Cultured Views

I have said this before here and I will say it again as it has been a very important aspect of my work here; where you host your blog can make a huge difference depending on what you write about. Don’t just think ‘company’ either – I have found that web site hosting matters as much, if not more, in regards to the location of that company as much as what company that you choose. This is a purely personal opinion, but I feel that hosting your blog/site in the US works best if your writings are along the controversial line – like mine can be here from time to time. I have found that a hosting company based State-side gives you certain protection freedom-of-expression-wise as bloggers are now generally required to follow the same rules as journalists when writing about sensitive cases; laws that will restrict you writing certain things in the UK will not apply to your blog if it is hosted in the US.

Then you might be a business person and have, like we did, a site to promote say – a hotel. We found that when we shifted the business hosting side of the things to a US based company the number of US hits on the site shot through the roof – so to speak – and we started receiving a massive increase in bookings from American guests. When you have a hotel in France this really matter and those results spoke for themselves; we suggested this method to many other accommodation owners who were not getting the hits to their sites – some did the switch and benefited while some took some convincing to even consider it. You cannot convert everyone though…what made us shake our heads were those few who stated it did not matter where you hosted your site. Several of them went out of business within a short time.

What you do need to do though is take a look at your target audience – if you want ecommerce hosting for example you will be targetting a very broad base of client and will need expert support for credit card transactions and purchases. Web Hosting Geeks are not as geeky as they sound and in fact helped us decide where to transfer our sites over to in one hit when we needed to get things done in a hurry. Of course you need to comparison shop – but just remember that the location of your host is just as important as all those benefits they offer you.

Related posts:

1. Changing the hosting yet again?
2. Protect your blog and freedom of speech – host it in the US
3. Nows the matter of insurance
4. Warning – yummy cooking blogs can be bad for your waistline!
5. Other people’s blogs – Infektia.net