Just a quick warning in regards to Hostgator Web Hosting. If you run some resource intensive software applications or scripts you do not want to use Hostgator shared web hosting. For one Hostgator might disable your account or the overall performance completely sucks. For those cases you are better of with VPS or a cheap dedicated web server. If you do not know much about how to manage a Linux server I highly recommend you take a look at Liquid Web Web Hosting. Their web servers are fully managed and Luqidweb is known for awesome support.
Liquid Web is around for many many years and owns their own data centers not too far away from Chicago. So, they are centrally located to almost any point within the continental US. The hardware they offer can pretty much handle any load that your website(s) might produce. You can choose from single proc servers to quadcore configurations with the latest Intel and AMD processors.
Using a web hosting provider that offers managed servers frees you from having to take care of your servers yourself. This comes in really helpful if you have an emergency and are not really sure what to do. Open a ticked with their (self-claimed) heroic support team, describe the problem, and have those guys fix it for you. You can concentrate on running your business while Liquid Web works on your server(s).
If you compare Liquidweb web hosting with other providers where you have to hire outside support to manage your servers you are easily coming out ahead when using Liquid Web Web Hosting and their built-in support and management.
Companies mentioned in this article are Hostgator and Liquidweb
PS: For normal websites running stuff like WordPress or a smaller vBulletin forum Hostgator shared web hosting is just perfect.