A while ago, I tried to access a website I like to read, home of the odd and unusual, offbeat news, with plenty of gorgeous pictures to support the content, and flawless copywriting. To my surprise, Google had blocked the site in my browser, because it contained malware. This happened because of a flaw in MediaTemple’s security patches for sites built on WordPress, that allowed hackers to insert a malicious script. It had to be there, unobserved, for quite a while, if Google decided to block the site.

To my knowledge, many MT customers who host there blogs, have to pay enormous sums, sometimes ridiculously high, for hosting, bandwidth, etc. A popular site like Life in the Fast Lane has seen, no doubt, bank-breaking bills. The price would be well worth it, if the site owner had peace of mind. But if it happened once, who says that it will never happen again.

MT assumes no responsibility whatsoever for WordPress-based sites hosted on their servers. This, in my opinion, doesn’t justify the high prices paid by their customers. Some bloggers are not IT experts – a hosting company has to provide a level of support that gives these website owners security and confidence.

Luxembourg-based Stidia is such a company.  Stidia’s IT engineers actively monitor logs, server access, website uptime, and fluctuations. In addition, they also simulate full scale attacks on Stidia servers and client websites, and apply the fixes without disturbing their customers. The monitoring is on-going, the highlight of this company’s offering, human powered service versus automated security patches.

I am not aware of their prices – the services are available, apparently, only for Stidia’s corporate customers. An amateur blogger cannot always afford the price of safe hosting like this. But for Life in the Fastlane, this could be a better choice than MT – and who knows, even cheaper? Although server-location could be an issue: Life in the Fastlane would become a Canadian website hosted on a Luxembourg server. Server location would influence search engine positioning for the site, probably not in its owner’s best interest. On the other hand, it’s always better to be a few positions lower in the search results, than not appearing at all because of a Google ban.

So if your website is in need of desperate attention, Stidia’s engineers might be the answers to your problems. Or some other company that offers actively managed hosting. If you can think of any, list it in the comments, and don’t forget to add server location for us.

Disclosure – Stidia is a Pamil Visions PR customer

A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything
2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium
3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising
4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising
5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

The proliferation of the internet has completely changed how our society exchanges information. What was once the realm of letters and paper is now the realm of e-mail and electronic documents. Just as the way of relaying information has evolved, so has the world of advertising. Billboards are now sidebar ads and the Yellow Pages are now Google Maps.

For many small businesses the internet has become a boon to their services, bringing them a whole host of new customers that they never would have seen in the years before the web. But, herein lays a problem. It is one thing to recognize the changing landscape of marketing and advertising, but a completely different thing to understand how this new mechanism works. Simply putting together a novice website and then letting is fester in cyber-anonymity is simply not enough. This is where a properly placed SEO campaign can assist your company in emerging from internet obscurity.

For example, you may be in the business of hiring truck drivers.  You may offer the highest quality truck driver hiring services available. Your track record may be sterling but no one will have any idea of your business’ quality if you don’t properly advertise it or if your name doesn’t appear in a simple web search. SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and these services accomplish exactly what the name implies: they help your website conform to the standards dictated by individual search engines. A properly launched and maintained SEO campaign can bring your name to the top of a web search, effectively bringing more traffic to your website. Think about it: when you search for a service, which web result do you usually click on? If you are like most people, the first page of results is usually as far as you get.

Let’s return to our previous example. If someone were to type “hiring truck drivers” into a search engine and you owned a company that specialized in this very service, you would want your company name to show up first. If you have correctly branded your company name online, enlisted effective SEO techniques, and followed up on your marketing campaign with solid services, then you would be in a prime place to reap the benefits of a very high ranking. All of these variables coming together and working in tandem would equate to a higher customer flow and increased sales.

A properly run SEO campaign can accentuate all the hard work you have put into your business by highlighting your products and putting your company name in front of more people than any other medium can afford. The results can truly be astounding: the investment worth every penny.

About the author

Ryan Chaffin is currently a college student majoring in Business Marketing. He loves anything technology, internet, and social media related along with sports and health & wellness. Ryan currently specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, and social media and believes in achieving your fullest potential on and off the web. You can also find Ryan on Twitter (@ryanchaffin).

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you’re week is off to an amazing start and that you have time for some reading today as I come with interesting suggestions.

If you’re planning to boost your e-commerce sales through blogging, Michael Martine of Remarkablogger has 10 wonderful tips to help you achieve your goals.

Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing explains a very important interdependence: social media and SEO go together and can’t possibly be separated.

We all want to increase our traffic. And Ted Demopoulos of Blogging and Business has some great tips for us to read and apply.

Erica Douglass from Erica.biz is determined to show us how to obtain a difficult, yet rewarding goal: making a million dollars with our business.

As word of mouth is such a powerful marketing tool, we all want others to talk about us and, more importantly, our business. Dawud Miracle explains how to get the conversation started.

As this week seems to be dedicated to 10-tip lists, here’s another exciting collection: read NetBusinessBlog to improve local search rankings in Google.

If you were wondering how not to pitch to a blogger, here’s Eric Karjaluoto’s (Ideas on Ideas) take on bad blog PR.

From tips, moving on to 10 commandments: Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog: How Non Profits Can Use Social media has recently published the 10 commandments of of panel discussions.

And if you’re ever using Typepad and want to switch to WordPress, stop by Confident writing first and read Joanna’s Young guide to the move.

I do hope you’re able to find something useful on this list. See you all next week when I promise to be back with more interesting articles for you to enjoy. Have a lovely Monday and week!

Alina