Hosting
Your site shoutd be hosted by a stable, reputable company with fast connections and daily backups. For a small amount of money, there is an enormous difference in the quality, security and service of hosts. When considering hosting, it is important to remember that ranking is associated with your domain, not your IP address. At ARC Web Development, I can put your site on shared hosting for a monthly fee, but you can also pay for longer periods. With shared hosting, your site is located within a subfolder on the same server.
When setting up your first website it's not uncommon to get confused between domain name registration and web hosting. Your domain name is the name of your site or URL (www.mycompany.com) and can be purchased by contacting me. In order for your website to appear on the Internet, the files need to be uploaded to a server. As arranged by ARC Web Development, this can be "hosted" at a selected hosting company. Hosting is usually billed monthly or annually -- ant it is important to consider the location and type of server (speed, security and uptime etc).
Every website that is managed by ARC Web Development will benefit from daily backups. Ownerhsip of a site is also transferred to my clients upon final payment of requested services. I can easily transfer your site from one host to another -- and even convert an HTML site to WordPress. When a ARC Web Development project ends, I'll deliver all the project assets to you upon a DVD image file. This includes graphic design work and image files, a back up of the website, information to access to all accounts (hosting, domain) and documentation associated selected features/functionality.
You might ask, "Does it matter where my site's server is located?" The answer is 'yes.' The location of your website's hosting service defines the jurisdiction for which laws are applicable to the website, as well as it's data. For example, hosting your website in the United States will mean that your data, content and site are subject to the U.S. legal system. It can also effect your SEO efforts. Choosing a Canadian hosting service, like whc.ca, will grant your website a Canadian IP address. Search engines, especially Google, work by providing location-based results. Choose your hosting service wisely.
Having a website hosted in the market you serve will increase your search relevancy within that country's location-based search results and increase your traffic from that country. It is also good to choose a host as close to your customers as possible (as few hops as possible). The majority of requests to servers in Canada are routed through the States and back again. You should think about the geographic location of your target market, and choose a host geographically located close to both your target market and your host's Internet backbone. For further information, feel free to contact me.
