What is brand monitoring?

Brand monitoring is a branch of social listening – that is, monitoring data flowing from the Internet and drawing conclusions from it that will shape the company’s image strategy. Since the explosion in social media popularity, we have access to a vast body of knowledge about customer preferences and behavior. The analysis of this data allows both corporations and small businesses to better adjust their business strategies to the expectations of consumers.

Brand monitoring therefore consists in analyzing the data that relates directly to the image of a given company among consumers. Statistical analysis of online statements on given topics allows you to obtain information in a few moments that required costly focus research just a few years ago. Now, it’s just a few clicks away to find out how we stand out against the competition.

How to listen to the voice of the client?

Of course, this is not all: thanks to brand monitoring, we can find out where the most talked about us is (both online and in the real world), how our marketing activities are received and what topics are most often talked about in our industry.

Modern social listening tools – such as SentiOne – allow you to analyze any topic in terms of emotional attitudes. Advanced AI algorithm is able to recognize whether a given statement is positive or negative. We can therefore analyze the mentions of your latest marketing campaign and find out what internet users think about it.

Just another click and we will also find out which keywords are most often used in relation to the campaign. In this way, we will identify which aspects of the campaign were taken away from the heat and which completely missed. We click again – and we see demographic data. Who turned out to be the target group?

It all sounds complicated. Yes, the detail of the data shared by social media platforms allows you to carry out analyzes for long hours, from any angle that we are able to come up with. Fortunately, this does not mean a lot of effort and resources. On the contrary – thanks to automation, we can receive reports and analyzes on any topic weekly, daily, even hourly, if we need such accuracy.

Brand monitoring – best practices and common mistakes

How does brand monitoring work in practice? What should you watch out for and what should you avoid?

First of all: under no circumstances can we limit our monitoring to just a few channels. In today’s internet, it’s easy to forget that there are communication platforms other than Facebook or Instagram. This is a big mistake! Our clients are not monolithic – we can find them everywhere. A decent monitoring strategy assumes collecting data from as many sources as possible, from social platforms (not only Facebook, but also, for example, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit …), through industry websites, to blogs and even discussion forums!

This means, of course, choosing the right software. The number of sources monitored is one thing – the data processing capabilities are another. Why do we need access to tens of thousands of mentions when we have to analyze all of them manually? The software we choose must be able to process the found content: keywords used, hashtags, sentiment (positive / negative), etc. Automatic reporting is also welcome.

It is a serious mistake to ignore the lessons we can learn from monitoring. If, according to the data, consumers talk about us on Twitter and we do not use this channel for marketing – this is a missed opportunity to reach the customer! If negative mentions of a competitor’s product indicate a missing feature we offer – why are we not using this in an upcoming marketing campaign targeting competitors’ dissatisfied customers?

Brand monitoring and skilful use of the data it provides opens up a wide range of possibilities. We can regularly review negative reviews about us to find out what our weaknesses are. We can observe trends in our industry – or mass culture – to create RTM campaigns. We can keep an eye on the competition so that they never take us by surprise.

Real-time brand monitoring – how to prevent a crisis

Most importantly – we can also watch the mentions of our own brand to detect and react to potential image crises.

There are many potential indicators of a growing image crisis. A sudden jump in the number of mentions about us is one of the most important – if it is not related to the launch of a new campaign or the launch of a new product. This is where automated sentiment analysis comes into play. Are the new mentions negative? If so, what keywords are the most frequent?

We are not able to predict the image crisis. A defective product or a serious error in accessing the service will sooner or later happen to anyone. The only thing we can control is how we respond to the crisis. Brand monitoring gives us the advantage of time, allowing for an almost immediate response.

In some cases, we may even be able to stop a potential crisis before it escalates – if social media mentions a bad experience with our brand starts appearing, we will be able to apologize and offer compensation right away.

We can also react to mentions containing particularly sensitive keywords. The selection of these terms is an individual matter for each industry; for example, brands in the beauty industry may want to monitor slogans such as “animal tested” and “side effects”.

Modern brand monitoring solutions enable automatic “monitoring” of our mentions around the clock. If they discover a sudden spike in mentions or a brand association with a sensitive topic, they will automatically notify the right people such as the brand manager or customer service team.

Is brand monitoring worthwhile? Of course!

As you can see, modern brand monitoring is an indispensable tool for any company that is present on the Internet. Since the pandemic forced us to go online almost completely, it is hard to imagine a brand that would not be able to take advantage of the benefits of social listening.

Our verdict is therefore obvious: if you are not already monitoring the brand, it is worth considering. This is one “magic bullet” that will deal with both research for marketing campaigns, image / competition analysis, and save your company from escalating potential image crises!

Quantity over quality – linking in the first decade of the 21st century

Before SEO became a sophisticated art, SEOs didn’t play around with conventions. Optimization for the search engine guidelines was simplified, and the keywords just poured out of every line of code. Nobody cared too much about the user’s needs, which was due not only to the lack of technical capabilities (these have developed with the growing popularity of HTML5 and CSS3), but also to a smaller number of network users.

How did we link these several years ago? I think the term “without moderation” will be the most accurate here. Initially, it was mainly the quantity that mattered, hence the spammer websites popped up like mushrooms and immediately became a base for various types of websites. Sites of this type were called “presell pages.” These types of sites were the perfect answer to the question “where to link the page?”. Some of them were not moderated or thematic – it was enough to find access to the site, set up an account, sometimes pay a few dollars and prepare a text suitable for use in a blender. These types of programs allowed for the creation of synonymized texts that could be used on a larger scale. The texts were similar, but the use of synonyms gave the illusion of uniqueness. Unfortunately, reading them was not recommended – the written texts did not contain valuable information, and were only carriers of links to positioned pages.

Over time, the weight of the links has changed – high positions were provided by links from educational (edu) and government (gov) sites, and the role of blogs piled up with junk articles began to decline.

Penguin – the Google update that turned the SEO world upside down

In 2012, an update was added to the search engine’s algorithm that ended the golden years of carefree linking. An update called “The Penguin” has reduced the importance of links from spammy sites and significantly reduced the possibility of black hat link building practices.

The “Penguin” analyzed the links coming to the website and assessed their naturalness. Links from cluttered pretzels, low-quality internet forums and other sources with dubious reputation received very low marks, which for the website usually resulted in a drop in the Google ranking. It also performed the detection of duplicate linking patterns, suggesting the operation of linking scripts on a massive scale.

Initially, the Penguin update was “fired” from time to time – its operation was most often manifested by a rapid change in the visibility of the site and a decrease in traffic. The penguin filter forced the SEOs to rapidly “clean” the profile of incoming links. Resignation from low-quality links allowed for a stable increase in position, but the return to its former glory was not always possible. In some cases, the banned page returned to the Google search engine only after a few months, when a new version of Penguin was added to the algorithm.

The update that wreaks havoc on links on Google debuted at the end of March 2012, and the effects of its subsequent hits could also be seen in October 2012, May and October 2013 and October 2014. In September 2016, Penguin joined the basic elements of the search engine algorithm and since then works in real time. Its constant activity allows you to react faster to the negative effects of ineffective linking, without having to wait for the next update. Additionally, the version of the update, which has become a permanent fixture in the search engine’s repertoire, seems to be milder for reckless linkers – controversial links are usually simply ignored. However, this does not mean that you are allowed to link from everywhere – sites that practice spammy tricks can still be punished with elimination from search results.

Link anatomy – how to link?

Linking, while different from Google’s early days, still matters a lot. Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at the correct link structure.

A link, also known as a link to a page, is one of the basic elements of HTML – a markup language commonly used to describe web pages. Link – hyperlink – is an element referring from one document to another, which is displayed most often after clicking on the indicated tag. The structure of the global internet is based on links.

What does the link look like?
– <a> – tag
– href – attribute containing the address of the link’s landing page,
– anchor – link text visible on the website,
– the link can point to documents within the same document (href = “#”), within the same domain (href = “/ about us /”), or to any document on the Internet,
– In the <a> tag, there may also be a title that will be displayed when you hover the cursor over the link, and a target that will determine whether the document will open, for example, in a new browser tab. In the hyperlink tag, you can also add guidelines for web robots, e.g. prohibiting them from going to the specified URL.

In the context of positioning, the importance of the link anchor element is often emphasized – this is where you can place a keyword that will be the “title” of the link pointing to our website. In the case of planning a link-building strategy, selecting the right anchor will be one of the key elements that will make our activities look natural. The most important thing here is diversification, i.e. the use of various methods of link labeling:
– URL address – the anchor is the website address pasted into the content of the article or post. It looks the most natural – after all, who of us want to describe a link sent in forum posts or comments? Hyperlinks with an anchor containing a URL are often created automatically, such as by pasting the address into text in Google Docs;
– brand – name of the company or website to which we link. It is a safe form of link naming that allows you to promote your brand;
– keyword – a more risky form of linking, which too careless use may be punished by the search engine. An anchor link containing a keyword looks the least natural. Keyword linking helps in website positioning, but it should be used in moderation as one of many solutions;
– graphics – a link to the page can also be placed within a photo or file with the company’s logo. It is then necessary to describe it in accordance with the requirements of the <img> tag.

Links can be placed in any section of the website – in the menu (top, side), in the text, in comments, in the footer. They can be located on one subpage of the website or repeat within a category or the entire domain – then they are called site-wide.

Link quality – where to find high-quality links?

With the advent of the Penguin era, collecting links to a site has become a more demanding activity. Finding a good source of links requires more selection and rejection of pages of questionable quality – for example, which are dominated by texts consisting of chaotic texts with a high concentration of keywords.

So where to link the page? It is worth looking for sources of links with high authority, i.e. a good Google rating. The search engine does not officially inform about the scores obtained by the site, but there are external tools that allow you to determine their level. One of them is Ahrefs, which uses the Domain Rating indicator, which evaluates the number and quality of links.

When looking for the perfect place to throw your link, we should also look at the number of users visiting the site. High organic traffic is associated with a high level of visibility of the domain, and this in itself tells a lot about the assessment of it by Google. This type of information can be obtained with the help of SEO Surfer programs.

Another element worth our attention is the link profile of the website, which is to be the carrier of our hyperlink. The number of outbound links is also important – too many links weaken the “link juice” directed towards our website. What is “link juice”? This is how the power (authority) is transferred from one domain to another. Too many links to external websites “watered down the juice” and reduces the value of the obtained link.

In addition to these techniques, the seeker of links should direct their attention to websites thematically related to the content of the linked page. It will also be helpful to get links from local websites promoting activities in our country. Links that are to direct to the domain in English should be placed on native websites and similar – other language versions on the corresponding portals.

Where to link the page?

Gaining links is a tedious process that requires attention as long as the idea of good online visibility is important to our business. Activities in this area should be wisely planned and take into account other aspects of marketing activities undertaken under our brand.

So let’s discuss the most popular link sources:

NATURAL
Natural links are created without the participation of interested parties – Internet users spontaneously share interesting links in comments, on forums or within their blogs. These types of links testify to good quality content on our subpages, and sharing it by users can bring a lot of traffic within our website.

Gaining links in this way will require a lot of involvement in the preparation of website content. Elements that are willingly recommended by users are, among others tips, rankings, summaries and attractively presented smaller doses of knowledge, e.g. in the form of infographics. In some industries, it is also possible to prepare witty material that will have a chance to become a “viral”, which will quickly reach many potential recipients. After this type of online fame, there will probably be links that will complement the profile of the domain that we want to position.

FORUMS
Internet forums in recent years have lost their popularity in favor of thematic groups on Facebook, but those that have remained in the Internet reality are a source of high-quality links. Adding links in these places, however, must be consistent with the topic of the forum and its rules, mostly limiting the possibility of spamming. Links placed in response to a question asked by another person have the best chance to escape the harsh judgment of admins and support the site for a long time. It is worth linking in places where we already have an account and were previously participants in the discussion.

COMMENTS
Some websites and blogs allow you to comment on articles and even supplement them with active links. Links left here should be thematically related to the entry. Adding a link in a comment does not constitute its approval by the webmaster. In addition, this type of link will often have the rel = “nofollow” parameter, which will not allow web robots to go to our site, but users can still click the link.

CATALOGS
This is one of the older forms of getting links, which allows for a large increase in the number of links in a relatively short time. However, modern catalogs boast much higher quality and oblige the link provider to be more involved. A good catalog will require supplementing the entry with basic information about the company’s activity, a unique description, and sometimes also graphics. Catalogs allow for additional promotion of activities, e.g. by higher positions of our entry in the search engine for services of a given website or by placing a link to the entry on the main page of the catalog.

GUEST ARTICLES
A fairly popular method of getting links and new readers is publishing articles outside your website, e.g. on a blog. A guest article allows the blog owner to get new, valuable content. It is assumed that these types of publications are not advertising in nature, but rather focus on providing information and sharing knowledge. Adding an active link to the content depends on the goodwill of the portal owner.

SPONSORED ARTICLES
Sponsored articles are aimed at promoting the site, although the texts published in this way do not have to be typically advertising texts. Articles usually contain 1 to 2 links, most often with an anchor of your choice. This type of service is payable, and the cost depends on the reputation of the portal – the greater the traffic and size of the website, the higher the price.

Cooperation in the field of sponsored articles can be established in person, through the site administrator and the marketing department. Websites specializing in mediation between publishers and those looking for space for content marketing activities are also very popular.

BACKGROUND
A good source of links is your own backend – websites, mostly thematic, where links to the promoted pages will be placed. The back office requires the purchase of a domain, space on the server and a CMS system or other solution that will allow you to conveniently add articles. Additionally, content creation should be added to the costs – especially if we do not plan to do it on our own.

For building your backend, it’s a good idea to choose legacy domains that can be captured when they expire. Those with a good story are especially valuable – the content previously posted on it coincides with the topic of our website, the website has not been penalized by Google, and the incoming links come from trusted sources.

High-quality facilities can also be the subject of other marketing efforts – well-written, widely read articles can become an additional source of traffic and an element of building the position of an expert.

PARTNER SITES
The cooperation of two companies can be expressed in many ways, including by mentioning partners or contractors within the website. The partner’s logo is usually placed on the website, entered in the <a> tag. When analyzing your marketing activities, it is worthwhile to review the list of places where the name of our business is mentioned and ask for a link next to it pointing to our website.

It is also worth approaching other places in a similar way – e.g. lists of companies offering certain services in a given area, prepared by an independent unit. It is worth finding those that have been operating for a long time and complete the data about your company.

OFFLINE ACTIVITY
One of the effective ways to get high-quality links is to increase the reach of impact also outside the Internet. These types of treatments are very effective, especially in the case of local positioning – social activity, participation in meetings or financial support for events, usually results in the mention of our brand on the event pages. These “few words about us” can always be supplemented with a link to the website (usually with an anchor with the name), which will perfectly complement link-building activities. Among other places, it is also worth mentioning biographical notes, e.g. on the website of the university or conferences in which we participate.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Links from social media do not allow us to accelerate the climbing of our site in SERPs, but they do help to increase traffic on the site. Profiles in SM are an excellent channel of communication with customers and it is here that the links to attractive content are usually transferred the fastest.

Other linking ideas

Getting valuable links is not an easy task and in many cases requires creativity. Some approaches will be effective in one industry and may not be feasible in another. An example is an attempt to get a link from Wikipedia. In the case of promoting the website of famous people, sportsmen, politicians, etc., the publication of an entry with a short biography and description of activities will not be hindered by the editors of the online encyclopedia. Attempting to get a link to the website of a company specializing in screw production will require a lot of effort, e.g. creating a source complementing Wikipedia content, and will probably be rejected anyway.

It is also worth looking for inspiration from the competition – thanks to tools such as Ahrefs, Majestic or Seo Surfer, we have the opportunity to see links directed to their websites. Note, they will certainly not contain information about all links! Some sources may block bots collecting this type of data. “Parroting” the linking sites allows you to get a good link to your site and weaken the link to your competitor – on the principle of the aforementioned “lens” dilution.

When looking for places where you can link your website, it is worth paying attention to the quality of links and emphasizing their naturalness. Brazen, rapid building of the link profile usually does not improve the health of the website … As in the case of some on-site activities, off-site also pays off thanks to systematic work, control and analysis of effects.

What is a Marketing Strategy?

Every brand should have a marketing strategy, regardless of size. It is a document analyzing the current situation of the company, as well as defining the goals of marketing activities and how to achieve them. It should be quite extensive and indicate the direction of marketing activities to obtain the best possible results. It can be called a guide for the team that will coordinate all activities related to marketing.

More specifically, the marketing strategy should include:
– strengths and weaknesses of the company,
– the goals he wants to achieve,
– how to implement them,
– defining the target group,
– defining the competition, as well as what the company has an advantage over it,
– costs of marketing activities.

Importantly, a good marketing strategy should not only be applied on an ongoing basis, but also verified, updated or supplemented in accordance with the latest market realities, technological development, trends, etc. Thanks to this, it can support the company at every stage of its development and be a signpost for it. It is worth making efforts to create this document, because its professionalism and comprehensiveness will facilitate the management of the company’s activities.

Why is a marketing strategy created?

As already mentioned, the strategy is to determine the direction of marketing activities undertaken by the company. Its main goal should be to define how to conduct communication so that it is:
– better than the competition’s communication,
– adjusted to the needs, expectations and characteristics of the target group.

In addition, it is important to define the target itself, which will help to specify the actions.

The marketing strategy is created in order to avoid acting blindly and incurring unnecessary costs on unsuccessful and not bringing the expected results. It brings many benefits. Primarily:
– allows you to focus on the possibilities to be used and avoid threats,
– enables the identification of tools that will prove useful in fighting competition,
– allows you to recognize the competitive advantage of your company’s product over other similar products,
– helps to save time and money, setting the direction for creating effective campaigns,
– supports effective communication of the company with customers and partners,
– helps to increase sales and maximize profits.

A well-structured document of this type and its enforcement should directly contribute to increasing sales, acquiring new contacts, gaining new customers and retaining those who have already used the company’s services, while increasing their satisfaction.

How to create a good marketing strategy?

Creating a good and complete marketing strategy is certainly not easy. It requires a lot of analysis and reflection, as well as consultation with specialists. The key is to understand your product (what you sell) and the target group (the type of people who may be interested in your offer). You should look at the company’s activities objectively, putting yourself in the position of a potential customer, which is not always easy. It is necessary to extract from the offer what makes it unique and better than the offers of the competition.

You need to consider, among other things:
– what is the purpose of the product or service (e.g. meets specific needs, solves problems, provides unique experiences, etc.),
– how and to what extent the product is better than the competitors’ proposal,
– how it can be useful for a potential client.

It is also important to define exactly who this potential customer is. If you sell children’s goods, your target will be young parents, if you produce shovels and rakes, you will target gardeners, garden enthusiasts or perhaps professional gardeners, orchardists or farmers, if you offer cosmetic treatments, you will be primarily interested in women above a certain age limit. You always need to know who to turn to in marketing communication and adjust its form, content and message to the requirements and needs of a given target group.

The target fragment of the marketing strategy should be as extensive as possible. It is not enough to generally define who is a potential customer of the company. You should also look at the interests, habits, needs or lifestyle of the target people, as well as how they communicate. The target group can also be divided into segments based on various criteria and choose the one that appears to be the most profitable.

Marketing goals – what is it?

Once you’ve dealt with analyzing your offer and its target group, it’s time to define your company’s marketing goals. This is nothing more than assumptions about what you want to achieve through your marketing activities. You might think that there is nothing easier – probably every business owner wants to achieve the highest possible profit. However, for marketing purposes, it is about specifics. They can be related to different criteria. It is important, however, that they are specified in a fairly precise manner so that it is possible to determine whether or not they have been achieved. Marketing goals may include, for example:
– increasing sales,
– increasing awareness,
– acquiring a partner or sponsor,
– number of visits to the website,
– increasing the brand’s reputation (e.g. being perceived as an expert in a given field).

It is also very important to determine the scale of the expected effect and the time frame for achieving it. Marketing goals should certainly not be confused with a vision or wishes. They must be real, feasible and measurable!

How to define marketing goals?

Still not sure how to define marketing goals for your business? The so-called a SMART model that sets a very helpful framework. Each of the letters of the SMART abbreviation defines in this case the feature that the marketing goal should meet. What is it about?

– S (Specific) – specific, specific. The point is that the goal should be detailed enough to be related to real threats or opportunities. An example would be “getting 1000 new customers” (instead of getting more customers).
– M (Measurable) – measurable. The target must have an attribute that allows it to be measured or counted and checked that it has been achieved within the required range. Therefore, most often goals contain numerical data, as in the example above, or also percentages.
– A (Attainable) – achievable. Only work towards goals that are challenging but achievable. “Taking over the world” is not a realistic goal, but being number 1 in the industry in terms of sales is.
– R (Relevant) – important for a given business and related to the overall action strategy. The goal should be consistent with the entire marketing strategy, the realities of the industry, the needs of the target group, etc.
– T (Time-bound) – defined in time. There should be specific dates by which the target should be achieved. Only in this way will you check whether you have succeeded. By setting a time frame for yourself, you will also get more motivation to act. Otherwise, you can put things off “for sometime”.

In general, marketing goals can be divided into several groups. It is worth setting yourself at least a few tasks from each group. We distinguish mainly:
– strategic goals – aimed at increasing sales, revenues or market share, as well as creating and implementing an action plan for the next few years;
– tactical goals – used separately for each product according to the market situation, for example, increasing brand awareness, acquiring sales leads, improving customer service quality, increasing the number of returning customers, etc .;
– operational goals – related to the development of the marketing program, are the most specific, for example, to acquire a certain number of customers or sell a specific number of products.

In addition, a division into qualitative and quantitative goals as well as short-term and long-term goals can be distinguished.

Examples of marketing goals

What can your marketing goals look like? In line with the above principles, examples of well-defined goals include:
– achieving a specific turnover in a specific tax year (or an increase in relation to the previous year expressed as a percentage),
– introducing a new product to the market (specifying the so-called deadline, i.e. the date on which the goal can be achieved at the latest),
– acquiring a specific number of new customers,
– acquiring a specific number of returning customers,
– increasing the number of points of sale by a certain value,
– increasing the number of inquiries by a specific value,
– increasing the inflow of foreign orders by a certain value,
– increase in market share by a certain value,
– achieving a specific sales volume,
– improving the quality of customer service by a specific indicator,
– reducing the rate of abandoned carts in the online store by a certain value,
– Increase of Open Rate newsletters by a certain number.

Various tools help to measure marketing goals. It is also worth using the so-called Key Performance Indicators (KPI), i.e. key performance indicators that allow you to measure the progress of given processes.

What are marketing indicators and why should you measure them?

KPIs are measures that allow you to evaluate the activities carried out by a given company. Thanks to them, it is possible to check whether the solutions implemented so far bring results. Thus, you can locate and fix problems and modify certain aspects of the strategy to increase its effectiveness. Currently, entrepreneurs have access to many methods of measuring their effectiveness in the field of marketing, which turns out to be extremely helpful. However, it is worth remembering that usually it is not worth monitoring the status of all indicators, because there are simply too many of them and they can cause information chaos. So what is worth paying special attention to?

– Traffic on the website – more people reaching it, more potential customers. You can also check who the visitors are and where they come from, and thus better adjust its structure and content to their needs.
– Conversion Rate – If more traffic doesn’t translate into more orders or inquiries, something is wrong. Perhaps potential customers are not finding what they are looking for or are facing technical problems.
– Proportion of sales leads to customers – if not much of the so-called sales leads become clients, it also heralds some problems, e.g. in the area of ​​customer service.
– Cost of acquiring a lead – it is also worth checking how much time and money should be spent to get a single lead. This may indicate insufficient effectiveness of the activities carried out.
– Lead revenue in relation to the source – it is also good to know what revenue each obtained lead brings and compare it with the costs. This indicator will also help you determine which lead source is the most profitable.
– Social media reach and user engagement – this is a good method of checking your brand position and influence, among other things.

These are just a few examples of important data that allow you to check how the implemented solutions in the field of marketing work and to what extent the goals included in the marketing strategy are being achieved. The premise is simple – set goals and start achieving them by monitoring your progress on an ongoing basis. In practice, however, it is difficult. That is why there are not many really good marketing specialists!

What to look for when choosing shared hosting?

Shared hosting is the most popular form of using a server that allows you to create your website at low cost. In this case, the resources we use are shared with other users within one very efficient server. This keeps prices affordable. The server is fully administered by the hosting company, and users can conveniently use all functions via an easy-to-use panel.

If you are creating your own website for the first time, shared hosting will probably be the most suitable for you – it allows you to create a corporate website, portfolio, blog or medium-sized online store. Unless you develop complex solutions that require custom solutions, or host sites visited by hundreds of thousands of users a day, most likely shared hosting will be right for you.

When analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of individual hosting services, it is worth noting that there is no one best solution for everyone. For a photographer who wants to put all his photos and videos online, the most important aspect may be the available disk space, while an entrepreneur who runs a small business and just wants to create his “business card” online does not want to pay for unused gigabytes, while would like to use more e-mail accounts. A solution recommended by your friend may not work for you. For this reason, I cannot answer the question of which hosting is the best. Instead, we indicate issues that should always be checked before choosing.

Uptime – time trouble-free operation

This term stands for uptime, which is simply the reliability of hosting. When you set up a website, you want it to be always available. Imagine that you are starting a long-planned promotion in your online store or providing potential customers with links to your portfolio … and due to server failure the website is currently unavailable. There is no doubt that even if the breakdown is short, it can mean very serious financial losses for the entrepreneur.

Until a few years ago, interruptions in the operation of servers were commonplace, which is why the best providers introduced the concept of uptime to stand out from the competition. This value is expressed as a percentage and is often referred to as SLA. For example, an uptime / SLA of 99% means that servers are running smoothly 99% of the time. Currently, reputable hosting companies already offer uptime / SLA usually at the level of 99.7 – 99.9%. However, we do not always find this information at all – in some cases, hosting service providers are confident in the reliability of the technologies offered and prepared to pay compensation in rare emergencies.

Disk space available

One of the most important factors that we should pay attention to when choosing hosting is also the available disk space – the amount of space on the server that we will have to store all kinds of files necessary for the functioning of the website.

In case you already have your website and just want to transfer it to another server, you can easily see how much disk space you used. There should be no problem accessing historical data. However, it will be more difficult to assess your needs if you are just setting up your first website.

Remember that the place is taken by:
– website template files and software – PHP, HTML, JavaScript scripts – WordPress installation without template and plugins is 50-60 MB, PrestaShop software for creating online stores – 70-80 MB;
– graphic files, photos, videos. – a typical photo from a smartphone is 1.5 – 6 MB – due to the thumbnails, this number should be multiplied by two, a 10-minute video in the quality of 480 pixels may take up to 150 MB.
– databases – they will contain all the content that you publish on your website in text form, for example blog entries, as well as data on the configuration of themes or plugins.
– e-mail accounts – remember that each message takes up space on your server. This applies to both sent and received messages as well as unsolicited correspondence from the SPAM folder. Especially in a situation where you massively send and receive large amounts of e-mails from customers or you have many mailboxes, this can translate into a large consumption of disk space.
– logs and own backups – can also take up additional disk space.

Data transfer

In addition to the space for your files on disks, also pay attention to the available transfer. This is information from which we will find out what amounts of data we can download and send to the server each month. This number includes all page views by both users and bots.

In this case, too, it may be difficult to estimate future needs if we cannot rely on past information. However, there are sites that allow you to ‘weigh’ existing websites in this respect, such as tools.pingdom.com. For example, you can check a competitor’s page and try to estimate your needs by multiplying the page’s “weight” by the number of views per month.

Some hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth with no limit. However, remember that such unlimited hosting applies only to websites and materials that are on these websites. Usually, in the regulations, you will find provisions that prohibit the abuse of unlimited transfer.

Hosting speed

The vast majority of users leave the website if it fails to load within a few seconds. Only the most determined wait longer. For this reason, loading speed is fundamental when choosing your hosting.

Slow page loading or problems with displaying some elements will discourage potential elements. For this reason, it is worth paying attention, among others on the type of disks used.

As part of the hosting service, you can meet the following types of disks:
– standard HDD drives – Hard Disc Drive – classic disc drives,
– fast SSD drives – Solid State Drive – semiconductor drives,
– super-fast NVMe SSDs – state-of-the-art drives up to 10 times faster than SDD drives.

And you probably already know which one will be the best choice, right? Yes. It is worth to bet on SSD or SSD NVMe.

In addition, it is worth paying attention to IOPS – this abbreviation stands for the number of operations performed per second. Some hosting plans, despite using SSD (or SSD NVMe) disks, limit the speed of reading and writing to the disk (given in MB / s) or IOPS. It’s worth being careful about that. The same as avoiding companies that have SSDs, but only for some data (e.g. for MySQL databases, while all the rest is on plate, slow HDDs).

When comparing the hosting speed, you cannot forget about parameters such as the number of PHP processes that can be run simultaneously and the available CPU and RAM power. A simple rule applies here – the more, the better. A good minimum is 10 processes, 1 CPU core (1 GHz) and min. 1 GB RAM.

When looking for fast hosting, it is also worth checking what software it is running on (LiteSpeed is faster than nginx, and this one is faster than Apache). It is also worth making sure that your hosting supports the latest available PHP version and the HTTP / 2 protocol – both of these factors affect the speed of your website.

Mail and e-mail accounts

Each hosting service also offers the option of creating company mailboxes with an address in your own domain. It will be a good idea to create a separate mailbox and e-mail address for each of your colleagues / department in the company. For this reason, it is worth checking how many e-mail accounts can be set up as part of the hosting service. It is always worth being able to create additional ones in the future when the company grows and new people are hired.

It will also be a good idea to check what types of spam and phishing protection are in place in your mail service. These should be solutions such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. It is best if they have already been implemented automatically, otherwise you should do it yourself.

Data security – backups and SSL certificate

One final point worth discussing is security issues. Of course, you will have to keep your data safe by taking care of a backup – it can save your site in the event of a breakdown or hack. Most hosting companies provide automatic data backups, but you will need to check how often it is backed up and how long your site backups are kept. Ideally, copies are made at least once a day (every 24 hours) and stored for at least 7 days.

Undoubtedly, an SSL certificate should also be implemented, which enables data encryption by users. This is an absolute must, especially when it comes to online stores. If you do not have it, the user will see a message that the site is unsecured – it will definitely scare potential customers away.

For this reason, it is worth choosing a hosting service that supports a free SSL certificate (e.g. Let’s Encrypt), which in practice is no different from paid certificates offered by many hosting companies and domain providers.