac Mail will confirm if you want to save the changes. Click on the Save button.

That’s it! You have now setup email within your copy of Mac Mail.

To find out more about the web hosting and domain name services offered at Digital Pacific visit our website or give us a call on 1300 MY HOST for a friendly chat.

Setting Up Mac Mail is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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VPS stands for virtual private server. A VPS hosting option is one step up from shared hosting. With VPS, a physical server is subdivided into smaller virtual servers – each with its own set of isolated hardware and software features. A virtual server is private and dedicated, but it does share actual physical server space with other VPS accounts.

The Advantage of VPS over Shared Hosting
A VPS account will allow a user root access via remote Desktop Access on a Windows hosting service, or through SSH on a Linux server. Having root access means VPS users can install their own chosen programs, applications, and scripts. A VPS option offers greater flexibility and overall control compared to a shared hosting account.

In terms of resources, a VPS will have certain limitations but nothing as restrictive as a shared hosting account. VPS resource allowance depends on the resources installed on the physical server it resides on. However, because each VPS is isolated it will have a dedicated amount of resources at its disposal. These resources won’t be affected by other VPS accounts.

With shared hosting, resources are unilaterally shared. So a sudden spike of traffic, or resource usage, from one or two websites may hamper the performance of other websites sharing the same server. Because a VPS is allocated its own dedicated share of resources, this problem will not occur.

Additional Security
A VPS is more secure than a shared hosting account. Unlike a shared hosting package, a VPS does not share memory-related resources with other accounts. It has its own dedicated allotment of RAM and disk space that cannot be accessed by other VPS accounts hosted on the same physical server.

The security advantage of possessing your own private disk space, RAM, and other resources is obvious. No one can maliciously tamper, other users cannot pry, and you have complete control over any applications or programs you install.

Managed and Unmanaged Versions
A managed version will be easier for anyone that has limited technical ability. With a managed option, the hosting company will lend a helping hand and provide and manage some aspects of your account, such as software installation and upgrades.

An unmanaged version is simply what it says. Users have full control over all aspects and are free to install and manage their own VPS application and programs. For the technically proficient, an unmanaged VPS account offers total control.

An unmanaged VPS package will be cheaper than a managed one because there are no additional administration costs to incorporate.

VPS Problems Created by Poor Hosting

Overselling and CPU Usage
CPU resources available to a VPS depend on the size of the CPU processor installed on the hosting physical server and the amount of VPS accounts sharing the same CPU.

• A low-powered CPU may struggle to efficiently manage the demands placed on it by too many VPS accounts, resulting in slower load speeds and downtime for websites.

• Poor-performance situations occur when a web host is guilty of overselling the server space. It is said ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ and this rings true for VPS hosting. An excess of VPS users on one server can overload a CPU, resulting in decreased performance.

Look for reputable hosts who provide decent CPU resources and competently manage VPS-to-server ratios.

Restrictive RAM Issues
Some cheaper VPS hosting packages have low RAM allocation. It is important to check the amount of RAM included in a package. The amount of RAM a website needs depends on various factors: If a website intends to run large databases, numerous smaller databases, and/or resource-intensive CMS platforms, then restricted RAM will be an issue.

At Digital Pacific, we provide between 512MB of RAM up to 2GB of RAM depending on which plan you sign up with.  A low-cost VPS hosting provider may only provide 124MB of dedicated RAM. Fine for the most basic of websites, but way too limited for the majority of blogs, CMS-managed websites, and sites with intensive graphical elements and databases.

In some cases, a decent shared hosting account may be superior to a cheap VPS hosting package with limited RAM.  Never get swayed by low cost without first checking RAM availability.

Two Signs of a Quality VPS Web Host

Account Flexibility
A decent VPS hosting provider should offer a user the option to modify and apply only the specifications they require (disk space, RAM etc). The benefit of this over, say, a dedicated server account, is the user will only be paying for the resources they are realistically going to use.

A good VPS host will be able to quickly increase the level of allocated resources available to a user if required (monthly charge will increase).

Burstable RAM
A VPS package with burstable RAM offers an aspect of flexibility. Bursting allows a user to exceed allocated RAM limits when required. A website getting a sudden spike in traffic could suddenly require extra RAM. Even if this RAM was in excess of the user’s agreed allocation, burstable RAM would allow this.

Burstable RAM is not guaranteed and may not always be available. It is simply a potential back-up. If a website is constantly exceeding its basic RAM allocation, the account user should be looking to upgrade the hosting package to include a larger RAM allowance.  At Digital Pacific, we offer our VPS customers between 1GB and 4GB of Burstable RAM.

Why Choose a VPS Package?
A VPS offers a secure, flexible hosting option. It is a way of obtaining a hosting service with dedicated resources without paying the higher costs of a dedicated server package. A VPS account provides more security than shared hosting, and users do not have to worry about incurring website downtime or drag caused by other websites sharing the same resources.

It is prudent to assess the amount of overall resources a website will need before choosing a VPS service. At Digital Pacific, we provide between 512MB of RAM up to 2GB of RAM depending on which plan you sign up with. However, it is important to note that a low-cost VPS hosting provider’s package with a tiny (124Mb) RAM allowance often proves to be inefficient compared to a higher-end shared hosting package.

VPS accounts are flexible and can be adapted to suit individual needs. They come in many sizes and with various resource allocations, additional support, and pricing policies. Decide on the type of VPS package you will need by researching what programs you want to install, the traffic you hope to achieve, and the disk space your resources may require.

Plan ahead if you can and choose a VPS package that will allow for expansion, but it is not necessary to go over budget and purchase a plan that is way beyond your needs. A good VPS hosting provider will be able to upgrade your package at an individual resource level, as and when you require.

If you would like further information on the VPS hosting plans offered at Digital Pacific visit our website or feel free to give us a call on 1300 MY HOST for a friendly chat.

VPS Hosting is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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To setup an email address on your copy of Thunderbird (v7 or higher), do the following:

1. Go to the Tools menu and select Account Settings.

2. In the Account Settings dialogue box click on Account Actions. Select Add Mail Account.

3. In the Mail Account Setup screen enter the following details:

• Your name: Enter your name, department or business name. Clients will see this name when receiving emails from you.

• Email address: Enter the full email address that you wish to work with

• Password: Enter the current password for this email account. Tick the Remember password option if you don’t wish to enter your password each time you connect to your mailbox.

• Click on the Continue button

4.  You may see a Secure Connection Failed message appear. Click on the Cancel button to continue.

5. In the Mail Account Setup screen select IMAP (remote folders). Thunderbird will store your email on our server and keep a replica of your email messages on your computer.

Click on the Manual config button.

6. In the Mail Account Setup screen ensure that your settings configured in relation to your domain name and email account.

Any reference to mail.dpsupport.com.au and test@dpsupport.com.au should be replaced with your domain name (eg. mail.yourdomain.com.au) and your email account (eg. email@yourdomain.com.au).

Ensure that SSL is set to None, and that Authentication is set to Normal Password for both incoming (IMAP) and outgoing (SMTP).

Click on the Create Account button

8.  You will receive a warning message about ingoing/outgoing encryption. Just tick the option “I understand the risks” and click on the Create Account button.

That’s it! You have now setup email within your copy of Thunderbird.

To find out more about the email hosting options offered at Digital Pacific, visit our website or speak to our friendly staff on 1300 MY HOST.

Setting Up Email on Thunderbird is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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3. How to Manage SPAM in cPanel

To setup your control panel to manage SPAM email, do the following:

1.  Log into your control panel at:

http://www.yourdomain.com.au/cpanel

Replace www.yourdomain.com.au with the domain name of your hosting account.

If you are unsure of your cPanel login details please refer the the email “Hosting Account Information – Please Keep Safe – Please do not reply”. This email was originally sent out to your default billing email address when you first purchased your web hosting.

2.  Go to the Mail section and select MailScanner Configuration

3.  In the Change All Domain Settings select the folllowing:

Low Scoring Spam: Deliver
High Scoring Spam: Delete:

4.  Alternatively you may prefer to forward your low scoring spam to a dedicated spam email address. The control panel will allow you to forward either low or high scoring spam messages to a mailbox called spam@domain.com. You will need to create this mailbox before applying the setting. If you do use this setting then you will need to check your dedicated spam mailbox on a regular basis to ensure that no legitimate email is appearing there.

5.  If you wish to either permanently allow (whitelist) or prevent (blacklist) an email, or emails from particular domain names, then click on the Email Black/Whitelist settings link.

In this area you can adjust what email accounts or domains can be allowed through or blocked.

How to Manage SPAM in cPanel is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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While making money on the Internet is certainly not as easy as it used to be, there are still plenty of opportunities out there. With a realistic approach and plenty of patience, many people are perfectly capable of making an income online. While there are freelancing opportunities to accommodate a wide variety of skills such as writing, web design and much more, starting your own business from scratch is somewhat more challenging. One of the greatest attractions to starting an online business is that the costs are minimal. Keeping your goals realistic is also essential. It’s wise to completely ignore the outlandish promises made by companies and individuals selling get-rich-quick schemes and instead start out with a plausible plan with goals that you can actually reach if you work hard enough. Consider the following steps for building a money-making website.

1. Be Inspired

Consider your skills and your level of knowledge in certain areas. You’ll want to think of a niche which you know plenty about as well as something which interests you. Since you’re going to need to provide quality content and something of value to your visitors, you need to be knowledgeable in your field. Of secondary importance is coming up with an idea that is ideal for making money.

2. Register a Domain Name and Hosting Package

The only costs involved in starting an online business are registering a domain name (web address) and getting a web hosting package. The costs only run into a few dollars per month and the costs will only ever increase if you have an enormous number of visitors and you need to start paying for more bandwidth.

Choose your domain name carefully. It’s good practice for search engine optimization (SEO) to include a relevant keyword or phrase in your web address. You should also keep it short and memorable. It’s also a good idea to register multiple domain names which all direct to your main website. Ideally, you should register your domain name for a longer time, such as five years. The search engines favour long-term registrations.

You’ll also want to decide whether to use a local domain name ending in the country code for your location or a .com address. As a general rule, you should only use a localised domain name such as “.com.au” if the content of your site is primarily relevant to an audience in that country. For the most part, all other sites are better off using a .com address. There are plenty of other options, however.

3. Get WordPress

WordPress is the industry leader in blogging software. Free and open source, WordPress was originally designed exclusively for blogging. These days, however, just about any type of site can use the WordPress software. It’s easy to use and does not require any knowledge of HTML, although having such knowledge will certainly come in useful.

There are countless themes available for WordPress. The themes govern the entire appearance and layout of your site. You’ll want to choose this carefully since changing it later on when you have lots of content can be complicated. You should also choose a theme which is SEO-friendly. There are both free and premium themes available.

To save yourself from going through the hassle and complication of installing WordPress yourself, you may want to go for a hosting package that has WordPress included and installed on your new website. This means that you’ll be able to start uploading content to your site as soon as you’ve registered. Digital Pacific provides free WordPress hosting application installation with most web hosting plans.

4. Set up Your Social Networking Accounts

Social networking is a major part of online business. You simply cannot ignore it if you want to have any chance at success. You should also install buttons linking to social networking sites on your webpage. These buttons should appear beneath every article in your site. This allows visitors to easily share content that they like with their friends on their favourite social networking site.

There are dozens of popular social networking sites out there, but there is no need to get involved with all of them. You should definitely have a Facebook account which you can use to post links to your content, provide updates and much more. You should also consider starting a Facebook fan page for your business as well as joining groups relevant to your niche.

Twitter is another essential tool for Internet marketing. Twitter is more business-orientated and it provides a way to get followers which will always receive updates about your site. Other popular social networking sites which you should consider include digg.com, technorati.com, linkedin.com and stumbleupon.com among others. These sites are focussed on sharing websites, promoting and ranking them.

5. Setting up Advertising

Unless you’re selling something such as an eBook, the main income from your website will come from advertising revenue and affiliate programs. The first thing you should do is get a Google AdSense account and install it on your site. AdSense automatically provides advertisements related to the content of your site. When a visitor clicks on an advertisement, you get money. There are many other pay-per-click advertising programs out there too, such as Chikita and Amazon. Be careful not to overdo the advertising on your site as this will only turn visitors off.

You should also join affiliate programs. Affiliate programs allow you to advertise products and services which are relevant to your niche. You get a percentage of the sale every time a visitor makes a purchase having been directed from the advertisement on your site.

6. Provide Content

Now that you have your website up and running, you’ll want to provide content for it. Your content should be unique and high quality. It should be well researched and error free. Providing something of value to your visitors will keep them coming back for more. It will also help your search engine ranking.

Add content to your site on a regular basis. Uploading a new article every couple of days is ideal. Before you know it, you’ll have a rich site full of content to keep your visitors occupied. When you make a new post, you should also go through all of your social networking accounts and share the link to it so that potential visitors will be alerted to the fact that you’ve updated your site. This requires commitment, but it is essential that you stick to a regular schedule when it comes to updating your site.

To build a successful website for your business, just follow these simple steps and you will start to see some positive results. To find out more about domain names and the various web hosting packages offered at Digital Pacific, give our friendly team a call on 1300 MY HOST.

How To Get Your Business Online is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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We thought we would keep everyone posted on the events that have happened at Digital Pacific over the past 12 months and give you a sneak peak of what is planned for the next 12 months.

Data Centre Relocation

Around June 2010 we started to plan the move of our infrastructure to a brand new Data Centre. We felt that we needed to make this move as we were growing at a rapid rate and we needed make sure that we could sustain our growth well in to the future. The move itself was successful and whilst it took over a year to plan, the actual move took 5 weeks which was done in stages to minimise downtime. We reserved a fair amount of space at this facility that should see us through the next few years.

New Network Build

When we were planning the DC relocation we thought it would be an excellent time to build a new redundant network from the ground up, so we invested a large sums of money in Cisco and Juniper gear to make this a reality. The switches we used are Juniper EX4200’s and are capable of supporting our new cloud platform and IPV6 deployment which will be happening over the next few months.

cPanel Migrations

When we started Digital Pacific over 10 years ago we used a control panel called Ensim which was an excellent product back then, however over the years that product was acquired by another company and support and updates came to a halt, so we made the decision to move to cPanel which is the worlds most popular control panel for web hosts. At the end of November this year we completed our Ensim cPanel migrations after almost 2 years of planning. We worked closley with cPanel to develop migration scripts and tools to make the migration as smooth as it could be. There were a few sites that required attention after the migration however overall this was a massive success. cPanel is the control panel of choice for millions worldwide and Digital Pacific is now proud to now offer cPanel hosting. We have also fine tuned our cPanel servers with Cloud Linux and other software that gives a lot more stability than the previos Ensim servers.

New Backup System. We take them seriously!

We have taken backups fairly serious for the past 11 years, no one can run a hosting company with confidence and not have backups, it surprises me the number of hosting companies out there that either don’t backup or just backup to the same machine. People who run backups in that manner should never be in charge of any critical infrastructure. I would like to give you a bit of a background on the Digital Pacific Backup and restore process. We have partnered with a company called R1 Soft who are based in the US, their software is the only true Enterprise grade backup system available to the hosting market at the moment. Backups on all servers initiate on the R1Soft master server and “pull’ data from which ever server is being backed up, all backup traffic makes it way via high speed multiple 10GB links that go straight in to our offsite Disaster Recovery DC backup facility in to the latest Dell SAN’s with storage of well over 200tb’s making backups very quick and highly secure placing very little load on the server being backed up. We perform 4 backups in snapshots per day per server and more regular intervals for VPS servers, We will soon be implementing a web based system that will allow customers to have complete control over their backups, allowing you to restore all of your files or just a single file or table at any point in time from the past month, restores should take about 5 minutes for an average size site. We will then archive previous months to another secret location. Thats not all, We also use a completely separate and redundant backup network ports that does not affect your public traffic leaving that for your website visitors. We also have a state of the art DR plan but we cant let that one out of the bag. Then our competitors would be on to us. Rest assured, we have it covered. We have never lost a single customers file in 11 years due to no backups, and those files are in the many millions.

DNS

Over the past 6 months we have been building and testing our new DNS management software, which will allow you to manage your own DNS records via our control panel. We have also migrated our DNS to new servers based here in Sydney, our secondary DNS server is based in QLD. Over the next 6 months we will be deploying more servers around the world for global redundancy and will be giving DNS Hosting to all customers that purchase a domain name with us.

What are we working on over the next 6 months?

Over the next 6 months we will continue to work on projects that will keep us at the cutting edge of technology. Below are just a few things that we have in the pipeline. We cant let you know them all just yet.

Cloud Hosting

We are currently working on providing utility cloud services on demand, we are currently in talks with various hardware and software vendors for this project, we are looking to have this launched around May 2012. We are excited about this project and can’t say too much about it yet. Stay tuned.

One Panel

At the moment we have various systems that our customers log in to to manage their accounts with us. These systems are for billing and invoicing, cPanel and a range of others that are used to manage various aspects of services that are provided by Digital Pacific. We are currently working on systems that will allow our customers to manage everything from one control panel which we have dubbed “1Panel”. This product will automate a lot of the tasks our customers require on a daily basis. This will include a new management interface for dedicated servers which will include the ability to reboot, re-image and view bandwidth graphs as well as a lot more. We have been working hard behind the scenes for the past 12 months on this and are hoping to have it launched in the first quarter of 2012.

24/7 Support

Over the past 6 months you may have noticed that your emails are being answered all hours of the day, this is because we have secretly been trailing 24/7 support but have not yet announced it as official. We plan on announcing this around the middle of next year once we have all of the kinks ironed out.

There are a few more things that we still have under wraps, we can’t let it all out in one go. So stay tuned and thanks for all of your support in 2011.

Andrew Koloadin

Digital Pacific Milestones for 2011 is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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With cloud hosting you can perform computing tasks via the Internet. The term “cloud” refers to a network of servers on the net. These servers contain software that you, as a cloud hosting client, can use. This means you no longer have to store bulky software packages on your own server, and because of high speed internet connections, applications runs faster than ever before. However, this is just the start of the advantages that cloud hosting offers. Here is an overview of the main benefits of cloud hosting.

Efficiency
Employees can work independently when on location. All information necessary to do their job can be accessed online via the cloud. All they need is a laptop and/or a smartphone. This way of working is said to increase productivity. Once you have set up an account with your cloud hosting provider, you can start working straight away. There is no hardware or software to install. A so-called dynamic cloud server will be made ready for your use in just a couple of minutes.

Cost Effectiveness
Applications are available 24/7 from your hosting provider. As a business owner you no longer have to buy and maintain your own servers, which makes a significant difference in the running costs of your business.

Scalability
No large upfront investment is needed. You pay a monthly fee based on what you need, which gives you a large degree of control over your budget. If you need more storage capacity or more computing power on a temporary basis, you can upgrade for the time you need, and afterwards you can simply change the parameters of your dynamic cloud server back to the old settings. In the same way, you can start out small, and as your business grows you can upgrade your cloud hosting package to fit your needs without having to worry about installing more hardware and software. Everything is already available to you. All you have to do is opt in.

Reliability
You don’t have to worry about updating software. Your hosting provider will regularly carry out updates automatically from a central location. This ensures you are always working with the most up-to-date software that is available. Additionally, all servers need regular maintenance, and the same is true for the servers that make up the cloud. But this won’t affect cloud users, as everything they need is automatically moved to another location in the cloud where it can be accessed as usual until the maintenance is done. You won’t even notice it.

Cloud computing has a lot to offer, and these advantages make having a powerful, personalized IT system accessible to even small or start-up businesses. The scalability and efficiency of cloud hosting supports business growth and encourages entrepreneurialism.  If you are ready to give the cloud a test run, there are several applications that you can install immediately with any Digital Pacific business hosting plan.

Advantages Of Cloud Hosting is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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If you are starting a blog for your small business it’s tempting to skip buying a domain name and jump right into a free blog hosting service. You’re trying to grow your business so you want to keep costs down where you can. Free is good, right?

Wrong. If you are at all serious about your company, be nice to your business blog and buy it a domain name.  Here are seven good reasons why you should register a domain name for your small business blog.

1. If the aim of your blog is to market a business then it must look business-like. A self-hosted domain is the first step to a professional looking blog. Internet-savvy readers simply won’t take seriously a blog like yourbusinessblog.freeblogsite.com. It looks amateurish. Readers will take far more seriously the self-hosted yourbusinessblog.com. It looks like a real site. Whether you’re selling a product, a service, or your own expertise, a proper domain name will inspire customer confidence.

2. If you don’t buy your own domain name then you do not own your own blog. Simple as that. While you do own the copyright to all your content, it is the free hosting site that actually owns your blog. This means you have no protection should they decide to suspend the blog or should the host site itself close down.

3. With self-hosting you have complete control over the ads you may to choose to place on your blog, unlike a free hosting site which may place irrelevant or even counter-productive ads on your blog. By having your own domain name and paying for hosting, you can select ads which are relevant to your business, or choose to have no ads at all.

4. A shorter URL address is easier to remember. Readers won’t return to a blog they can’t remember the name of. They are more likely to return to yourbusinessblog.com than yourbusinessblog.freeblogsite.com.

5. Buying domain names gives you multiple email addresses to the same domain name. You can have a different email address for sales, support or feedback for example, all at yourbusinessblog.com. This adds to the customer’s impression that you are a reputable and efficient company.

6. Using your own domain name from the start helps reinforce your brand whether it be a business, product or service. Your domain name represents your business, your blog and ultimately your brand. It is one of the first things people recognise about your blog.

7. If you don’t buy the domain name for your business, someone else might. If your business becomes successful, internet opportunists may register your business domain name in the hope of capturing some of your traffic or selling the domain for profit.

Having your own domain names for your small business blog may not be free but is relatively low compared to the credibility and business recognition (and therefore profit) you might lose by not having your own domain.

Seven Good Reasons to Buy a Domain Name For Your Small Business Blog is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Last Friday night we held our annual Digital Pacific team Christmas Party at the Bavarian Bier Cafe.

We gorged ourselves on copious amounts of pretzels, pork knuckle and chicken shnitzels until we were just about shnizeled out.


We also consumed so much beer and cider that (lucky for the Bavarian Bier Cafe), we had to move on to our next pit stop at the Comedy Store before too much damage could be done.


Needless to say, a fantastic night was had by one and all. Plus, what a bonus it was that we were all still standing by the end of the night!

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A Very Merry Christmas Party is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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