EzSEO Newsletter # 205

This week:

1. Top Web Hosting Results

2. SEO Quake - plugin for Firefox

3. Wordpress Tutorial News

4. SEO Videos

Hi again

This week I’ve got the latest news about the forthcoming Wordpress Tutorials, plus the results of the Top Web Host Survey from the last couple of weeks. There’s also a fantastic SEO plugin for Firefox, and more.

Let’s get on..

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1. Top Web Hosting Results
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It’s time to reveal the results from the top 9 web hosting survey from last week.

Before I do, I got an email from Tom Brownsword who is a computer security expert, who said this:

“Hello Dr. Andy!

Just a quick comment, if I may, on Issue #204 of EzSEO Newsletter.

One of your readers told about how they could not change script permissions to 777 with their web host (Web Hosting Horror Story #5). As a certified computer security pro, I’d like to point out that it is actually a blessing in disguise.

First, setting the directory permissions to 777 gives anybody in the world write access to that directory. NEVER a good idea. 755 should be more than enough to get the job done (and if it isn’t, the script needs to be rewritten. Period). I can’t think of any reason why a group or the world would need to write to a directory that contains scripts.

Let me run a scenario for you. Miscreant creates a script that attempts to write files to web servers. When it’s successful, the script notifies the miscreant. Said miscreant returns to the web server, installs their own spam / botnet / malware script, then takes over the server. Or proceeds to wreak havoc on the rest of the server. Or… you get the idea.

In a perfect world, users would immediately change back the permissions after a script install, but perfect users are hard to come by! Sadly, this security hole too often stays wide open, leading to successful exploits.

My favorite hosting company — Dathorn — doesn’t allow 777 permissions on directories (755 is the max) — just another reason I love them. They’ve even told me in the past that I can’t run certain scripts on the server, along with telling me “why”. There’s always been a good reason and I’ve learned a lot in the process.

So not allowing 777 permissions on directories is a good thing — plus it should never be needed. Even when called for, 755 will work just fine in most cases.

And thanks for your consistent work on this great newsletter!

Best regards,
Tom Brownsword”

Thanks for that Tom. I will certainly be a lot more careful in future when I am installing scripts.

OK, the Web Hosting Survey results. Drum roll please……

208 people answered the survey. A big thanks to everyone who took the time to do so.

The first question was a tough one. I asked you to put the following in order of importance to you: features, cost, support, reliability.

Here are the results:

1. Reliability
2. Support, Cost
4. Features

Reliability was voted as the most important factor in web hosting by around 62% of those who answered the survey. I totally agree. If reliability is poor, the rest doesn’t matter because when my sites are down, I don’t make any m0ney.

In second place, it was too close to call, with Support and Cost being equally important.

The least important factor was features.

I suppose this last point probably indicates that most web hosts have all of the features that standard users will want, therefore it’s not so much of a concern.

It is probably only the power users that will need a little bit more.

OK, the second question in the survey was a grid showing the top 9 web hosts (according to newsletter subscribers who took the previous web hosting survey a couple of weeks back).

I asked you to rate any host that you had used in the last 2 years on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (Perfect).

The results surprised me.

HOST #1 - 1&1 UK
This is the web host I use for most of my sites. I find it has unparalleled reliability, which for me is the most important factor.

Here is what you thought:
Average score 6.3 based on 13 users.
Lowest score 3 (1 vote)
Top score 9 (2 votes)

HOST #2 - 1&1 US
The US 1&1 started up a few years ago after the huge success of 1&1.co.uk. Initially, reliability was a problem, and as with most new businesses, there were teething problems. What do users think now?

Here is what you thought:
Average score 5.9 based on 35 users.
Lowest score 1 (3 votes)
Top score 10 (2 votes)

HOST #3 - Bluehost
Here is what you thought:
Average score 8.0 based on 31 users.
Lowest score 1 (1 votes)
Top score 10 (9 votes)

NOTE: 27 out of the 31 who answered this survey awarded Blue Host a score of 7 or more.

HOST #4 - Go Daddy
Here is what you thought:
Average score 5.3 based on 46 users.
Lowest score 1 (4 votes)
Top score 9 (6 votes)

20 people awarded GoDaddy a 4 or less, 25 people awarded a 6 or more.

HOST #5 - Host Department
Only three people answered the question for this host, so I wouldn’t read too much into it. However, the three people awarded this host 8,8,9. Obviously they are happy with it, so it might be worth checking out.

HOST #6 - Host Gator
Here is what you thought:
Average score 8.0 based on 109 users.
Lowest score 1 (3 votes)
Top score 10 (22 votes)

Out of the 109 who answered the survey for this host, 10 people awarded Hostgator a 5 or less. 31 people awarded them a score of 8, 31 awarded them a score of 9 and 22 awarded them a score of 10. This certainly looks like a host to consider.

HOST #7 - Host Monster
Here is what you thought:
Average score 8.9 based on 8 users.
Lowest score 8 (3 votes)
Top score 10 (2 votes)

There were only 8 users of this host, so again, while it looks promising, it would be nice if there was a little more data to go on.

HOST #8 - iPower
Here is what you thought:
Average score 4.5 based on 15 users.
Lowest score 1 (1 votes)
Top score 10 (1 votes)

NOTE: 8 of the 15 people who rated this host gave them a 3 or lower.

HOST #9 - Lunar Pages
Here is what you thought:
Average score 8.1 based on 9 users.
Lowest score 7 (3 votes)
Top score 10 (1 votes)

After reading horror stories on the Internet about these hosts, I was pleasantly surprised by their average score of 8.1. OK, its only based on 9 users, but the fact that no-one gave a score lower than 7 means this host may well have improved in the last couple of years.

The top scoring host was Host Department with an average score of 8.3 out of 10 - [based on 3 votes])

Because it only had three votes, I have excluded it from the top 8 table. However, be aware that it might be worth investigating yourself.

Top 8 Web Hosts as voted for by readers of the ezSEO Newsletter are as follows:

#1 - Host Monster (Score 8.9 - [8 votes]).

#2 - Lunar Pages (Score 8.1 - [9 votes]).

#3 - Host Gator (Score 8.0 - [109 votes]).

#4 - Bluehost (Score 8.0 - [31 votes]).

#5 - 1&1 UK (Score 6.3 - [13 votes]).

#6 - 1&1 US (Score 5.9 - [35 votes]).

#7 - Go Daddy (Score 5.3 - [46 votes]).

#8 - iPower (Score 4.5 - [15 votes]).

If you are looking for a host, the table above gives you an unbiased score for each host in the survey.

I would particularly recommend you look at those in the top 4, as achieving a score of 8 out of 10 is some going. While the top two had relatively few votes, Host Gator was voted for by 109 people, and still achieved an impressive 8 out of 10. That would be my recommendation for best host.

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2. SEO Quake - plugin for Firefox
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I found a great little addon for Firefox this week. What I wanted was something that would show me the Page Rank of the search results in Google whenever I do a search. What I found is called “SEO Quake”, and it gives me far more than that.

Installing SEO Quake is as simple as visiting this page with Firefox, and clicking the “Install SEO Quake Now” button:

http://ff.seoquake.com/

Once installed, head on over to Google (Yahoo, or MSN), and do a search. Wait a few seconds after the search results display, and you’ll find SEO Quake kicks in.

SEO Quake will modify the search results to show a great deal of information underneath each entry in the results page.

Before I go on, let me just show you this warning on the SEO Quake homepage:

ATTENTION! Frequent use of big amount of parameters may lead to the ban from SE. In this case, you will need to delete cookies and change proxy server.

In other words, customise it to include just the information you needs and turn it off when you don’t need the information it provides. Fortunately, turning it off is a simple case of clicking the icon in the Firefox status bar (that’s bottom right of the browser).

OK, so what information does it show?

You should read the SEO Quake homepage for a complete list, but the important ones as far as I am concerned include the following:

* Google PR
* Number of indexed pages in Google.
* Number of links found in Google, pointing to the current page.
* Date of current Google cache.
* Number of indexed pages in Yahoo.
* Number of links found in Yahoo, pointing to the current page.
* Number of links found in Yahoo pointing to the current domain (as opposed to links pointing to a single page.
* Domain present in the Yahoo Directory?
* Similar information for MSN.
* Domain present in the Dmoz Directory?
* Alexa Rank
* First date in Archive.org
* Domain IP.
* Link to the Whois record of current domain.
* Link to the source code of current web page.
* Display quantity of internal/external links.

For SEOs, this information is very useful in helping us find out why a web page is ranking so well,

e.g. After playing with it for a while, it became very apparent that the age of the domain is very important. I know this is something that SEOs have been saying for a while, but it was nice to see it for my own eyes, as I have never really paid too much attention to that aspect before.

Anyway, SEO Quake is a fantastic add-on, and one I highly recommend. Use it wisely, and don’t forget to turn it off when you don’t need the information it provides.

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3. Wordpress Tutorial News
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I now have a domain setup for this tutorial series.

I haven’t had time this week to start the tutorials, as I am working long hours getting everything ready for the release of KRA Pro tomorrow. However, as long as that goes smoothly, look out for the first issue of the Wordpress Tutorial next week.

The tutorials are going to go from the absolute basics (installing Wordpress) right through to a detailed look at using Wordpress for creating affiliate sites (that do not look like blogs).

I am not expecting any previous knowledge of Wordpress, or site building, so anyone should be able to follow. I’ll be using videos and written lessons to teach the course, so that should please 95% of you (based on the survey from a couple of weeks ago). Best of all, like all courses run in this newsletter, it will be fr.ee.

If you want to take part, you will need 2 things:

1. Web Hosting with one MySQL database.
2. A domain.

I am looking forward to this - I hope you are too.

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4. SEO Videos
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Over the last week I have uploaded a series of videos that will be interesting to you even if you are not interested in buying KRA Pro.

The ones I recommend you watch are the following:

VIDEO #1 - Does Google Really Rank Well-Themed Content Higher?

VIDEO #2 - How do you find theme words, and what results can we expect from pages built using the themeing idea?

VIDEO #3 - How to find great ideas for content that will be add value to the ‘net.

VIDEO #4 - How much competition is too much?

You can see these videos on the blog:

KRA Pro Blog

NOTE: Scroll to the bottom, and read the last one first (since this is a blog, newest posts are at the top).

Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:

http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:

http://ezseonews.com/archives

Have a great week!

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