[Genie]

Here's one for all you techy people out there (please be gentle with me) I run an online counselling service, based in the UK, hosted by a UK company. Whilst I cannot fault them, in fact would recommend them any time, I'm thinking with the exchange rate and cut in income it wouldn't be logical to continue using their hosting facilities.

I've been working on my new website with Frontpage and am happy with the results, now I'm looking to find a way of getting this online for when we arrive in NZ in the next few weeks (OMG) I need a host with Searchmax or similar to push site up the Google listings, but am not prepared to pay £10 per word, as recently quoted!!

Would anyone have had expereince bad or good, of this process in NZ? Are there any easy ways to do this ie can we purchase a package with broadband that will allow my site to be hosted? Can you tell I'm completely in the dark about this!! :roll

Any advice would be great to hear from anyone.

[thejoz]

A little off the point but our websites do very well in Google (top of page one for many search terms) and we've never spent a penny on getting them there! I don't believe that hosts can help in this matter but I could be wrong.

My advice on S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimisation) is this:
*Good site content (lots of relevant text and good internal linking structure).
*Inbound links (preferably from high ranking sites with some similar content to yours).
*Carefully chosen meta tags (title, description & keywords) preferably tailored for each page of your site.
*Finally, only create outbound links when absolutely neccesary (link partners, and for the benefit of your clients/customers/visitors) and if possible never from your homepage.

As for your main question though I don't know of a good/cheap host in NZ as I'm still in the UK (Doh!) but there will certainly be some though.

[overscan]

I run a website (http://www.secretprojects.co.uk) which is hosted in the US. With the dollar so low, its definitely much cheaper to host there than the UK or NZ.

In terms of SEO, I agree, paid services are no substitute for relevant content and, best of all, a URL that related directly to the content.

[Ojai]

Don't host it in NZ, the bandwidth charges are expensive. You're better off hosting in the US or UK.