To be honest, I’m quite tired of hearing nothing other than PageRank, PageRank, PageRank. In the world of SEO, many have become easily distracted by focusing all of their time and attention on Google. However, it is very important to remember that Google accounts for only 39.8% of all the user searches on the Internet today. True, Google is the monstrous #1 search engine, but it’s not the only one out there.

Google’s PageRank is a measurement of a page’s worth based on the quantity and the quality of both incoming and outgoing links. The PageRank is calculated on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the best- and extremely rare. It’s important to remember that a high PageRank value does not necessarily guarantee a high Google rank for any particular keyword(s).

Over the past few years, website owners have focused so much attention to their Google PageRank that they have forgotten to pay attention to what the other search engines are looking for- and most importantly, what the human visitors are looking for. PageRank has become an obsession to the point that domain names are bought and sold, even with no associated website, just on the basis of that domain’s current PageRank.

Have we forgotten about these other search engines?

1. Yahoo!

Yahoo! accounts for approximately 29.5% of search traffic on the Internet today. Long before Google was a force to be reckoned with, Yahoo! was the most popular cat on the block. Let’s not forget that Yahoo! is still one of the oldest and best known search engines out there. They would be a good shoulder to fall back on if Google fails you and you just can’t seem to get to the top with them. Remember, with so much emphasis being placed on Google, this leaves much less competition for you with other great search engines such as Yahoo!

2. MSN

MSN, owned by the Microsoft Corp., has not particularly been a favorite amongst Internet gurus and SEO experts for a variety of reasons. However, MSN steals approximately 14.2% of the search traffic on the Internet. How about when you purchase that new Windows-based computer and open up Internet Explorer for the first time? MSN will most likely be your default homepage. Believe it or not, many people do not even realize that they can change their default homepage or even understand how to directly type a URL into their address bar. Therefore, to reach any page they want, they’ll just type it in to MSN and click “Search Web”. Forgetting about MSN could really take a bite out of your website’s full traffic potential.

3. AOL

I’m very happy to say that I have noticed AOL slowly slipping off into the background. It couldn’t be done fast enough if you ask me. However, estimates have shown that AOL accounts for about 8.7% of search traffic. The funny thing about this is that AOL does not generate their own independent search results. Any results that are shown on AOL are pulled from Google. So the bottom line is that to do well on AOL, you’ve got to do well on Google. This doesn’t really help me out as I’m trying to tell you to back off Google a bit and remember all the other search engines, but I thought I would share the traffic estimates with you anyway.

4. ASK.com

Over the past few years, ASK.com has been continuously refined to where it is now, and is still undergoing constant changes. Accounting for approximately 6.5% of search traffic, ASK.com has a “Google-like” appearance with an easy to use interface. True, ASK.com has a ways to go in order to be a really hard competitor with some of the larger engines, but I see it gaining more and more momentum in the shadows and over the next few years, I feel that ASK.com will really be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.

Overall, proper SEO techniques will improve your rankings in any major search engine. The message I am trying to get across is to warn website owners about making the mistake of focusing all of their time and attention to Google-specific optimization while forgetting about quality content, a user friendly site and the other 60.2% of user searches being done everyday.

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Last week I stumbled across DailyBlogTips.com. I’ve been visiting frequently since then, and I’ve chosen them for SiteFever’s Favorite of the Week.

DailyBlogTips has well-written original content and is updated quite frequently. Today, they’ve released a new post titled Top 25 SEO Blogs. It’s obvious that some time was taken to write this post, and a chart was made showing each blog’s ranking for Google, Alexa, Bloglines & Technorati. Although SiteFever.com didn’t appear on the list, I can’t argue with their choices. Someday maybe we’ll start ranking up there on everyone’s top picks.

They’ve also just recently decided to display only excerpts of each post on the homepage, the same as I do. I have decided to use only excerpts on the homepage because I don’t like the homepage to be a mile long, and I don’t want my site visitors to have to sift through a bunch of posts they may not be interested in. By having post excerpts on the homepage, this allows more articles to be listed- for example 8-10 excerpts of recent posts rather than only 4-5 full posts.

Getting back on subject, DailyBlogTips reports a very impressive 4,350+ RSS subscribers to their RSS feed and boasts articles in 18 different categories.

For these reasons, DailyBlogTips.com has been chosen for SiteFever’s Favorite of the Week.

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For those of you who own a blog, are you making sure to “ping” blog crawler sites when you publish new posts on your site? Pinging these services is like submitting a static website to a search engine- only better. When you submit a website to a search engine, you have to wait for weeks or months for the spiders to crawl your website, and then hope that they will list your site. When you ping these blog services, you are in effect notifying them that you have published new information and their spiders will automatically crawl your blog to search for this new information, publish it, and in turn will increase your website’s popularity. The crawling process is usually completed within a few hours as opposed as weeks or months. Pinging sites as these is something that every blog owner should implement when making posts. And best of all, it’s free!

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After 2 loyal years with HostGator, SiteFever.com has moved to InmotionHosting.com.

The server that my sites were hosted on with HostGator was experiencing some issues over the past two months. It had to be rebooted quite often, causing too many instances offline than I would find acceptable. The customer service that I had received (or lack thereof) from HostGator contradicted the large number of positive reviews of the company. Up until then, I had absolutely no complaints about the company whatsoever.

After calling tech support almost on a daily basis for eight weeks, I spoke with a supervisor and explained that I knew that it was not their policy to allow a person to change servers, however it was obvious that they were not correcting the issue on my server in a timely manner and I needed my account to be changed. I even offered to pay money to have this done, so I was told that the director of the department would be getting in touch with me within 24 hours to let me know if this would be acceptable. This was two weeks ago and I’m still waiting to hear from him. I made up my mind to just forget HostGator and find another hosting company because I did not have a mountain of available time to wait on HostGator to figure something out- because in the meantime all of my websites (I currently have about 80 sites online right now) were going down on a daily basis. I started shopping around.

I also posted a few complaints about my experience with HostGator on the DigitalPoint forums. Brent, the President of HostGator actually sent me an email himself apologizing for the problems that I had been experiencing with the server, agreed that there had been issues with it and assured me that they were being taken care of. I thought that I must have had the company all wrong, and that this was the best customer service I had ever seen! The President of a multi-million dollar company took the time to research my email address and write me personally regarding the issues I was dealing with! I replied with the suggestion that if he had known that there was a problem with the server, I believe that a courtesy email to all the users on that server assuring them that HostGator was aware of the problem and that it would be resolved in a timely manner would be appropriate. Instead, they decided to act as if nothing was wrong and in the meantime, they took their sweet time resolving the problem. Of course, I did thank him for the time that he took to contact me and asked him what he would be able to do about all of the problems I had been experiencing.

Brent emailed me back again, only this time offering me a great deal- A dedicated server for only $75/month. He even setup a custom link for me to use in order to purchase this service. This would solve all of my problems as well as give me an incredible upgrade over the current hosting plan I had been on. Again, I replied to Brent thanking him for his generous offer. I told him that I was confident that they would eventually correct whatever issues they were having on the server I had been hosted on, but that the dedicated hosting package sounded like a winner to me. I had just a few questions for him regarding the plan he offered me- pretty much to be sure that he was offering me all of the same features that come with dedicated hosting if I had purchased it off of the website.

A few days later, I received another response from Brent telling me that the issues had been corrected on the server I had been hosted on and that instead of moving to the dedicated server package that he offered me, I should just continue to give the server I was on more time while using my existing plan! I couldn’t believe what I was reading! To think that my issue was so severe that the President of the company decided to get involved and offer me something for my troubles, then a few days later decide to renege on his offer and tell me to just keep what I had! And I thought that I was wrong about HostGator, but apparently I was right. This went from the best customer service to the worst customer service in 1 second flat. I didn’t even give him the time of day to respond to his message. HostGator seems to me to be a wonderful hosting company- providing everything is going fine. When problems arise, they seem to avoid you like the black plague. I knew that my gut instinct had been right- I needed to find another host that can provide me with very reliable servers and great customer service. That’s when I stumbled upon InMotionHosting.com.

From the second I called InMotion, I found their customer service to be absolutely wonderful. Very short wait times on the phone combined with a knowledgeable and friendly staff had convinced me that this is where I needed to be. I purchased my hosting and within a few hours I was sent a letter informing me that my account had been activated and a summary of all of my new server information.

So, any of you who are shopping around for a host or are dissatisfied with your current hosting company, I would strongly recommend taking a gander at InMotion. I have absolutely no complaints about them at all. So I would like to take a moment and thank InMotionHosting.com for providing SiteFever with a great reliable server to operate from and we look forward with sticking with InMotion for years to come.

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If you’re like me, you probably spend hours everyday uploading and downloading files back and forth between your local computer and your website. With so many FTP software titles to choose from, how do you find the best one for you? Here I have listed some must-have features to look for in any FTP software as well as four of my top recommendations.

Must-Have Features

There’s more to a high quality FTP software than just uploading and downloading files. The features I appreciate the most include a “keep alive” feature, which sends random messages to your server periodically in order to keep your connection from timing out and disconnecting. Secondly, FXP (or, server-to-server) transfers are great if you manage more than one website. FXP will allow you to send files directly from one remote server to another without having to download the files to your local computer. Lastly, my personal favorite is a scheduler. A scheduler will allow you to automate things such as website or local backups. For example, if you would like to regularly backup the information on your local computer, you can schedule a daily backup where your FTP program will automatically upload newly modified files on your computer to a remote location. This also works the other way around for backups from your remote website to your local computer as well.

With that said, I have outlined four popular FTP programs that I would recommend for anyone looking for a high quality feature-rich FTP client at a reasonable price.

1. WS_FTP Pro- http://www.ipswitch.com
Cost: $54.95

Just off the top of my head, I would probably guess that WS_FTP Pro may be the most popular FTP client software out there. Developed by Ipswitch, WS_FTP Pro is packed with tons of features that will allow you to manage your files with ease. Of course, WS_FTP Pro is not the only version Ipswitch offers. They offer a few different versions along with the option of purchasing additional support if you desire.

In addition to my must-have features of “keep alive”, FXP and scheduler, WS_FTP Pro includes some neat things such as a thumbnail display of remote images, multiple program skins and auto email notifications on file transfers.

2. Cute FTP- http://www.cuteftp.com/cuteftppro/
Cost: $59.99

Again, Cute FTP also provides my three must-have features. Similar to WS_FTP, Cute FTP also features thumbnails of remote images. This software will also automatically check for updates to your local files and folders and automatically upload them to your remote server. Another similarity between WS_FTP and Cute FTP is the utilization of tabs, which many people find convenient but I am personally not a big fan of (although I’m not quite sure why).

3. Smart FTP- http://www.smartftp.com/
Cost: $36.95

Add the awesome feature of on-the-fly compression along with my three must-have features, and you’ve got Smart FTP. I also enjoy the easy to maneuver and understand GUI interface. Overall, Smart FTP is probably the best FTP client you can get taking into consideration price and features. It’s an absolutely awesome software which I have heard very little complaints about.

4. Turbo FTP- http://www.turboftp.com
Cost: $39.95

Here’s what I have been using for the last few years. I actually paid the developer to customize the software by adding a few features to Turbo FTP’s task scheduler. I suppose since I paid extra for a customized version combined with the fact that Turbo FTP has all of my must-have features and I have been using it for a while now, I have not been inclined to change. The GUI interface is very similar to Smart FTP. I suppose if I were to change programs, I would switch to Smart FTP.

Don’t think that you have to pay to customize Turbo FTP in order for it to compete with any of the other programs mentioned above. This software is very easy to use and navigate, and the developers offer great support.

Conclusion

If you’re shopping for a good FTP client software, I hope that the information in this article will help you to find a program that works best for you. Everyone may be using the same type of software to accomplish a wide variety of tasks, so ultimately, you’ll just have to shop around and find the particular software that works best for you.

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With close to 1,000,000,000 people using the Internet today, it is no secret that putting your business online opens up a world of opportunity for you. If you are just thinking about taking the leap of making your online appearance or you already own a website, you should have realistic expectations so that you know what and what not to expect.

This article will discuss some of the most common myths that people who are thinking about starting a website have. If you’re looking at starting a website, you need to understand these four popular myths.

Myth 1: Internet = $

Many people feel that with a website, they can expect a quick boost in sales. This is flat out absolutely false. Ask anyone who has been there and done that. As a matter of fact, only a small percentage of websites on the Internet actually make money. True, there are the few that have made it big on the Internet, and even more that do make decent money. But it will not come easy. In order to make any reasonable amount of money on the Internet, it will take a good understanding of how the Internet works, website design, marketing, search engine optimization amongst a slew of other things. You can do it, but you will have to earn it.

Myth 2: The more I offer, the more I will sell

That may have been true 10 years ago when there was less to choose from. Now, with so many websites available to a consumer the trend is to form a niche. Find something specific you would like to offer and stick with it. If you try to offer too much, it can become confusing to the visitor. Alternatively, start with one niche and build from there. There is nothing wrong with becoming a huge wonderful resource for millions of people, just make it happen one step at a time.

Myth 3: From the day my site goes live, I’ll receive a ton of traffic

This sort of goes hand in hand with myth #1. You can have the best website in the world offering the vaccine that cures cancer, and if nobody knows it exists you’ll never make a penny. Just as with a literal storefront, you’ve got to advertise, advertise, advertise. Get people to link to your site. Consider PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns. Talk about your site in blogs and forums. Email your friends. Do absolutely everything you can to get the word out about your website. Visitors will not find your site on accident.

THE #1 MOST COMMON MYTH: I can do it all by myself

I am 110% for taking matters into your own hands- I personally do not like to rely on other people for something that I need completed. When I published my advertising newspaper (called The Town Square), I went to the stores, I sat on the phone, I learned Adobe and Quark, I scheduled meetings with the print shop, I setup the mailing lists and delivered the pallets of newspapers to the bulk mailing service. This can actually become a downfall when you take on too much and nothing gets done. I spread myself too thin because I did not want to rely on anyone else because the business meant too much to me. If you need a sidekick to help you complete what needs to be done, don’t be afraid to do it.

Also, you have to be honest with yourself and admit when you can’t do something. You may be the best at managing your business, but you have no clue how to design a website. DON’T DO IT! Your website visitors will without a doubt see that you have no clue how to design a website- they will get a bad first impression of your business and you can never buy that back.

Don’t be afraid to pay somebody to take care of the tasks that you don’t know how to handle yourself. It may be a little bit out of your budget, but you’ll be happy you left it to the professionals. Not only will the end result look better, but it will most likely be completed much faster than you could have done it. And, as you know with any business, TIME IS MONEY!

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I came across Webd360 when the owner, Miraj Patel submitted his full content RSS feed to be included in my post last week on the same subject. I decided to give his site a visit and I thought that the content was very well written. The layout was clean and easy to read. After scanning over a few of the posts on his site, I went ahead and subscribed to his full content RSS feed.

Of particular interest was an article Miraj wrote entitled Avoid Useless Posts. I think that from time to time everybody comes across bloggers block where they have trouble thinking of content to post on their site. He gives some pretty useful tips on how to help with that.

I’ve also been thinking about adding a top commentators plugin to SiteFever, and after seeing the results it brought to Webd360, I’m sure I’ll be including it on my site in the near future. I think that it’s very generous of him to include links to the top commentator’s websites directly on his homepage, just for commenting on his blog.

Webd360 is approaching 70 posts now, and Miraj keeps the content fresh and updated. If this is the first time you’ve heard of the blog, I’m sure it won’t be your last. It’s growing pretty quickly and it would be a good site for you to keep handy. Take a few minutes and pay Webd360 a visit. And if you comment enough, you’ll get yourself a link on the homepage!

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