Publishing a web site is getting much easier and more affordable these days. There are a few things that you need before you can publish your new web site. Renting a domain and a web host are the first steps. Domain names cost around $2-$8 per year and basic hosting runs between $4 and $15 per month. So the most inexpensive would be $48 for a year of hosting + $2 for your domain name = $50 per year (plus they normally have a discount for buying a full year of hosting).

SEOwebMarket highly recommends that you only use services from GoDaddy for many reasons including security, respectability, support, value, and service. This web site is hosted by GoDaddy and we wouldn't settle for anything less.

A domain name is the name or address of your web site (yourdomain.com). Domain names have many important attributes. Some catchy domain names sell for over $10,000 every week, but there are plenty of good names left. It is best to register your main domain for five to ten years in order to achieve the highest possible ranks.

When someone types in your domain name or is directed to it by a link, they are routed through a "name server" that tells their computer where the web server (for that domain name) is located. Name servers are usually included in the price of domain names.

iCann normally charges $0.25 cents extra to register any domain name purchase (this is required). You can also pay an extra $4 if you want to keep your personal information secure (private domain registration); this just reduces the amount of spam that you will receive on the site's eMail accounts.

There are many domain name extensions available. By far, the most common is the ".com". There are also ".net", ".org", ".info", ".biz", ".us", ".tv", ".name", ".uk.co", plus an extension for almost every country in the world that has internet access.

If you have a commercial web site, then you should definitely be interested owning a ".com" name for your company. It is often wise to acquire the ".com" of some similar names or alternate spellings of them. You should also invest in the ".net", ".org", ".biz", and ".info" versions of your main domain.

If you want a domain name that is currently in use or is registered by someone else, you can Backorder Domains. By backordering a domain name, you are reserving the right to purchase it when it becomes available.

When your backordered domain expires (if it is not automatically renewed by the current owner), it becomes available to you. GoDaddy will try to purchase your desired domain right away. If someone else bids on the name, GoDaddy will bid up to the amount that you paid for backordering ($18.95) on the auction of the domain name. If the bids exceed this amount, GoDaddy will notify you and give you a chance to bid on the auction.

If the name that you want is auto-renewed or you don't get a chance to obtain it, you can pick another name that you want to take its place (with no extra fees involved).

SEOwebMarket.com recommends purchasing a backorder and making a list (spreadsheet) of the names that you want (sortable by expiration date). Every time the soonest to expire re-registers, you should choose the next name on the list. It's like having a $20 bill working to get you great web real estate. Once you obtain your backordered domain, you can backorder another until you own all of the names that you want.

You can look in the whois directory to see when names are set to expire. The whois directory also lists the name and contact information of the domain owner.

A web host is a computer (normally a whole room full of servers) that stores your web site on its hard drive and serves it to people that connect to it. Good web servers are on multiple very fast Internet connections, they have terabytes of storage space, very fast processing speeds, and should almost never crash; GoDaddy servers have 99.9% guaranteed uptime. SEOwebMarket.com highly recommends using a Unix or Linux based web server; anything less just isn't worth the hassle.

GoDaddy charges $4 per month to host a single web site, and $7-$15 per month to host multiple websites. There are two basic measurements for web servers: disk space, and bandwidth. For most small businesses, the usual allotted space will be more than enough room. For sites that have a tremendous amount of media like music or movie files, you might need to purchase more file storage space. For sites that have an unusually large number of visitors (which is almost always a very good thing) or massive downloads, purchasing additional bandwidth for data transfer might be necessary.

There are many web site enhancements that cost extra money. For regular web sites, you wont need the extras; but for business web sites, some of the extras can be very valuable. If your site does eCommerce, the Secure Site Certificate and merchant services are necessary.

Quick Podcast from GoDaddy.com

Free GoDaddy Customer Support

Most hosting companies charge for customer service. It is common for them to charge you $29 per month just to ask a couple questions when you are stuck. GoDaddy backs its services with free 24/7 customer support. You can call them and ask as many questions as you need to solve your problems. They also keep a nice sized staff on the phones at all times - so you never have to wait more than a few minutes to talk to them; many other services have you talking to a machine or pushing 2 for services or 3 to wait longer, and then they keep you on hold for 30 minutes before you get your chance to talk to a live human. You can also send eMails to them with any questions and real people respond right away with answers (not form mail auto-responders).

Free GoDaddy Extras

GoDaddy hosting comes with 501 free eMail addresses, free PHP databases, many third-party web applications, and a few other tools that other companies charge extra for. There is a free contact web form that users can use to submit messages to you through a page on your web site by entering data into fields - and when submitted, the form will eMail the information to a designated eMail address.

eMail Accounts

GoDaddy hosting comes with 501 free eMail addresses. One of them is 25 MB, and the other 500 are 10 MB accounts. The free accounts are typically more than any small business would ever need. If you need to send larger files, for $30 per year you can get 100 more eMail accounts that can be as big as you want - even gigabytes.

Secure Site Certificates (SSL)

If you expect your visitors to submit information through a form on your web site, a secure site certificate is almost a necessity. This enables a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) that encrypts any information that is sent through the site. You can tell if you are on a secure line by the "http" part of the URL; if it says "https://", you are on a secure line; if it says "http://", any information that is sent through that page could possibly be intercepted by a third party. You can display the certificate on your site to assure users that their personal information (especially credit card numbers) will not be compromised. GoDaddy sells Secure Site Certificates for $20 per year.

eCommerce is hot right now. eCommerce is even hotter when we combine it with a well-designed web site and natural SEO. eCommerce allows a web site to make secure, live sales through the web site including the ability to accept checks, credit cards, and many other forms of payment online. This means that you can even make money while you are sleeping and your business can be open 24 hours a day - even on holidays.

In order to add eCommerce functionality to a web site there are a few steps that you need to take. You will need to pay for a shopping cart and a merchant account (in some cases you also will need a payment gateway). The total cost of eCommerce varies from $50 per month up to hundreds of dollars per month depending on how many different products you have, how many transactions occur, and total sales revenue.

The average cost of maintaining a full eCommerce account would be about $200 to set-up the merchant account, $20-$100 per month for the shopping cart (depending on the quantity of different products), about $35 per month for the merchant account, plus about 1% to 2% of the total sale amounts. Expect to spend about $1000 to run an eCommerce web site during its first year; if you have a lot of products or a lot of sales, expect to spend more.

SEOwebMarket.com will soon be getting a license to develop and distribute custom eCommerce solutions that can take the place of one-size-fits-all shopping carts.