WDTalk

Hostirian, L.L.C., a leading provider of business class shared, dedicated and colocation Web hosting, is proud to announce a partnership with SmarterTools, Inc. to provide a new line of Web hosting software for its Windows dedicated server customers.

St. Louis, MO, September 18, 2009 – (PR.com) – Hostirian, L.L.C., a leading provider of business class shared, dedicated and colocation Web hosting, is proud to announce a partnership with SmarterTools, Inc. to provide a new line of Web hosting software for its Windows dedicated server customers.

The software (SmarterBundle Pro) includes professional editions of SmarterMail, a cost-effective Windows mail server; SmarterStats, a robust and comprehensive Web log analytics tool; and SmarterTrack, a complete customer service software solution. The SmarterBundle Pro is valued at approximately $800 and will be included with every Windows dedicated server at no additional cost.

“At Hostirian, we’ve been very hands-on providing our customers with exceptional value for their money,” said Ken Cox, Hostirian’s vice president of operations. “Our partnership with SmarterTools complements our Windows dedicated server product line perfectly. We’ve found that SmarterTools products are by far the most feature-rich and easy-to-use products on the market.”

SmarterMail is a cost-effective Microsoft Exchange alternative, bringing enterprise-level functionality to businesses, ISPs, and Web hosting environments. With features like detailed reporting, events/notifications, throttling, email archiving, intrusion detection/prevention, advanced synchronization, out-of-the-box antispam and antivirus, Hostirian customers will be able to enjoy an effective and user-friendly mail server application.

SmarterStats is a complete Web log analytics solution that supports various log file types, including Internet Information Server (IIS) and Apache, on Windows and Linux operating systems. In addition, SmarterStats provides detailed Web site statistics for both small and enterprise-level businesses while reducing disk space utilization by 85%.

SmarterTrack is a powerful help desk application built for tracking, managing, and reporting on customer service and communications, including sales and support issues. Features include a Ticket system, Live Chat, WhosOn, branding and language support, cost analysis, data mining, reporting, surveys, and a Knowledge Base.

About SmarterTools Inc.

SmarterTools (www.smartertools.com) is an information technology (IT) management software company that builds applications to simplify and automate the day-to-day operation of business. With a diverse product line including SmarterMail mail server, SmarterTrack customer service software, and SmarterStats Web log analytics, SmarterTools has targeted various small businesses, Web hosts and internet service providers and has grown its install base with customers in over 100 countries. SmarterTools was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.

About Hostirian, L.L.C

Hostirian (http://www.hostirian.com) is a leading Web hosting and colocation provider in the Saint Louis area. By focusing only on Web hosting and colocation, Hostirian is able to provide a level of customer support and consultation that remains unmatched by other providers at a cost substantially less than national Web hosting companies. Hostirian offers business class shared, fully managed Web hosting, dedicated servers and colocation services to businesses operating mission critical systems. Hostirian also offers Web hosting services to a growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver application services to their customers over the Internet. In addition, Hostirian offers related value-added services, such as fully managed firewall services, and consulting services (including capacity and migration planning).

What type of attitude?

Of course, I mean the RIGHT attitude sells. Even the perception of a poor attitude can sour prospects and clients, leading to increased customer churn and diminished sales. Every contact with a prospect or client is an opportunity, if not immediately, then certainly in 30, 60, 90 days or down the road. Every objection is an opportunity, whether it’s in sales or service and your attitude plays heavily on the outcome.

As Web Hosting Providers
In web hosting, sales and service efforts are largely conducted via telephone conversations, email messages or live chat. Do you present an attitude of “I care about you?” in your written or spoken words? Phrases like, “Thank you for this opportunity to help,” and “What can I do to remedy your problem?’ help seal your path to success.

From the Prospects and Customers Point of View
It’s become very clear that prospects and clients want results and not excuses. They don’t want to know what you can’t do, rather what you CAN do for them. They don’t care WHY your network is down. They just want their site online NOW. They expect you to be professional. What they don’t expect is for you to go that one percent extra to solve their issue or needs. Why? Because so few ever have!!

Customers that don’t complain are not necessarily satisfied customers.
How would you know if your customers are satisfied? Ask them, but rephrase your wording to, “Have we exceeded your expectations?” Most clients are brutally honest when asked. There’s a perceived (winning) attitude when you’re friendly, offer to help, follow through on your promises and deliver results to solutions you’ve both agreed upon.

Attitude Check
As evidenced on quite a few web hosting forums, your prospect or client starts talking about you AFTER their dealings with you, sometimes good – sometimes bad. What they say either leads to future opportunities, either with you or your competition. I’ve always heard the the biggest enemy in sales is complacency, but I contend that attitude is the make or break factor – up, down and across your organization.

Hostirian believes this acquisition was important to strengthen its reach in the web hosting industry, positioning itself to effectively deliver leading hosting solutions.

St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) September 12, 2009 — Hostirian, L.L.C. has acquired web hosting provider ATCI Hosting. Hostirian believes this acquisition was important to strengthen its reach in the web hosting industry, positioning itself to effectively deliver leading hosting solutions.

“The addition of ATCI Hosting will increase Hostirian’s overall scale and strengthen our world-class portfolio of hosting solutions,” said Steve Szachta, Hostirian’s Chief Operating Officer. “We viewed this as an opportunity to acquire complementary assets that position Hostirian for continued growth. ATCI Hosting customers will benefit from Hostirian’s 24 x 7 x 365 network, hardware monitoring, redundant environmental controls, and guarantee of service uptime (currently monitored at 99.966% uptime over the last four years). One of our strengths is our ability to transition customers to our platform and our available capacity lets us grow along with those customers.”

Far from just providing web hosting packages, Hostirian offers a uniquely hands-on consultative approach that helps insure each client enjoys a stable hosting environment.

About ATCI Hosting
ATCI Hosting (http://www.atcihosting.com) opened for business in 2004, offering high powered hosting and superior support. Their services include semi-dedicated, dedicated and virtual servers with a focus on quality, dependability and customer satisfaction.

About Hostirian
Hostirian (http://www.hostirian.com ) is a wholly owned business unit of River City Internet Group (http://www.rcig.net ), providing business class premium hosting, complex hosting, managed services and colocation services through its’ multiple carrier class facilities, multiple data center locations, each supported by online tools and personalized attention to client’s needs. Servers and applications are monitored by an onsite 24×7×365 NOC staffed by trained engineers. Clients include Web 2.0 search engine Ice Rocket, Interstate Bakeries, IntraISP, and FanBall.

Contact:
Steve Szachta
steve.szachta@rcig.net

PageRank has been a hotly debated topic in SEO communities lately, primarily because Google had earlier advocated PageRank sculpting using the nofollow tag, but this June, Google reversed course. Google’s Matt Cutts posted that Google had actually changed its algorithms over a year ago. The kicker is that the nofollow attribute is apparently still counted toward how PageRank is apportioned among all links on a page. So nofollow doesn’t mean those links don’t count.

From what I’ve gathered so far, my perception is that Google’s algorithms decide how much PageRank is assigned to each and every link on a specific page, meaning the more links on a page, the less PageRank each link gets. Of course, some links may not deserve credit and receive a PageRank of zero.

On to the nofollow attribute
Whereas, the SEO community used sculpting strategies to alter how PageRank was divvied up, giving more PageRank to specific pages, now the use of nofollow restricts or prevents other links from gaining any PageRank that Google once had given them.

The confusion
Enter the conspiracy theories. Google generated a lot of confusion by delaying acknowledging they had changed their algorithms – a year earlier, when they themselves advocated sculpting in the first place. Does this mean that sites that were sculpted were penalized without knowledge, or did anything, in fact, change at all?

What Matt Cutts says about PageRank Sculpting
“I would say that it’s not the first thing I would work on. I would work on getting more links, having higher quality content, those are always the sorts of things that you want to do first. But then if you have a certain amount of budgeted PageRank, you certainly can sculpt your PageRank. I wouldn’t necessarily do it with the nofollow tag …. but a better more effective form of PageRank sculpting is choosing, for example, which things to link to from your home page.”

My recommendation
Again, this boils down to providing value to the end user, providing higher quality content and linking to relevant pages and sites. It really is as simple as when a prospect searches for a keyword or keyword phrase, the major search engines are structuring their algorithms to display results that are meaningfully relevant, without duplication. The goal should be to attract prospects to your site, keep them there to expose them to your brand, products and services, then convert them to clients.

Keyword stategies are more important than ever with the upcoming release of Google Caffeine.

I recently reviewed a site for a law firm that wrote entire paragraphs for keywords – and had no description tag whatsoever. Google continues to evolve its search algorithms to return relevancy, thus the right mix of keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases becomes increasingly important. 

Keywords, keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases
Keyword density should be within the range of 3% to 5%. Keywords in the hosting industry would be hosting, space, bandwidth and so on. Keyword phrases would be shared hosting, disk space, unmetered bandwidth – and extended keyword phrases would be business class shared web hosting, unlimited disk space, unmetered bandwidth plans and so on.

Figuring out what works
The old addage of build it and they will come isn’t the best approach to SEO. Prospects search patterns change over time, relative to the services you offer. As well, search engine algorithms evolve as they refine their services. You need to first research what prospects are searching for TODAY relative to your services and tweak your site to match that trend – to make your site more relevant.

Since most sites have varied content from page to page, it’s important to change keywords accordingly. Your core keywords will blur somewhat from page to page, but your keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases should be relevant to their specific page. Using the same keywords, keyword phrases and extended keyword phrases on every page will simply confuse the search engines.

In the hosting industry, it’s very difficult to differentiate yourself from thousands of your online competitors, or so some would lead you to believe. Actually, while some providers post relevant content, most simply offer packages – a certain amount of space, bandwidth, RAM, CPU for a specific price. Of course price sells, but you generally get what you pay for. Lower prices generally relate closely to overselling, leading to reduced server performance, slower downloads, and increased customer churn via suspensions or terminations for excessive use of the provider’s resourses.

Value Sells
If a provider offers excessively low pricing, they have to oversell their servers to turn the same profit as providers that don’t. So math aside, why select provider A over provider B. It’s all about perceived value to the prospect. Value sells – it always has and always will. Every organization I’ve ever been in tells the same story, “We’re not the cheapest place in town, but we offer value and solutions.”  In the hosting industry, I read of providers going belly up almost weekly. Hosting forums are flooded with threads from members asking which provider to trust. The providers that survive are invariably the one’s that provide value. So how does a prospect perceive value online? The answer is lots of content – relevant content that’s focused to specific needs, matching your core products and services to your online marketing and SEO strategies.