Marketing Your Hosting CompanySEO - PPC - Social Media or What ?Most smaller hosting companies have limited marketing budgets. They try some of the marketing basics including building links, setting up a PPC campaign, and some random social media. I've even seem Craig's List ads. More sophisticated companies will do a little keyword research, a few pages of relevant content with internal linking, a few search engine and directory submissions, and some manual link building. Then there's HostGator. They do everything - all the time. However, keyword research shows that there is tremendous search traffic for web hosting products and services. We are often told by some providers that basic SEO is impossible for web hosting keywords - way too competitive. However, some companies have discovered gold in niches. There are Christian Web Hosting firms, Political Hosting outfits, SEO Friendly Hosting companies, and even Game Web Hosts. So, how do you find these niches? Get serious about Search Engine Marketing. The best way to do this is to attend a major search industry conference. Learn what the big boys do, and how they learn to do it. If you pay attention, and do some networking, you will uncover lots of opportunities. We highly recommend investing in a full conference pass to most any event by Search Engine Strategies Conferences. It will cost you less than a couple months of serious PPC campaigns. In 2006 I attended the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in Chicago. Danny Sullivan moderated a panel on fundamentals. I took written notes in a spiral notebook. Those notes, which outline the very basics, are still completely relevant today. At the 2009 SES conference in Chicago a speaker from Google revealed their secret formula. He said that Google wants to be the best search engine. (okay, I know that one) They want to list the most relevant websites for any keyword query. (think niches) He recommended doing proper keyword research, find that niche, write clear and relevant content, have some relevant links and keep the website clean and easy for actual human eyeballs to read. He said that their algorithm wanted to see that the site was written for humans, not bots. If we did all that, Google would find our site, index it and rank it. Of course, we had to compete on each keyword ranking, but that could be done with good content and relevant linking. It really matched Danny’s panel discussion of SEO fundamentals two years prior. At a search conference in Toronto a couple years back, Dr. Phil Mui from Google said that 'keyword research' is the king of proper SEO. The Queen was 'relevant content'. Several web hosts we work with have found their niches, and have good organic rankings for their services. So, get yourself educated and start growing your business!
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