C Class IP Hosting

One of SEO Hosting methods include C class ip hosting. C class ip hosting is to provide a different set of IPs on the data servers that are located in different places. These IP’s have separate Control Panel and server for each website. In this way, they are able to achieve backlinks from sites that do not have the same IP address.

What is the C class of IPs?. Every website has an IP address. Some have dedicated while others share the IP address. A typical IP address such as 148.59.85.14 has four sets. A, B, C, D. The 85 is the C class of IP. This is the part of the IP address that determines the location. If two websites contains different C blocks, they are considered to be two different websites in two different location. This is the basic idea behind the SEO hosting. The webmasters are able to get backlinks from different websites and hence create a cost effective solution to their cluster of websites.

VPS Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

SEO Hosting

When it comes to SEO hosting, here is a question; Which one should we choose for SEO, VPS (virtual Private Server) or dedicated hosting?  Let’s talk about shared hosting, vps hosting and dedicated hosting before we answer the question.

Shared Hosting

You shared other websites with a server space, so usually, you also shared the same IP address with other websites. The speed is usually “slower” than VPS server and dedicated server, and when users reach the limit, your website can crash. Those results can have negative impact on SEO. The only advantage that you can have in shared hosting is “cost” such as $10 or $5 per month.

VPS Hosting

VPS server (Virtual Private Server) is also as the name says, a Virtual server. So basically you still have a shared hosting, you and someone else can have a website on the same server, but each of you has his own virtual server that is private only for you and you are accessing it as the root user.

The benefits of a VPS server are that it’s customizable, has greater functions and still a very approachable price compared to a full dedicated server. You also have a limited RAM and disk space, but that can be scaled to your needs. Of course, the more you go up the higher the price. But it’s great as you can fit it to your needs. Also, you can have your own dedicated IP.

Here is a clip from Parallels regarding “the benefits of Virtural Private Server (VPS)”

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated server is obviously the top of the line; it is a private server which you can customize to your liking starting from an operating system of your choice to hardware and performances. This is usually expensive and is only for company websites that require specific customizations.

Now, to answer the question of VPS hosting or dedicated hosting for SEO is that if you don’t have a huge complex website, you can go with VPS. Google values websites that have “speed” and “constantly display the website to viewers”. The question is whether choosing vps hosting and dedicated hosting make a big difference on SEO? As long as you keep an eye on the bandwidth usage, memory usages and disk space usage in virtual private server, your website will display at constant fast speed, and you will be fine.

Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

From a standing point of view on SEO hosting, compared shared hosting to dedicated hosting, we definitely recommend you to go with “Dedicated Hosting” instead of “Shared Hosting”, because of speed of loading times. Google states as follows:

Monitor your site’s performance and optimize load times. Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve.

You can see why the dedicated hosting has positive impact on SEO than shared hosting. The answer is the overall quality of the web: speed. Now, strictly talking of Shared server hosting and dedicated server hosting.

Shared Hosting

In shared web hosting many small users upload their website on and run them on same shared server. The shared hosting is designed for individuals, small businesses and even by organizations. All have very little or low requirement of bandwidth and disk space, which means that the website doesn’t expect too much traffic.

In shared web server hosting the whole, maintenance of server and organization of server, software installation, security updates etc is managed by website host providers and they are accountable for these software maintenance too. They use software like Direct Admin, Plesk Admin as control panels for the overall governance of the server.

The advantage of service is cost: cheaper. In addition, not many web hosting service providers are able to provide full facilities of windows web hosting. It can be carried out in either of the two methods i.e. name based or IP based hosting. In name based hosting, many names can be used under single IP whereas, in IP based there is dedicated IP for each website. When you need to have dedicated IP address for your website in shared hosting, you need to have SSL.

Dedicated Hosting

In dedicated web hosting, each website is given a dedicated web server, and no other website can share this server under any case. It is used when a user expects to get huge traffic. It has much greater bandwidth then the shared one so is able to handle traffic with much ease. This is also required if you need to have complex application, secure information and customized options in your website.

The dedicated hosting allows the user to have 100% control with 100% responsibility to run their website smooth and consistent performance of their website. Due to this reason this type of web hosting requires proper management to monitor and rectify any problem immediately. This type of hosting can be chosen by a professional who needs to have a full control, by big organizations or by the user having commercial website to upload. Costly, it’s significantly expensive.

The question is whether it is worth having a dedicated hosting or shared hosting for SEO.

Dedicated IP for SEO

Dedicated IP Address for SEO

You should use a dedicated IP for SEO. Even so, you still need to monitor it to make sure it stays clean because you can also be affected by bad behavior of other IPs within the same C block. The second to the last set of digits in an IP address, such as the 96 in the IP address 107.2.96.25, identify the C block. It’s similar to an area code for a telephone number, except that unlike your area code, you can change C blocks. You can move your website to a new IP address and C block if you have trouble with the one you’re in. Call your hosting company and tell them you want to be moved. Check the new IP address and research if it has been blacklisted in any country whether it will be neighbor to black listed websites. Google does indirectly associate websites which reside on same class C IP address. Iit is best to ask the hosting company for a fresh IP as opposed to a recycled IP address.

Check on the history of IP addresses using a tool from ip-details.com. In addition, you can check if the IP address is blacklisted as spammers’ IP at http://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check.

Dedicated IP addresses are only available with justification as required by ARIN. The only reasons for a separate IP address are:

1. you have a new physical network interface (a physical or virtual server)
2. you want to install and use an SSL certificate

Therefore, if your website is hosted in shared hosting, you must obtain SSL certificate in order to have an dedicated IP address for the domain name. Otherwise, you need to have a dedicated server or virtual dedicated server / virtual private server,  so-called VPS in order to obtain an dedicated IP address for SEO.

Another question is which one is better,  dedicated IP address with SSL or on dedicated server or virtual dedicated server? Well, we have not found out yet, but we don’t think it doesn’t make too much differences,  and we don’t think Google can’t tell difference between dedicated IP address in shared hosting or dedicated hosting. Considering overall quality of web service that provided by a dedicated server or virtual dedicated server, we definitely recommend you to go with a dedicated server or virtual dedicated server with dedicated IP for SEO.

How To Remove Google Places Listing

Let’s say…. you have two Google Places listings showing; one you made yourself, and one someone must have created in the past. You want to remove the other Google Maps listing. Both listings say “Owner-Verified Listing”, but you have no idea what email address/Google account it was created under. How can we remove a Google Places listing that you can’t even verify?

An owner-verified listing means someone else has PIN verified the listing. In order to claim the listing and have access to it, you need to follow these steps.

1) Click on a link of “owner-verified listing” with a green check mark that you will see on the top right side of the listing.

2) It will ask you to log in your Google Place account, and then, you will be taken to your account’s dashboard. Here, add a new listing with the exact same details as the listing you want to claim., but it will ask you your business phone number before you do, then, it will show the listings that you have listed in the past. Click “add a new listing” button, and then, input the exact same details as the listing that you want to delete.

3) Once you do that, and hit submit, you should see the exact listing that you wanted to claim. Go ahead and claim it.

4) After that, you’ll have to PIN verify this listing. Please follow these instructions to verify the listing.

One you verify the listing, you can control the listing. Then, you can remove the Google Places listing.

For other local search, visit our Google Maps Algorithm page, Google Maps Optimization (Google Maps SEO) page, Live Search Map and Yahoo Local page.

Facebook Landing Page - How to change the default Facebook landing page

It is important to change your Facebook landing page for your business after you create your Facebook business page such as “welcome” page or “promotion” page. Usually, Facebook sets up your default landing page as “wall / post page”, so you need to change the default landing page on your Facebook business page. It’s better to use “welcome” page as your default Facebook landing page to like your page. Here are the easy 5 steps to change the default Facebook landing page.

1. Log in to your page as your profile name (admin)
2. Click “edit page” in right hand corner
3. Click on “Manage Permissions” on left hand side
4. Go down to “Default Landing Tab”
5. Click on drop down box with list of your pages and select your “welcome” page
6. Click save changes and your visitor will land on your “welcome” page first to like your page

Facebook Business Page URL - How To Create a Facebook URL for Business

Do you need a Facebook business URL? If your Facebook fan page for your business is established and has a growing fan base, then you can easily create a business vanity URL for your business Facebook page. For example, one of our clients’,  Parkut International’s Facebook vanity URL is http://www.facebook.com/ParkutInternational. These URLs make it easier for fans and customers to remember (or guess) where your page is located and it gives page owners a nice brand boost. Facebook has also opened up vanity URLs for Facebook Pages for those with more than 25 fans.

First you have to set up a personal account for Facebook. Only then you can set up a business page. At first the business page will have the url of www.facebook.com/pages/……………….. Once you get 25 fans to your page, you can then change the url to your own vanity url by going to http://www.facebook.com/username and changing it to, for example, http://www.facebook.com/ParkutInternational.

There are easy 5 steps to create a Facebook URL for business.

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/username/
2. Click [Set a username] for your pages
3. Pull down and select the page that you administer (see the screenshot below)
4. Enter a custom, personal URL for that page and click [Check availability]
5. Accept the vanity URL for your business Facebook page and start promoting it

Please note that your Facebook business page is not your profile page, so if you want to create the Facebook Business URL, the second paragraph is the one that you want to deal with.

When you’re selecting your Facebook vanity URL, keep in mind that the name you choose essentially becomes your URL. You can’t change it once you set it up. We would recommend using your business name, but there are opportunities to use keywords. You want to pick something that properly represents your brand and that will be easy for people to remember.

What if your business name is not available for Facebook Business URL? The requirement for Facebook vanity URL is as follows:

1. Usernames can only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (.).
2. Usernames are not transferable or editable.
3. Your page must have at least 25 fans to establish a Facebook vanity URL.

Therefore, if your business name has already taken for Facebook Business Page URL, we recommend you to use “-” (dash / hyphen) between the words.

Once you set up your Facebook business URL, you need to change the default Facebook landing page to the right Facebook landing page, which attracts visitors to become your fans. Remember that the landing tab is the decision maker of the visitors to like your fan page, so you need to create a warm, unique “welcome” page. For how to change the default Facebook landing page, please visit “Facebook landing page“.

Google Places Optimization - how to optimize Google Places

To get a top listing on the Google Places (Google Maps), you need to do “Google Places Optimization“. You probably want to know how to optimize Google Places. The three main factors that influence website rankings in Google Places are:

1. Back links from local directories (online yellow pages)
2. Back Links from user generated reviews.
3. Local Business Listing information

How To List A Business with Multiple Locations On Google Maps

Many business owners are concerned about how to list a business with multiple locations on Google Maps (Google Places). Look at the Starbucks. They have multiple locations. The best way to list your branches or stores in multiple locations is as follows:

• set-up multiple listings under one account
• use a different address for each location and different local phone number
• fill out the LBL (Local Business Listing) completely (100%)

It is okay to use the same domain name for each location. Also, you can use the same business name. What you have to be careful is to do “over optimization” . For instance, if you use your business title of Google places with extraneous keywords for optimization, which doesn’t look like your real business name, Google might consider that you are doing “over optimization”, because it is against Quality Guidelines for Google Places such as “Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world.”

Now, some say “it’s best to setup individual Google Accounts and pages for each location. That way if something happens to one listing, it doesn’t effect the whole”. This is an interesting opinion. We do the same thing for some of our clients, too. Either having a single account or multiple accounts is not against Quality Guidelines for Google Maps, so it is all up to you.

For other local search, visit our Google Maps Algorithm page, Google Maps Optimization (Google Maps SEO) page, Live Search Map and Yahoo Local page.

Google Sitelinks Has Expanded To 12 Packs

Google has announced the expansion of sitelinks to provide better search experiences to the Google users. Google sitelinks was 4 packs - a single row of just four links, but now Google sitelinks has expanded to 12 packs as shown below.

Sitelinks are quite useful, because it gives you a good overview of a website’s content ,which helps you quickly navigate to the most relevant part of the site.