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It’s one of the most significant choices you’ll make regarding your online presence. Your web hosting service can be the difference between presenting a reliably robust site and one that spends more time down than up. For this reason, gaining a good understanding of how to conduct a hosting compare is essential to your success in this regard.

Here are few key things to look for.

 What Your Site Needs to Do

Before you can make any sort of a comparison, you must first have a clear idea of what you need. If you’re building a huge eCommerce site with the potential of drawing Los Angeles rush-hour traffic you’re going to need a lot of bandwidth, a lot of storage capacity and exceptionally robust security protocols.

 How Unlimited Is Unlimited?

While you’ll see a number of providers toss that term about, the reality is unlimited is provisional at best. Delve into the terms of service and you’ll usually find unlimited is indeed unlimited—up to a certain point. Again, if your site is going to be drawing lots of traffic, you want to make your chosen host’s “unlimited” is the most unlimited you can get.

Conversely, if your site is a basic one with only few pages and light traffic, you won’t have those concerns. Going forward, if you need more features, what are the upgrade options? Additionally, how responsive is the server? Slow load times can cost customers as people grow more impatient about waiting for sites to load every day.

 Is That Introductory Rate Really a Good Deal?

A lot of companies offer super low “introductory rates, only to jack the price up substantially after the trial period ends to make up the difference over the balance of the contracted period.

And oh, by the way, to get that super low rate you may well have to agree to a three-year contract to ensure they have time to recoup that loss leader pricing. In some cases, renewal fees can be as much as four times the sign-up rate. What’s more, can you get a refund if you’re not happy with the service?

 When, Where and How Support is Provided

It’s more a question of when support will be needed, as opposed to whether support will be needed. Problems have a nasty habit of developing in the middle of the night in the middle of a weekend—during your biggest sale of the year.

When it’s your turn to deal with it, you’re going to want to get a live body on the phone to talk you through the solution. That’s why anything less than 24/7/365 live support is simply not good enough. You also want to know the provider’s average response time to problems.

Speaking of downtime, what are the host’s server reliability and uptime guarantees? You also need to take a look at the site backup options to ensure you can get back online quickly if yours crashes.

As you’re considering how to compare web hosting services, examining these factors will help you choose the best provider for your needs today—and into the future. Speaking of which Yahoo Small Business hosting stacks up nicely in all of these regards. Check it out today!

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Indispensable to the process of securing a good name for your online presence, getting the most out of a domain finder is simply a matter of applying a bit of planning, research and creativity. Key to establishing authority and credibility, reinforcing your brand identity and promoting your business, the right domain name can absolutely make your business. However, finding a good one that’s not already taken can be a bit of a challenge.

These tips will help you get the most out of a domain finder.

 Think Creatively

At the last count, there were well in excess of one billion websites registered. This makes the odds of getting your first domain name choice with a .com pretty slim. While this extension remains the most desirable, there is now a wide array of new, more descriptive top-level domains (TLDs) available. If you exercise a degree of imagination, you can get the name you want—with a different extension. If yours is a blog site, try going with .blog. If you have a small restaurant, consider using .cafe. You can find a list of the currently available TLDs at a site maintained by ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

 Keep it Logical

If you can communicate your domain name verbally without having to spell it out, you’ve got a good one. So basically, you’ll want to avoid using deliberate misspellings or slang. And yes, we know there are all sorts of trendy domain names out there breaking this rule, but they also have huge marketing and advertising budgets to ensure the world knows who they are. If you do too, more power to you. But your road will still be easier to travel if you resist the temptation.

 Keep it simple

Long, complex domain names invite confusion. Do you really want to type 26 characters into a web browser just to find a nice pair of shoes, when Zappos.com does it in 10? You also want to make sure the name you choose is easy to pronounce. People tend to have difficulty recalling words they don’t quite know how to say. Even if they’ll never speak your domain name aloud, making it easy to pronounce in their minds also makes it “sticky” for their brains. Another advantage of simplicity is it will usually be easier to spell. This makes users more likely to find you.

These three tips for getting the most out of a domain finder will help you come up with a name likely to resonate with your customers, while describing your business perfectly. The domain finder at Yahoo Small Business is easy to use, fast and you can conduct searches free of charge. Try it today!

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While it’s true that just about anybody can be successful if they put their minds to it, certain personality types find the path to success easier to trod than others. The good news is even if you weren’t born with these essential personality traits for SMB (small or medium business) owners, you can develop them. Doing so is just as vital as having email for business.

Faith

There will be times when you’ll have to carry on in the face of unfavorable odds. In those times, faith, born of your desire to succeed, will carry you over the obstacle. A positive mental attitude is absolutely essential to success. If you think you can, you’ll try. If you think you can’t—you won’t. Also seen as confidence, faith in your ability to succeed is probably the most important of these traits.

Humility

With that said, you have to be careful to avoid having that faith come across as arrogance. You’re going to need people to help you along the way. Folks tend to respect quiet, unrelenting confidence. They abhor loud, obnoxious arrogance.

Don’t be THAT person.

Acknowledge those who help you and show gratitude. Remain grounded when success comes. Show grace in the face of acclaim and be humble about your talents.

Goal Orientation

The best way to accomplish any seemingly monumental task is to break it down into steps. But you must have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve to do so.

With goal setting, you can approach your endeavor bite by bite, rather than feeling you need to devour it in one great gulp. This also gives you a yardstick by which you can measure progress and milestones from which you can derive a sense of achievement along the way.

Passion

One of the easiest ways to be successful is to find something you love to do, learn everything you can about the subject, then set about monetizing what you’ve learned. Having a passion for what you’re doing makes it feel less like work and more like enjoyment. Earning a comfortable living doing something you love to do is a more than worthy goal.

Resilience

Everything you try won’t be successful the first time. Thomas Edison is reputed to have said he didn’t consider his unsuccessful attempts at the light bulb as failures; he considered them learning ways the idea wouldn’t work. While there will always be lots of reasons something won’t go, all you need to find is one way it will. You have to be willing to keep trying until it reveals itself.

Listening

Yes, the idea of the solitary figure who fashions a new reality from the depths of their imagination with their own hands is a pervasive one. While these individuals tend to be thought of as solitary figures, they generally aren’t. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone, he just recognized a great idea when he heard one.

Most successful entrepreneurs are geniuses with many helpers. However, they have to be willing to listen with an open mind, or a great idea can float right past them unseen.

A Kodak employee invented the digital camera in 1975, but the marketing team didn’t listen when they were told it represented the future. Having filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, Kodak is now a shadow of its former self.

These six qualities are essential personality traits for SMB owners. People tend to believe successful people find success on their own. However, the reality is these qualities lead success to them.

For more tips, resources and your own business email address, visit Yahoo Small Business today.

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You’ve done everything possible to optimize your site. It loads quickly, ranks highly on search engine results pages and your customers rave about the user experience. Still, even with your most diligent efforts to the contrary, it’s possible to get hooked up with a subpar hosting service. To help you catch it as soon as possible here are some of the signs of bad web hosting.

Excessive Downtime

This, of course, begs the question—how much is too much when it comes to downtime? Truthfully, any downtime at all is too much. But to quantify it, if your site is experiencing more than one percent downtime, you need a new provider. This is particularly true if you can’t do business when your customers can’t access your site.

Bandwidth Restrictions

Frankly, there is really no such thing as “unlimited bandwidth”. Much like airlines, hosting providers overbook their services, counting on fluctuations in usage to cover their backs. However, this can become a real problem during peak seasons. If you read your terms of service carefully, you’ll find the true allocation you’re given. If it looks too low to handle peak loads, you’ve got a bad web host.

Slow Load Times

Most web users will only grant your site three seconds to load. Any longer and they’ll bounce out of your site to look for one with more expedience. Further, Google now ranks slow loading sites lower. If you’ve done everything you can to streamline for speed and your site is still loading slowly, the problem is likely to be with your hosting service.

Scaling Limitations

As your business expands, your site’s needs will too. It’s going to need more storage capacity, more email addresses, more backup capacity and more bandwidth too. If a service provider isn’t ready to grow along with you, that’s one you shouldn’t consider. Why build your site on a platform that won’t scale, only to have to move when it gets too big for that provider?

Security Lapses

If your users even get a whiff of a security issue, they’ll abandon your site like the proverbial rodents fleeing a floundering craft—and justifiably so. If it can be determined you failed to provide adequate security in the wake of a hack, you could be on the hook for lawsuits as well as the loss of your business. If the likes of Target and Neiman-Marcus can be hacked, it can happen to you. A competent hosting provider should offer you firewalls, SSL support, and DDoS safeguards, along with anti-virus and malware protection—at a minimum.

These are five of the most significant signs of bad web hosting. Other aspects to consider are the absence of routine backups, lousy customer service, weak tech support, lack of MySQL databases, poor maintenance, ineffective spam filters for email and no support for add-on domains.

Now, with all of that said, you can’t always judge the quality of a host based on price. Cheap web hosting doesn’t always mean bad web hosting, just as a high price does not guarantee stellar service. Do your homework to ensure that you choose the best web hosting service for the price.

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Guest post by Alisha Shibli Radix Content Marketing Specialist

In today’s business world, few terms or concepts are as pervasive—even sacred—as your brand.  So, what is a brand, really? It’s not a logo or a slogan or the colors you choose. Your brand is the sum of others’ experiences with you. It’s all the emotions people conjure when they think of you.

How your brand feels to others is not completely in your control. But you can take steps to influence how your brand is perceived and deliver an experience that matches the audience’s positive perception to create brand resonance. Lately most of this experience is happening in the online world. So the question arises: Where is your brand in the digital space?

The short answer is that it’s everywhere.

The longer answer is that when it comes to the online world, your brand is anywhere people engage with you or talk about you. Usually, your website will be the main source of all conversations because it’s where customers come to learn about your company. This is one of the reasons why your web address has to be spectacular -- it’s creating  the first impression of your business.

As a consequence, brands are investing heavily in building a strong digital persona, with each new marketing campaign having its own website, microsite or a landing page. Amidst all this noise, it becomes more and more difficult to be effectively heard.

How Do You Brand Your Website?

The first step to website branding is getting the right domain name, more specifically, the right domain extension.

Over the last couple of decades, a multitude of businesses have claimed some really good domain names; forcing newcomers to scramble for a consolation web address. While this not-so-great web address might look like a reasonable solution on paper; in reality, it winds up being long, unwieldy, difficult to say or spell, and hard to print on business cards.

Luckily, where there used to be scarcity in online naming options, there are now more than 1,200 new domain extensions available. Options such as .TECH, .STORE, .FUN, .SPACE, .PRESS, .WEBSITE, and .ONLINE are doing an incredible job of making business web addresses look brandable, cool and functional.

It’s disheartening when the name you want isn’t available. That’s where these new options come to play. They are not just a last resort—they’re a primary choice for businesses as large as Emirates (www.emirates.store) and Google (www.abc.xyz).

New Domain Extensions are Branding Magic

“If a phrase is easy to say and spell, it can be as memorable—or more memorable—than single-word names,” says Margaret Wolfson, founder and creative director at River + Wolf, a verbal and visual branding firm based in New York City. “Using the final word of the phrase makes the name kinder on typing fingers, an important factor to consider in today’s world of digital media.”

One of the ways to make your name kinder and your branding more effective is to have domain extensions that define your core competence. That’s what makes your brand name more meaningful, memorable and searchable. Additionally, one of the biggest benefits of new domain extensions is that the most desirable names are likely to be available on relevant extensions such as .TECH, .STORE and .FUN.

New Domains for Branding Links or Shortened URLs

A branded link is simply a short link – a shorter version of a URL you want to share online (especially on platforms like Twitter with limited character limits) - built around a brand name or related term.

URL shorteners are a part of link management that should be considered for every business that is interested in establishing their brand and building a positive image. Branded links help to:

Direct your readers and visitors to updated, relevant content they are looking for

Avoid looking spammy and instead come across as someone who is ahead of the curve

Stand out on social media -- to say more in less characters

With URL shortening services, brands now have the option to use a shortened link that not only highlights their brand name, but also the content that they share; reinforcing brand awareness and enhancing their brand recognition.

New Domains for Branding Email Addresses

Your email address conveys a lot about your brand. It may seem like a tiny detail in the larger branding picture, but it’s supremely important. Having one of the new domain extensions as your website URL can help your brand stand out from the crowd. Your email addresses will start incorporating that domain extension, making your email look intriguing, reliable and trustworthy. In these times of information overload, anything that stands out will facilitate a better engagement rate.

New Domains for Branding Products or Services

If you’re selling products or services, particularly if you’re promoting them individually, then it’s a worthwhile investment to secure those names as domains in relevant domain extensions. These can be specialized landing pages for those products and guide your customers into a sales funnel, either on a separate site or your primary website. You can also redirect the domains to specific pages or sections of your website.

Amazon did this with the Kindle. The www.kindle.store redirects you to the relevant page on their main website.

In these innovative ways, brands are investing heavily in tools and resources that help them build a strong digital brand. For example, a motor brand launching a “fun” new car could choose carname.FUN and promote it heavily to hammer the positioning well in the consumer’s mind. On the other hand, a co-working space could choose a .SPACE domain to make the website address keyword rich, yet short and memorable.

The bottom line is: Your domain name communicates an integral message about your brand and influences your audience’s perceptions. New web addresses are flexible and meant to accommodate a wide range of uses. As the registrant, it’s in your power to register and use them as you see fit. So make the most of it!

Alisha is a Content Marketing Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions available now through Yahoo Small Business, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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An electronic calling card of sorts, your email address makes a subtle, but lasting impression upon would-be clients and peers. If you’re doing business online and trading information via email, your choice of an address can help others perceive you as a responsible entity with whom they can reliably do business. No, [email protected] simply isn’t going to cut it.

With that in mind, adhering to the following professional email address guidelines will get you a lot more traction in this regard.

Using Your Own Domain Is Crucial

Employing a generic email domain suffix is one of the fastest ways to say, “I’m running a fly-by-night operation on the cheap.” While there was a time when a custom domain was a “nice-to-have,” it is now a “must.” Wholly indicative of your professionalism, experience and dedication, you simply have to have a branded mail address in today’s business environment.

Beyond that though, spam filters tend to weed out nonspecific domain names. This can prevent your messages from reaching those with whom you need to conduct business. What’s more, because your email address appears everywhere you send a message, it’s one of the least expensive ways to generate marketing impressions.

Nicknames Are Tacky—Avoid Them

If you had to guess, what would you say SlickDaddy99’s interests are? Either nobody knows, or nobody wants to know. And that’s bad for business.

Why leave your reputation open to interpretation? Always go with your name. This lets your colleagues know the message is from you right away.

Within that though, the exact format you choose will be predicated by a number of factors. If your organization is large, you’ll likely need to include full first and last names to differentiate between the five different Seans you employ or the three Janes you have on staff. This is also a good way to make a smaller organization look larger.

Use Special Addresses for Various Functions

Addresses such as [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected], can be used to route messages to specific areas of the business, while maintaining the anonymity of key people—until they want to disclose their direct addresses.

In addition to being a useful security measure, this gives you the capability of having a single message sent to several people at once in any given department. Sales messages can go to your sales managers, Customer Service messages can go to your customer service managers as well as you so you can keep an eye on things and so on.

Keeping these professional email address guidelines in mind when you’re establishing your communications protocols will improve the image of your business and help it run more efficiently. With domains more affordable than ever and scams proliferating at an ever-increasing rate, using your own domain name is no longer an option, it’s standard operating procedure.

If you don’t have a profession email set up, visit Yahoo Small Business to get yours today! You can now get a free professional email account, and free one page website, when you register a domain name. So there’s no longer any reason to use a generic address for your small business.

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Location, location, location… This factor is just as important on the Internet as it is in physical space. However, when you’re talking digital, the destination is more about the name than the place. If you want your company to be easy to find, choosing the right domain name is the ideal first step. Still, there’s bit more to it than that.

Here’s the smart way to conduct a web domain search.

Think Search Friendly

Let’s say you’re selling fruit slicers. If somebody is searching the ‘net for one, the probability of them entering the term “fruit slicer” into a search engine is very high. If your domain name is FruitSlicer.com, guess whose site is going rank highly on the search engine results page?

While going literal in that fashion might strike you as being corny, it’s better to be corny and found, than clever and obscure. Before you begin to conduct your domain search, make a list of all the keywords relevant to your endeavor and get one of them.

Think Intuitive, Pronounceable and Brandable

In addition to searchable, think simple. Avoid using hyphens, numbers or anything else capable of complicating its appearance in the minds of the public. Similarly, even though the likelihood of your clients saying your domain name aloud is miniscule, it should “sound good” when they think it. This makes it easier to remember and is more apt to engender positive feelings.

If you’ve worked hard to create a brand around your business, it makes sense to extend it into your domain name. Getting back to our fruit slicer example, if you want to be the Kleenex of fruit slicers, use that name in everything that has anything to do with your business. Eventually, when people think fruit slicers, they will envision your products because it’s intuitive.

Think Short and Intuitive

The best play here is to keep it short enough to be easy to remember and spell, but not so short it becomes unwieldy. FruitSlicer.com is perfect. It’s succinct, memorable and describes the business. Plus, it’s difficult to misspell, which means your traffic is more likely to remain your traffic, rather than being siphoned off by a usurper capitalizing on spelling errors. It also makes perfect sense for somebody looking for a fruit slicer to consider it, so it’s intuitive.

Think Beyond .Com

Yes, there are all sorts of wonderful new extensions out there now and they present some rather clever naming opportunities. The vast majority of the public is accustomed to .com. It’s the most often used and easiest to remember. Still, if a .com isn’t available, you can always find a .biz or a .me instead.

Think Trademarks

Before you fall madly in love with a domain name, run a search to ensure it doesn’t violate an existing trademark. And yes, it is entirely possible to register a trademarked name for your domain if the owner hasn’t done so. However, that won’t make it yours. You can be sued and forced to change it. To that end, once you have yours locked in—trademark it.

Conducting a web domain search with these tips in mind will help you come up with something readily searchable, brandable, memorable and most of all—yours alone. Get started by visiting Yahoo Small Business today!

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Is it right to base assumptions about people upon the way they dress? Can you really get insights into the personality of an individual based on the car they own? Whatever your feelings, your industry will make certain suppositions about you based upon your business email address.

What do we mean? Well, here’s what your email address says about your business.

There’s Shame in Your Game

Yes, there are plenty of free email hosts out there. And if you haphazardly adapt one of them to your business needs, you risk embarrassing yourself. If you didn’t think enough of about the potential of your business to invest in your own domain name, why should customers think enough of you to entrust you with their project? Further, the domain that you choose for your business can reveal quite a bit about your style and professionalism when it comes to the digital realm.

You Don’t Understand Simple Is Memorable

Let’s say your name is Frankie, you’re running an online bookstore, and your email address is [email protected]. Using that address, you’re asking people to remember unnecessary information that isn’t even part of your brand. Meanwhile, [email protected] or [email protected] are far more memorable, tell everybody you own the business and says you’re adept with digital technology.

You’ll Be a Shill to Get a Free Deal

Every time you share a generic email address, your marketing dollars are being used to spread the name of another company. One, by the way, that is highly unlikely to be returning the favor. It’s a pretty safe bet that the provider of free email isn’t spreading the name of Frankie’s Books everywhere it’s seen. But you’re certainly doing that for them. When you have your own email domain, every time you give someone your email address, you’re promoting your business. If you’re looking at the cost of acquiring one as a superfluous expense, it’s time you rethought that position.

You Recognize The Key Benefit of Ownership

If you go with a generic provider, you’re going to have a hard time getting the exact prefixes you want. Let’s say you want something simple like [email protected]. It’s a safe bet that it’s already taken.

When you own the domain, you determine which prefixes get used and how. You want Frankie@FrankiesBooks? It’s yours. You can also get Returns@FrankiesBooks, Customer Service@FrankiesBooks and any other thing you might think of.

When you own the domain, you make the rules!

You’re in Control

Ultimately, your email address says a lot about your business; how serious you are about it and whether you really want to be in control of your destiny. Are you willing to take definitive steps to own your brand, or are you going to leave something this important to chance?

You can take your brand firmly in hand with the business email plans at Yahoo Small Business. They’re easy to set up and affordable too. Get yours today!

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