Continued from Monday and again NO you should not host at GoDaddy!
As of today, my website www.mccordwebservices.com is no longer blacklisted at McAfee DNSBL, Spamhaus.org and CBL.AbuseAt.org. But I did have to do a manual request to remove my listing at CBL.AbuseAt.org..
Customer Service is Lacking
Here’s how simple it would have been for GoDaddy to keep a customer.
Offered a free dedicated IP for 30 days.
Offered to move me to a new server.
Immediately removed the offending site.
What to Do if You Host at GoDaddy
1. Move your site before renewal.
2. If you must stay buy a dedicated IP address.
Yes, I personally hate to move clients unless they have had a problem, but now GoDaddy gets two big black check marks in my book. I have had sites hacked from internal intrusions within the GoDaddy environment and now this issue with allowing one website in a shared hosting environment damage the online reputation and create email problems for everyone on that shared server.
What Am I Doing?
I am moving my website to Hostway. I have had my business site hosted at Hostway since 2001 and have never had a problem. With firewalls between sites on their shared servers, I do not expect ever to have this problem in the Hostway Shared Server environment.
No, you should not host at GoDaddy. Consistent website and email access are too important and hosting at GoDaddy is not practical if you want to be in business 24/7.
Here’s What Happened to Me at GoDaddy
I have my play/test website www.mccordwebservices.com hosted at GoDaddy. My main website is hosted with Hostway and found at http://www.mccordweb.com. I got a notice from WordFence Premium that my website www.mccordwebservices.com was on the domain and email blacklist with Spamhaus.org, McAfee DNSBL, and CBL.Abuseat.org. These are important sites that Internet Service Providers (ISP) use to decide what sites and email to block. So that notification was labelled critical.
That means that if this had happened to be my main business website any email I would have sent out using my email tied to my domain would have been bounced and set as undeliverable. On top of that the reputation of my business would be tarnished from being blacklisted. As I am in the industry having my site compromised or the appearance of being compromised is even worse.
I called GoDaddy immediately upon receipt of the notification. I was told that no my site was not compromised (I knew that as I practice intense security), but that several accounts on my site’s GoDaddy shared server were compromised, hacked, and sending out spam and possibly malware. With additional research on my own, I found out that one of the offending websites in my shared hosting environment with the same IP block was MichaelClayton.org. (Please do not visit this site as you do not want to get malware.)
I asked GoDaddy what they were going to do about quickly resolving this issue. They said they had notified the offending site owner and that the owner needed to do a cleanup. There was no deadline or time frame shared with me.
I asked GoDaddy to move me to a new server and was told by Tech Support on 5/23 at 9:35 am Eastern Time that a move was not possible and that when I signed up for hosting with GoDaddy, I had agreed to their terms of being on a shared server- meaning I could run into this problem again or in the future.
I asked for a change to my IP address and was told I could buy a dedicated IP address for my site for $75 a year. I pointed out that I was not willing to pay for something to solve a technical issue that was GoDaddy’s job to fix and was told sorry that’s the final answer. I had to pay to solve their problem!
I asked to speak to the supervisor and was put on hold for 20 minutes (I clocked this). When the tech came back on the line, he told me all supervisors were busy and that nothing else would be done for me.
As of today, my website IP is no longer blacklisted! It took 7 days for this issue to be resolved and one listing I had to submit a manual request for removal.
As a professional webmaster who has a number of customers hosted at GoDaddy, I was furious with the response that I received.
Please check back on Wednesday for the rest of the story and my recommendations for hosting and what to do if you are hosted at GoDaddy.
Cater to your Twitter audience, do you know how to do that? Do you know how to get more <3 (hearts – Twitter’s version of likes)?
Here’s What I Do to Cater to My Twitter Audience
Choose your topic carefully.
Make your topic into hashtags.
Offer snippets with value – like tips.
Link to your specific service page.
Use your resources and paraphrase.
Be unique, but informative.
Use your own name with Twitter.
Focus on one area/service.
Schedule your tweets ahead.
Post at set times.
Get More Hearts on Twitter Using My Strategy
Interestingly enough I have two twitter accounts, one for my business mccordweb and a personal one nancymccord. I have found that even though I feed the same content out to both accounts, I get many more hearts on my personal account.
For me, I post #AdWords Tips and #AdWords Trivia. I use my study information from my AdWords exams to reveal short little nuggets about AdWords from reports, studies, training materials, or my own knowledge.
In all cases I am linking to my own services page, but I am finding that followers will heart me and then retweet my post all repointing traffic to my own website service.
By taking this new strategic focus just this month, I have noticed how many more likes and shares I have been getting. I will be continuing to work this program to grow my fan base strategically in one of my own core services.
Do you need help creating a similar Twitter strategy for your own business? Check out our Twitter writing services today.
I am an SEO consultant NOT an SEO therapist! What a statement you might think, but more often than not, I am called by prospective clients that think that all they really need is an SEO therapist or SEO answer-man. They think that by getting their questions answered they can continue to do what they are doing and achieve placement in Google.
SEO is a craft and an art. What I would do as part of a program to improve visibility is not something that a do-it-yourselfer would routinely do or for that matter do well.
Want to Improve Organic Placement? Here’s What to Do
Hire a qualified person.
Make sure you have a reporting program to verify strategy.
Don’t go on the cheap.
Make sure you have a content strategy for your blog.
Know your target keywords for your website content.
Nail your keywords in your blog and website content.
Don’t fragment your business into mini 1-3 page websites.
Do regularly build out targeted content.
Don’t go crazy with keyword stuffing, be readable!
Do use AdWords to boost website traffic.
More often then not, I see successful lawyers, entrepreneurs, and successful business people feel that they can easily do their own SEO work. The truth is that a professional with the knowledge to help you garner placement over time and to be honest with you and accountable is worth their weight in gold.
If you are looking for a capable consultant to get you pointed in the right direction, I invite you to visit our website to learn more about our SEO and web visibility services.
