Welcome to the Q&A Forum

For all of the issues you mention, I am leaning towards the dedicated server. I think the level of business that we do on the web justifies the expense, even if it may be "overkill" on our actual needs. But with Google looking at speed (which is in their best interest...), it could only help.

Customization and not having to share problems other websites may be having on the server are also in the mix.

Thanks!

Would you share your really good host's name? Ours got back with a quote and I think it is high, but his expertise is probably worth the extra.

I did look it up and though I have a "Dedicated IP Address", I saw another domain hosted on the server with that same IP Address. It's not a bad site in red, but I thought a dedicated IP address was for one website only.

I also checked it at http://www.domaintools.com and we show up as the only one.

And our host did check it out, too.

From an SEO perspective, how do you know when to upgrade web hosting to VPS or Dedicated Server?

Added:

We have a Dedicated IP Address and plenty of bandwidth and disk space. We've done a lot of work on page speed.

What we don't need is slow-downs due to the sharing space. Our business is seasonal  with much higher traffic for three months of the year.

I'm leaning towards moving it up a notch. What is the next level after this?

And yes, our web host just confirmed that some of the things I want to implement can't be done because we are on a shared server. He recommended going to Dedicated Hosting.

And finally:

If we want to be absolutely positive that shared hosting problems won't affect us, and to customize, and also to increase speed, dedicated server seems to be the way to go?

We are a small business that tried both and use neither because the code was javascript and slowing down our page loading speed.

The solution for us (and taking a look at how SEOmoz did it) was to use icon images with hyperlinks to our FB page and Twitter--pure and simple.

We use Facebook and Twitter. SEOmoz has those plus Feedburner and LinkedIn.

I am guessing that people who regularly Digg, Technorati, and so on, probably have an app pinned to their browser for quickly sharing.

Except for the speed issue, I liked Addthis better because more websites I look up to used it.

Yes to the Google Local suggestions.

I would like to see webinars on:

• Guerrilla SEO in Highly Competitive Markets
• Small Business SEO (Including discussion of when to hire a professional and what you can do in-house)
• Google Page Speed

We are a small business and do most of our work in-house; however, I can share something that might help you to decide.

I agree with EGOL's take, particularly the part about risk. I looked at quite a few of the links you shared and they don't look so great quality wise. I opened them in tabs side by side and, though I am not an seo professional, it says link farms to me--cookie cutter websites, exact copies with different names, or similar looking with different names and colors.

We hired a very reputable company last year to help us rank for 10 key words, for which we received a very thorough marketing strategy report to enable us to do the work ourselves. The cost was in the neighborhood of $3,000. We implemented most of the suggestions and are satisfied that it was a useful expenditure.

They also offered to do linking and pr at  various monthly prices. We didn't do that because it was out of our price range. For comparison, the price you are paying is in the mid-range of the proposal we received.

All of that said, I find that we've gotten more value from our Pro Membership here at seoMOZ and setting up a Campaign.

I marked the two I received over the weekend as Sp*am.

As we add PDF documents to our website, I want to take it up a notch.

In terms of seo and software price, is Adobe Acrobat the only choice?

Thanks!

No Mac here.

I should clarify that I can convert files to PDFs with Microsoft Word and add some basic info for the search engines such as title, keywords, author, and links.

This article inspired me:

• www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-optimize-pdf-documents-for-search

I can add links back to the page when I create the PDF, but we also have specific product PDFs that suppliers let us copy and serve from our server--why use their bandwidth.

Much as you would stamp your name on a hard copy brochure the vendor supplies, I want to add a link to our page from those PDFs.

That makes me think I should ask our supplier to give me a version with a link to our page.

Then there is the question: is that ok to do?

In the meantime, I will check TriviaChicken's suggestions and dream about a Mac, Allan.

Thanks

Are you counting links in drop-down menus and side navigation? I think they are counted in the Site Diagnostic.

Try doing the redirect with mysite.com//

The %5C equals \ in URL Escape Code.

Not that I am an expert in this, maybe someone who is a techie will comment.

What about getting both domain names anyway? I always thought it is good practice to buy the related domain names so the competition can't get them? You would redirect/point the longer name and the hyphenated names to the shorter one. I'm not sure of any seo benefits except the competition doesn't benefit from your name.

You can get around the page speed issue by creating your own links.

You can make a Facebook link to your Facebook page using the FB logo and hyperlink.

Same for Twitter.

Make sure it doesn't use javascript. Why the widget makers don't get it amazes me.

I use the pipe because SEOmoz uses it. Visually it indicates something different is following. I think it more professional looking than the mere dash.

Marcus and Alan offered some very good advice.

I've visited your website before and had a good user experience.

I'd only add two suggestions.

The Itineraries Tab could be a one-click to the Itineraries landing page. It is easy to locate individual names in the Left Nav and main events/conferences on the page.

Get Google Page Speed for Firefox. Love the wealth of information and fixes it offers. I like to copy and paste the page results into Notepad. You can see scores for each issue--helps prioritize what to fix first.

HTH