Keith John Gill asked:


Tucson AZ, it is one of the fastest growing “High-tech” business communities in the nation. With this fast growth comes a greater demand for flexible, scalable, intuitive, feature rich, customizable, and economical options for business class data and voice solutions.

The interesting thing though is that this “demand” is born more out of what is “wanted” than what is really “needed”.

I represent a large competitive local exchange company (CLEC) where I focus on the local Tucson AZ business community. It is my job to give business owners and principles what they “want” not necessarily what they need. Often times what they “want” is also what they “need” but not all the time. But what a business “needs’ is never as nearly important as what they “want”

Think of this “need / want” dynamic on a generalized personal level. Do people generally more often buy and consume less healthy white bread or healthier whole wheat bread? Statistically people more often buy and consume white bread…Why? Because it is what people “want” not what they “need”. Get it?

So how does this apply “need / want” dynamic apply to the Tucson business community and specifically to business class data and voice solutions where my expertise comes into play?

There are quite of few choices locally here in Tucson AZ for a local Tucson business to use as their data and voice provider. You have Qwest which is the legacy, “incumbent local exchange company” or ILEC, then a handful of other “competitive local exchange companies” CLEC’s such as Cox and Comcast and then a small group of service resellers and other companies that exist solely in the IP world that offer private network IP based services.

Anyone of these choices can fill the “need” to get the job done for the local business owner. But the real question is what does the business owner “want”? What are the rising trends? And who can consistently provide for these “wants” and rising trends?

Based on my field tested experience and research these are the trends and “wants” that I see as on the rise among Tucson businesses in regards to their voice and data solutions.

1. Scalability: Businesses want the flexibility and the choice to logistically scale their data and voice needs as their business grows and not be locked into an “all or nothing” type of solution. A popular voice and data solution that is not scalable enough for a lot of business are legacy, copper wire T1 lines. A full T1 in the Tucson metro area can cost anywhere from $400 to $700 per month before mileage charges. T1’s also offer a maximum of 1.544Mbs of fully symmetrical bandwidth and nothing more. If a business owner ever wants more bandwidth they have to bring in a whole new sole and separate T1 and another $400 to $700 per month. Now what if a business does not need a full 1.544Mbs of data connectivity right away because they are a new and growing business? In this instance a T1 does not offer the scalability nor the flexibility that some businesses “want”.

2. True Local support and local point of contact: This is something I hear a lot. Local business owners and managers are tired of calling support or service and getting connected to someone in another state (or worse another country) who has no real relationship or vested interest in solving an issue in a painless and timely manner. Tucson business owners want the personal relationship and for vendors to truly understand and relate to a given “want”.

Tucson Businesses want personal, high-touch, one-on-one, and fanatical customer service and a local person that they can form a true professional relationship with.

One business owner told me that he loves that I can be the local Tucson based point of contact because if anything goes wrong with his voice and data connections, for his mission critical applications, he likes not having to go travel very far to find me and “punch me in the face…” . Of course he was being sarcastic….I think?

3. Ala Carte service and flexibility: Tucson business owners “want” to be able pick and choose the services and products that they truly “want” and not be locked in having to take a certain level of service before being able to get a certain feature or product with a whole bunch of other ancillary services that they may never use.

4. Custom solutions: Tucson businesses are extremely diverse and not one particular “off the shelf” solution will fit every business. Tucson Businesses want to be able to have the choice of a custom fit / custom engineered solution for their data and voice solutions.

5. Choice to bundle services and have one vendor: Tucson business owners love to “bundle”. Practically it makes sense NOT to layer costs spread out among several different vendors. Tucson business owners hate having to pay up to 4 different vendors for their data, voice and HD video needs for their businesses. Being able to write one check and have one point of contact is not only convenient but it also saves a lot of lost time and frustration which in turn creates more productivity and profitability

6. Service and feature that cater to mobility and telecommuting: Tucson Business are moving away from the full time, static “brick and mortar” locations and are increasingly become more mobile in their business practices. Hence Tucson businesses want their data and voice solutions to be as mobile as they are like “digital voice service” with such features as “find me / follow me”, “call hunt”, “simultaneous ring” etc. Likewise on the data side Tucson business owners want the ability to access files and folders on their own private network remotely. Be it a virtual private network sessions or setting up a wide area network Tucson business owners need access from any location at any time they need it.

Also, I have noticed that an increasing amount of Tucson businesses are employing home workers or “telecommuters”. Especially those companies that employ a large customer support or technical support work force. To me this is a great thing. Automobile traffic is becoming an increasing nightmare in Tucson not too mention gas prices. So if more people can effectively work at home the better it is for everyone.

Being that “telecommuting” is becoming more of a growing trend for Tucson business, business owners want features and service that support this trend. Such as remote call forwarding, remote VPN access or having a wide area network or WAN for short.

7. Several different price points and bandwidth tiers to choose from: This ties back in with scalability and flexibility. Tucson business owners do not want to be locked into an “all or nothing scenario”. Tucson business owners want an economical solution that is fluid and can scale and grow as their business grows. Not all businesses want a full T1 data and voice connection to begin with when starting out and some business want a lot more than what a T1 can provide once their business grow and evolves.

8. True understanding of Personal Business WANTS: Did you ever meet someone who tried to serve you vanilla when you never “wanted” anything but chocolate. Vendors and sales people have gotten a bad reputation for constantly trying to pound a square peg in a round hole all because they don’t take the time to truly listen and understand your “wants” as a business owner. Most vendors try to constantly give you what they think you “need” but never address what you want.

Now, there are several different “wants” and growing business trends here in Tucson AZ in regards to data and voice connectivity but these are the most common I have run across.

So now that we have uncovered the growing trends for Tucson Business in regards to data and voice connectivity and what they “want” (not what they need) how does a business choose a vendor that can consistently deliver on these most common “wants” and trends? Very carefully, that’s how.

Never sign anything unless you are sure your potential vendor is going to be able to consistently deliver on your business “wants”. Again, it is my job to give Tucson businesses what they “want” and I will be the first one to tell you that I can not deliver something and recommend who can. Most times I and the company I represent are the best choice. But sometimes we are not.

Remember, it’s about what you “want” not what you “need…Now go get what you want.



Charles

Joseph Nyamache asked:


When starting out with your SEO strategies, the first thing that you should do is ensure that your company website has a user friendly interface. This, in theory, means that your links are visible, easily located and correctly labeled.  It is also important that the content that is provided in the website is complete, interesting, effective and grammatically correct.

One very important factor is search engine optimization (SEO). This requires you to employ a number of different strategies to ensure that your company website is heard and seen by the right audience.  Common SEO strategies would be keyword listing, site code optimization and top search engine placement.

Your plan should be optimized by understanding web hosting. Regardless of how fantastic your website looks or how effective your SEO (search engine optimization) strategies are, if you do not acquire the right web hosting deal that meets your needs, then none of these would be beneficial because your web hosting plan would prevent them from being uploaded and viewed correctly.

It is extremely important to add web hosting to your plans if you wish your website to have its own niche on the Internet.  Therefore, it is imperative that you carefully read what we are about to teach you.

There are two available choices when it comes to web hosting.  It is available free of charge, or you can pay for it.  Of course it would be great if web hosting were free for all; however, it is important to understand that all of the needs of your company website must be met by the free web hosting plan if you require your future to be rosy.

Listed below are the key issues that need to be addressed.

Would you be prepared to deal with advertisements that may well take up too much of you space?  Or deal with those advertisements that may well irritate your readers?  It is very often a case that these advertisements are required by free web hosting plans.  This is the only reason why they continue to allow people to enjoy free web hosting. Would you be content with the low bandwidth access and minimal web space that comes with free web hosting? If you answer “yes” to the questions above, then it is greatly advised that you go to a web consultant and allow them to deal with all of your work.



Courtney

Article Manager asked:


In this modern and competitive world of business, web hosting has gained immense popularity. Web hosting also known as website hosting is the business of providing a server space, web maintenance and service   to the web site files for a fast connection to the internet. It depends upon the mutual understanding of the client’s side and the server side.

Who provides a Web Hosting Service?

There are different companies who specialize in certain services or software. They are the ones who provide the required data centre space and connectivity to the internet for servers. Just as no two faces are similar, likewise no two web hosting environments are. The type of web hosting services varies widely. Companies offer an array of features and facilities to their clients and cater to their needs accordingly.  Single page hosting is mostly sufficient for personal pages and here the files are uploaded via the file transfer protocol.

An overview of how Web Hosting works.

It is important for all the customers who plan to host their sites on the net to have a precise concept of how exactly a web hosting works. A web host company has computers that are called servers hooked to the internet. They are assigned a particular IP addresses or domain names which in turn may be found by some other computers on the internet. It is here that the web pages of a client are stored. When a particular address is typed on the address bar of the browser, a request is generated that tries to locate the most appropriate web page on that server. If it succeeds then the web page is downloaded into the browser and the searchers are able to view the necessary information.

There are innumerable companies providing such services and it is for this service that they charge a package from their clients. Web hosting holds a very important part in the modern business world. In order to persuade more customers to sign up with them, best deals with regards to varied options and features accompany a web hosting package.



Cheryl

Gerald Faustia asked:


It seems that so many times it is hard for the little guy to get a leg up in the business world. Every supplier or service that you talk to is only interested in catching the bigger fish and is totally disinterested in you. When it comes to finding a web host for your website it can often times be no different sometimes. Sure they have service plans that you can cut costs with but how do you know just what you need to get by.

There are a few simple rules to follow if you are in the market for a budget web hosting plan that at the same time doesn’t leave you empty handed on the essential services that you will be needing from time to time. If your website is less than one-hundred pages and doesn’t have any data intensive components such as streaming videos than you can get by with the bare minimum amount of bandwidth and gigabytes of memory and that means a basic plan for about $5.

If you have more than one-hundred pages and or your pages are heavily laden with text and photos then you may want to take the option of shared web hosting for about $10 which is going to give you more bandwidth and memory. That is what you will need for the bare bones basic web hosting service if that is all that you need. You have to bear in mind though that what you are going to be doing with your website also has to be considered.

For instance; if your site is just for reference purposes that is supporting a non Internet business in your community then you can still get by with the low cost basic web hosting service. If however your business is an Internet business that changes the picture considerably. This is because, unless you are marketing a product that only you have and no one can live without, you will be in competition of untold numbers of other people on the Internet.

This then means that you are going to have to engage in some level of website promotion or SEO which stands for search engine optimization. If you don’t, then every time that someone types in the keywords to look for what ever it is that your website is selling you will be the last in line with regards to prospective sellers.

SEO can be aproached two diffferent ways with reqards to a prospective web hosting service. The first way is to just pay them to promote your website and do the SEO for you but it is going to cost you.

The second way is to learn about SEO and then do it yourself. If you are going to do it yourself you will need to learn what basic tools you will be needing your web hosting service to have available. SEO is not overly complex but you do have to know what you are doing or all of your best efforts can be a waste of time.



Dora

Robin Dale asked:


We all know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best and most effective way of marketing a website. It is the most efficient method for driving traffic to your website.

Google largely values backlinks that your website may have from some other relevant websites with barely any outgoing links. Generating backlinks is still very important to gain Search Engine trust and to boost up your rankings. So, it would be good, if you find any way to get few backlinks for your site from relevant sites.

But, it is not always possible to get backlinks from the relevant site as other sites are your competitors and why would they provide a link to your website?

With the motive of clearing out illegitimate techniques of SEO employed by black hat users, Google has given a set of restrictions that prohibit black hat users from using their techniques to play with Google’s Algorithms. And, one prominent restriction among these is: Google does not consider any backlinks from other websites hosted on the same C Class IP as yours.

If you want only to increase the Page Rank of your website for flipping, then multiple C Class IP hosting is not the one you want to waste your time on. But, if you’re looking to rank your website for a particular keyword, if highly targeted traffic is what you are craving for then multiple C Class IP hosting is the best thing for you.

C Class IP Explained

Basically, an IP consists of 4 parts: Class A, B, C, D divided by “.”. These numbers are given to identify a particular network and a host on that network.

Now, as we mentioned above that Google does not count backlinks from websites that are hosted on IP Addresses in the same IP C Class as your website is hosted, it might get little complicated for utilizing backlinks for ranking. However, this trick surely has a solution. What you can do is create your own websites and trick Google into counting the backlinks.



Simply, you need to create websites on different C classes and place your backlinks on them. The entire procedure is extremely simple, provided you arrange for Multiple C Class web hosting. Once you avail this requirement, all you have to do is registering 10 different domain names in accordance with the niche of your website.

Create WordPress blogs on each domain and craft exclusive, keyword rich articles for these blogs. And then easily get your keywords hyperlinked and backlinks them to your website.

When it comes to boosting your position on SERPs, these backlinks work wonders. They efficiently boost your search engine rankings for your specific keywords as you have backlinks from 10 different websites all of which have low outbound links. This step increases your trust rank amazingly and opens a huge funnel for traffic from Search Engines.

Hence, Multiple C Class IP Hosting is a successful way to enhance your search engine rankings. However, link building is somewhat an expensive option but Multiple C Class IP hosting makes it simple and effective for low budget webmasters.



Ruby