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Technology Essentials

7 October 2006

Internet users are guided by search engines more than ever before, which means businesses have to understand how to work with the web drivers in order to maximise online potential.

Lawrence Jones of UKFast, awarded ISPA, UK's 'Best Hosting Provider 2006 and 2005', warns that many companies are failing at the first hurdle by hosting abroad.

"The most visited website in the UK is Google," said Jones. "This is a clear indication that the search engines are choosing where to send the majority of the traffic. You have to be prepared to play their game if you want to make it to the top of the listings and hook the visitors."

Many businesses are still hosting their websites abroad. Hosting in the US has been historically cheaper than in the UK and until recently it did not make much difference when searching online - but now it does. Eighty one per cent of all UK searches are done through Google and Yahoo and this impacts in many ways.

"If you offer consumer products in the UK, but host on another continent, you are going to be penalised by the engines," explains Jones. "The engines look for relevance on every level and one of the first requirements is that your web address is assigned within the country you are trading. If it is not, you could find yourself on page 16 of the rankings and nobody else will find you there."

As online spending increases, more and more companies are willing to invest in their Internet solutions and the first move for many must now be to place themselves at the heart of their market.

UKFast produces a regular podcast analysing subjects including 'optimising your hosting environment.' The business based resource also looks at breaking Internet news and current innovations that will impact on UK businesses as they improve their services online. The UKFast podcast is at www.ukfast.net/podcast.htm.

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