Ordering one of our Hosting/Marketing packages is easy and fast. You can have your site up and rolling in just a few hours.

From the “John does Linux” files (see the last episode; okay, so that was Unix)…

This site is now running on a Virtual Private Server from RimuHosting. Who cares? No one but me.

What a deal!

RimuHosting is a nice upgrade from my TotalChoice account, both in terms of sheer “horsepower” as well as flexibility. Not only do I get 4GB of disk space and 30GB bandwidth for $20/month, but I have root access to the VPS and all the privileges that affords me.

DIY hosting

Well, almost.

I’m used to web hosts that include Cpanel and/or Web Host Manager. RimuHosting gives you nothing of the sort — which is fine by me. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent hours pouring over Apache documentation and testing various configurations. I only had to ask Joe for help a couple of times.

Amazing support

None of this would’ve happened without RimuHosting’s friendly and helpful support team. I’ve emailed them at all hours of the day and night, and they always get back to me within a few hours. Keep up the good work, guys.

SEO experts are constantly telling us about the importance of good quality content and good quality back links from web sites with relevant content. They also tell us that reciprocal links and page rank are of decreasing importance. They then instruct us as to how to go about getting good links by personally contacting other web sites and proposing a reciprocal link! Confusing! As is much of the advice given to prospective site designers.

Personal experience with our own web site has shown that the following is correct and works;

- Content is the key. Lots of it, with constant up dates to it, and it should be well written and informative not just a sales pitch.

- The more pages you can create the better. Upwards of 100 pages will highlight your site as an important one. Sites with only a few pages rarely appear on the first page of search engine results.

- As the site ages its importance will increase. Those who got in early generally outperform the later sites. Google also have an ageing process for links. As these links approach six months old they become of more importance.

- Reciprocal links once gone through the ageing process are still being counted, even with Google's updated algorithm.

- Article writing and publishing will produce huge numbers of backlinks. You should be looking to produce upwards of 30 articles and aim for around 250.

- Attaching a weblog to your site which is updated daily will increase the rate at which the search engines visit your site and at the same time adds valuable content and links.

- Page Rank has still some importance in determining your position in the rankings because it is based on the links and the content of your site. However the page rank as given by the Google Toolbar is not necessarily accurate. A more accurate page rank can be gauged from using the detail supplied by the Google Sitemap statistics. Consequently generate a sitemap and submit it to Google.

The most important piece of advice is to design your site for the visitor and not the search engines. Have as much information within the content as possible and keep the graphics to a minimum.

About the Author

David Andrew Smith is the owner of http://www.wesparkle.co.uk a cleaning services company which operates throughout the UK.