Frequently Asked Questions

We are a web hosting company that is dedicated to offering quality web hosting and website design at an affordable price.  In this day and age, there is no reason why anyone can not have his/her own website if desired.  Small businesses, individuals, civic groups, clubs, churches , etc. can all benefit from the services being offered by Cephas1online!  There are many who have the desire or need for an internet presence but simply don't know where to begin, or are simply afraid it is too expensive.  We are here to help with either situation.  After collecting necessary information from the customer,  we actually design the website and after the customer's approval,  we handle all the details and steps necessary to get that site up and running.  All the customer has to do is start giving out his/her web address to friends, family, members, customers, etc.  We believe you will be truly amazed!

Sounds great!  How do I get started?

You will find no impersonal forms here!  Simply send us an email noting your contact information and a brief description of your needs and someone will contact you within the next few days for a consultation to gather information from you so we can begin work on your site.

How and when do I pay for my service?

You may pay by eCheck or any major credit card through PAYPAL. You are not normally required to have a PAYPAL account to make a payment. However, opening an account with PAYPAL is free and you can set that up here.  Payments are usually due on the 1st of every month and payments made after the 7th are past due and subject to a $5.00 late fee.  If more convenient,  payment due dates can be changed to fall on any day of the month as long as you email your request to us before your payment is due.  Only one such change may be made per year unless extenuating circumstances exist.  Send us an email here.

What are my up front costs?

If you subscribe to a package that includes web pages made by us,  the applicable set-up fee must be paid before any work will begin on your website.  You do not begin paying a monthly bill until the 1st of the month following the launch of your site.  (eg.  If we launch your site on April 12,  Your first bill is due on May 1.  If launch is on June 2,  Your first bill is due on July 1.)  In most cases,  a PAY PAL invoice will be sent out within 24 hours for the set-up fee if you subscribe to one of these packages.

What if I want to make my own website?

No problem!  Let us host it for you.  Check out our "Hosting Only Plan" on this page.  Also be sure to check out available upgrades and pricing to  customize Your plan.

None of your available packages really work for me.  What can I do?

You can handle this one of two ways,  You can start out with the "Hosting Only Plan" and upgrade it with only the options you need.  Or You can send us an email with the options that you need and we can work out a custom package made just for YOU.

I have too many monthly bills already.  What if I want to pay yearly?

That works, too!  In fact, for customers wanting to pay yearly we are offering this special deal: Pay for 11 months and get the 12th month free!

What if I am not satisfied?  Do you give refunds?

Unfortunately, we at Cephas1online.com do realize that it is impossible to please everybody.  If we,  for any reason are unable to design a website that makes you happy we will refund your initial set-up fee.  After we design a site and you approve it,  however,  refunds will not be made.  There is no contract and service may be discontinued at any time with no additional fee if you become dissatisfied after your site has launched.  We actually recommend that all new customers subscribe to the service on a monthly basis at first and try us out.  Once you realize what an excellent value our services are you may then decide to start paying on a yearly basis.  No refunds of any kind on eCommerce sites due to the large amount of time and work that goes into these sites.  Please keep this in mind when signing up.

Do you guarantee server uptime?

No, we do not.  Many web hosting companies make claims such as "99.9% server uptime".  Folks, this is an advertising gimmick used solely for generating customers.  They cannot back this up as servers are computers and computers break down as I am sure you well know.  Cephas1online.com is not in the business of lying to its customers. We can tell you that our servers are very reliable and we make every effort to keep them up and running smoothly.  If for some unforeseen reason,  the server hosting YOUR site were to be down more than 10 days out of the month you would receive a credit for a free month.  We feel that this policy,  as well as being straightforward and honest from the beginning is a much better way to do business.

I ran across a web hosting company that offers 1,500 GB of hosting space.  Why do you offer so much less?

The answer to this is simple.  It is called being realistic.  These companies use this as another advertising gimmick.  The truth is:  they don't expect you to ever actually use this much space.  If there customers all actually used this much space they would quickly go out of business because the space offered is more space than the server has available.  So in essence they could only get one customer per server without seriously over selling the space they have available.  To tell you the truth,  we don't usually even recognize space restrictions unless the server hosting your site were to come close to filling completely.  In most cases we would simply contact the customer to ask permission to move the site to a server with more space available.  Unless you were hosting a large collection of high res photos or several large files,  you would never go over your limit anyway.

What about bandwidth limits?  Do you have them?

We do not want our customers worrying about bandwidth limits,  so we have chosen not to impose any restrictions on bandwidth.  What good is a website to the customer if their site goes offline every month due to a bandwidth restriction?  For a website to be most effective it needs to be available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engines have different criterion to measure web page importance. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the importance of a web page with the goal of getting the page positioned at the top of the search results.

How long will it take for my web site to get to the top of the search engines?

Most often SEO is a long term process. Getting a new site indexed in the major search engines could take several days to a few months. But getting good positioning in the search engine is a longer process and can take up to a year or longer. There is no way to determine how long it will take to achieve desired positioning. Patience is the key to search engine optimization.

How much traffic will my web site gain from SEO?

The traffic you get will depend on what keyword phrases you optimize your web pages for and what positioning your site achieves. If you optimize for less competitive keyword phrases you may gain a top position but receive very little traffic. Optimizing for competitive keyword phrases and achieving a top position will increase your traffic. However, if you are optimized for the wrong keyword phrases you could achieve higher traffic that results in low conversions.

What will you do to optimize my web site?

Current SEO trends include: back linking, html and title tags, content copy, anchor link text and keyword analysis. Depending on your situation all or a few of these methods will be used.

How often will you submit my site to the search engines?

One Time, then we rely on  proper back linking major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves will crawl and index your site naturally. Most of the smaller search engines pull their information from the major search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo and DMOZ, so there is no need to submit to the smaller search engines. Time is better spent back linking to relevant web sites and submitting to relevant directories.

What is back linking?

Back linking, or link campaign, is one of the most important aspects of the SEO process. Back linking involves getting other relevant web sites to create links to your web site. The text used in your back links is also very important. It should contain your most desirable keyword phrases. Many web sites have very high positioning in Google without meeting any other SEO criterion except for back links.


Will back linking increase my engine position?

Yes,  Google is now placing enormous amounts of weight  to how many back links you have to your site.  Remember it is very important to have relevant links on your site as well this would be reciprocal linking where another website has a link to your page and you have a link to their page on your site.


Is there a guarantee?

Our guarantee is that your web site will be optimized by current SEO trends and requirements and that your positioning will improve. We do not guarantee a particular position in any search engine, nor do we guarantee any particular amount of traffic or sales improvements.

Why do I need search engine optimization?

SEO is essential to increasing your web presence. SEO takes research and patience, and if you are running an e-commerce web site without SEO then you are missing out on one of your greatest Internet traffic resources. SEO can make the difference between success or failure of an e-commerce venture.

Why does search engine optimization take so long?

As search engine optimizers, we are sometimes competing with millions of web pages for positioning of a single web page. Many of these web pages are highly optimized due to being several years old and having thousands of back links, therefore, establishing a web presence among these highly optimized web pages is often a long term project requiring considerable effort

We will be adding to our list of Frequently Asked Questions as new ones develop.  If you have a question that you do not see answered here, please email it to us here and we will get an answer back to you right away.