Some promotions expire and at different times, so if you see a promotion you like, check the promo’s expiration date.

1. Promotional Codes

Promo Code Description Start Date End Date 100CN15 15% discount off any order $100 or more 6/21/2009 7/6/2009 50CN10 10% discount off any order $50 or more 6/21/2009 7/6/2009 5NC25 5% discounts on orders $25 and over 6/21/2009 7/6/2009 Visit our Product Catalog to view all our hosting and domain products.

Who doesn’t like promotional codes? These codes are good through the 4th of July weekend (2009) for any of our domain and hosting products. Great to use when you purchase web hosting annually.

2. $3.99 Domains with Purchase

Purchase any non-domain product from within our product catalog and register domain names at a discounted price of $3.99. Great if you’re looking to start an affiliate site or start a blog.

3. Register a .US tld for $7.99

This promotion was inspired by the upcoming 4th of July holiday. Register .us domain names for only $7.99. This promotion ends July 7, 2009 at midnight Pacific time.

4. FREE Private Registration with 5 or more domains

Register or transfer 5 or more domains with WP Blog Host and receive free private registration for those domain names. Note: Privacy must be added to the order in which the domains are purchased in order to qualify for the free offer (i.e. add private registration to the cart).

5. $1.99 .INFO tld Discount

Whether you want to promote information about your businesses, organizations or yourself, .INFO is a great way to create an identity on the Web. Get .INFO first year registration for just $1.99/yr (you save $8.00!).

6. 20% Off WordPress Security Upgrades

One of the services I provide here along with an associate are WordPress security upgrades to lockdown your WordPress installation some and help prevent malicious jerks crack into your blog. In my experience, many bloggers don’t think their blog is a target so they don’t worry about it. But they’re wrong.

Get 20% off ($49.95 $39.95) from now through the 4th of July weekend 2009.

Why Purchase From WP Blog Host?

If you’re not yet a WP Blog Host customer and you’re a blogger, here are some reasons why you might want to consider joining the club.

• Full range of hosting and domain products you can grow with.
• Live 24/7 phone and email technical support for our hosting and domain products. (480) 624-2500
• Resident WordPress blogger (yup, that’s me) who helps customers when they need WordPress or blogging help.
• We’re the coolest web host on the planet!

Related posts:

1. Did You Know You Get These With Domain Name Registration?
2. 10.5 Reasons Why WP Blog Host is the Web Hosting Samurai
3. Increase Your WordPress Blog’s Security By Running It Through SSL

When I see old news reprinted I try to understand, after all we are taught that we should write for our audience, right? And if our audience are newbies, what are you going to do.

Anyway, back to our topic of SEO. I’d say the more common SEO topics have been covered pretty well, however, rarely do I see the following topics discussed as much as the more common SEO topics. They can all play an important role when it comes to getting and keeping your blog visible in search engines. They are:

1. Blog security
2. Your site’s TLD
3. Web server location

1. SEO and Blog Security

At first it might not seem like there’s much of a connection between search engine optimization and securing your blog, but the connection is real.

Like I mentioned in my article, WordPress Security: The First Thing You Should Understand, a simple Google search for “My Blog Was Hacked” will (now) return 716,000 results. Many hackers who crack into your website aren’t really there to simply crash your site, instead, they want to use it. Many times they’ll steal bandwidth and use your site to create dozens of spam backlinks to various sites.

What this has to do with SEO

If someone hacks your blog and uses it to create tons of spam links and Google finds out, you run a high risk of receiving one of those heart-stopping emails from Google informing you that your site has been removed from their search engine because it appears to violate their terms of use. So by securing your blog and thwarting possible hacks to your site, you can increase your chances your blog stays in the serps – which is the biggest SEO concern of all!

Still doesn’t seem like a big deal? Read this case study by Robin Harris, one of the bloggers over at ZDNet.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. I can’t stress enough the importance of securing your blog. If you need help with it, let me know.

2. SEO and your TLD

Wikipedia describes TLD as A top-level domain or domain name (TLD), is the last part of an Internet domain name, that is, the group of letters that follow the final dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com“.

What this has to do with SEO

You want to show up in the search engine results where your target market is, right? Your TLD selection is probably one of, if not the most, important decision SEO-wise you are going to make.

Country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) are for websites and registrants of a particular geographic location. For example: .bz (Belize), .ca (Canada), .dk (Denmark), .ec (Ecuador), ie (Republic of Ireland), .uk (United Kingdom), .us (United States), .zw (Zimbabwe), etc.

.com is definitely the most widely used and is international. If your target market is either worldwide or in the United States, I’d say stick with .com.

As an example, if your target market / website visitors uses the Canadian version of Google, the Canadian version of Google is going to consider .ca websites highly important to this user.

3. SEO and Your Website’s Server Location

Here’s a big one not many people know about. The physical location of your website’s server is relevant in Google’s eyes.

I’ve already written on this topic, SEO Q&A: Does It Matter Where My Website’s Server Is Located? so I won’t regurgitate it all again.

Yes, I said regurgitate. I like it and think it’s funny, so it stays.

What this has to do with SEO

Long story short, Google wants its search engine to be the best search engine out there. To do that, they have to need to give you, the Googler, the most likely websites that matter to you and will solve your problem. One of the things it will note is your computer’s IP address (that is, it will take note where in the world you live).

Once Google knows where you live, it quickly looks at web servers in your general location and tries to find if any websites are hosted on them which are relevant to your search query. Therefore, if your target market lives in Arizona, it might be wise to try and find a web host which owns servers located in Arizona. Just don’t go choosing your hosting company on that criteria alone.

How I know this is true?

First, I own a few websites and through my site statistics (mainly when the sites were new and had less backlinks to them) I noticed people who Googled my targeted search terms were arriving on my sites. The server was located in Fremont, California – and guess where the vast majority of my early site visitors lived (as noted by their IP address).

Second, instead of showing you a bunch of screenshots from my previous statement, why not take the word of two Google software engineers (Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur):

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog

As a side note, while I was drafting up this post one of our blog security upgrades customers emailed me showing me how someone tried to crack into his blog today. He was notified of the attempt via email and the intruder was locked out. You have to ask yourself, is adding security to your blog a priority for you?

Related posts:

1. SEO Q&A: Does It Matter Where My Website's Server Is Located?
2. 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website
3. The 1st SEO Decision You Should Make To Rank Well In Google