About Me 0012: Making Money Guide

SEO in the niche of web hosting and domain name registration

In this article we`ll try to generalize our practices in promotion of companies that provide web hosting and domain registration services.

We will talk about such questions:

Analysis of hosting / domain name registration market and finding potentially advantageous promotion directions;

Features of keywords selection in the conditions of SEO-pressure

Definition of promotion strategy

Methods of getting links

Features of different queries groups conversion depending on geography

Typical problems that interfere sites conversion and ways of their solution

Market analysis and competitive researches. Finding potentially advantageous promotion directions

First of all, it is necessary to note that a large traffic in the niche of web hosting is deceptive. If you look at Google AdWords Keyword Tool data you will find out the following picture:

In fact, there are about 400-500 visits from the 8th– 9th place for a query “hosting” per month. It`s necessary to consider this and other points while planning hosting project promotion, because information about a large amount of queries in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is “stuffed” with endless positions checks. As the market of hosting projects and domain name registrars is extremely competitive, you have a great chance to invest money, work and time in promotion of such queries that are stuffed and do not bring traffic and sales, and after all you can incur losses and even remain disappointed in the search promotion at all. The same can be said about domain name registration.

In fact, there are about 500-600 visits from the 5th – 6th place for a query “domain” per month.

That`s why, in our opinion, it`s better to begin promotion of hosting project or domain name registrar with finding active competitors in the search marketing niche and define their strategies. For this purpose we can recommend a wonderful tool – SemRush.

So, we need to find competitor sites in our niche, which are actively engaged in the Internet marketing. We just type highly competitive query corresponding to the topic in SemRush and find sites that are ranked well for it:

Now we need to make cleaning, i.e., remove irrelevant sites from the list. In this case, obviously, Wikipedia must be removed from the list. After checking a few queries important for you in the same way, we will receive a “crossed” list of sites. Sites from this list have good rankings for many queries in this subject, so they should be examined primarily.

Lets take a site hostgator.com as an example:

The example shows that, firstly, the number of search queries for which the site “hostgator” is shown has an explicit trend to growth. It reflects the efforts made by the owners of this project to increase its visibility in search engines.

After selection of queries that bring maximum traffic to the project according to SemRush, we get an approximate keywords list which can be used to start promotion.

Making the list of necessary keywords, let’s see whether it is a good idea for us to «meddle into a fight» for these keywords. You should consider such factor, as SEO-pressure, for this purpose.

Features of keywords selection in the conditions of SEO-pressure

You can use different tools to estimate a competition for the selected query. A plug-in for FireFox called SeoQuake is one of convenient free instruments.

Let’s type a relevant query interesting for us, e.g., business hosting:

You can see that some strong sites are present in SERP, and some of them have got from several hundreds thousand to millions of backlinks and even more. The competition in SERPs is about to be really strong, so I would like to repeat: you should select a semantic core very carefully. Moreover, there are sometimes artifacts in SERPs, and learning them is possible only from experience. Let’s take the query “ecommerce hosting”. This query is high frequency in subtopic «hosting for ecommerce sites», it has about 12 thousand searches per month in exact match worldwide:

We can see that the trends of search don’t show any sudden jumps or drops.

The target audience for these queries is in the U.S. and UK – the most creditworthy regions in general. However, traffic for such query from the American Google Top5 – Top6 is about 1-3 persons a day, with natural drops on weekends; it gives us about 40 people a month. A conversion rate for these queries is extremely low. Of course, promotion for this queries is acceptable only with the purposes of improving positioning and brand awareness, but as for sales it isn`t effective.

Let`s take a query “reseller web hosting” which has next data from Google KeyWord Tool worldwide, for comparison:

The query brings twice more traffic from the 4th-5th places having twice smaller amount of searches in exact match according to Google KeyWord Tool! Conversion rate of this query is also quite high. At that, Google Insights give the following data:

At the same time the great part of traffic and transactions comes from the U.S. and UK users despite of the fact that the site holds comparable positions also in Google.co.in.

All of these patterns are also true for domain name registrars.

It’s impossible to know this information without experience in promoting a site for such queries or without trying PPC advertising in exact match. There are a lot of keywords like these, so you should constantly monitor all queries in the aggregate estimating of the effectiveness of each one.

You can also “pull out” perspective keywords making the analysis of the backlinks text anchor to sites of competitors who are actively engaged in search marketing. You can use special tools, for example, CS Yazzle or SEO SpyGlass by LinkAssistant, either manually using Yahoo! Site Explorer.

To estimate a real traffic on a query you may also try PPC in exact match.

The following method can be used to estimate keywords efficiency. The initial necessary data is:

Position for a keyword;

Traffic on it;

Estimated number of searches from Google Keyword Tool in the exact and phrase match for the world and top regions;

Quantity of page views;

Time spent on a site;

Bounce rate;

Conversion rate.

Microsoft Excel counts a parity of all these factors with the help of formulas and allows realizing efficiency/inefficiency of each keyword visually.

Perspective traffic, quantity of searches per month (data of Google AdwordsKeywordTool) and conversion data for each query are marked with green color. Indicators exceeded the average indicators for the site to the worse are marked with red (bounce rate, number of pages reviews).The percent of conversion which vastly differs to better from the average indicator for the site is marked with yellow color in the last column (Conversion rate).

Using this technique allows tracking the most convertible requests and receiving greater outcome from a client’s site.

Selection of promotion strategy

Based on our experience in promotion of projects in the niche of hosting and domain names registration we can say that the most high-frequency, convertible and competitive queries are in these topics exactly.

Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated

If to compare an earning power of dedicated servers sale (VPS) and earning power of shared hosting sale you will come to the conclusion that in general virtual (Shared) hosting sale is more profitable: one dedicated server sale brings around 200$ of income, at the same time sale of the same server “cutted” on virtual (Shared) hosting allows to earn much more (~100×5$), even with the consideration of the increasing load on a support.

However, traffic in Shared hosting subtopic is much less than in dedicated server subtopic. People interested in such things, according to our observations, come by queries like “cheap hosting”, “cheap web hosting”, and the quantity of such searches is very small because Godaddy and Hostgator take away the lion’s share of these customers, mainly due to type-in traffic.

In this case, it seems to be a good decision to perform promotion in the VPS and Dedicated sector.

Many companies, apparently, have come to the same conclusion: promotion for queries of “shared” group is much easier, than for queries related to dedicated servers.

Specialized kinds of hosting

As we have noted above, low-frequency traffic brings rather small part in general traffic and conversion; therefore, in our opinion, it`s better to begin promotion for high-frequency keywords with addition low – and mid-frequency keywords, which give a great bulk of sales and target traffic on a site. However, if your hosting site sells “exotic ” types of hosting, such as hosting with support of Zen Cart or Django, then such low-frequency, long-tail keywords can justify themself at the initial stages of promotion.

A cost of their promotion to the Top-10 is small, and similar “exotic hosting” is usually searched by people who understand the subject well and thus type long queries in search bars.

Eventually, when the site starts to rank well for competitive queries, it makes sense to “collect” low-frequency “long tail” of queries in subjects, not to miss this small piece of the market.

Also I would like to notice that promotion for keywords like “hosting” and “web hosting” is extremely difficult process due to high competition (though these keywords begin to “sell” beginning from top-20!)

Methods of getting links

The basis of search optimization are at the moment:

keyword research;

texts and meta tags optimization according to the keywords;

adding backlinks with correct “anchors” (with right reference texts).

As we have already noted, hosting sites have a large number of backlinks. How do they receive so many backlinks? This is obvious, that reviews and comments at forums will never help to collect tens thousands of links. Four main methods used in this theme should be picked out. Some of them are typical for other niches and some of them have unusual “boom” exactly in hosting and domain subjects.

Link exchange (the proper way)

Links buying (the smart way)

Getting links through its own affiliate program.

Conversion of search traffic

Let’s look at the comparative analysis of search traffic conversion in various regions (sample of more than 90.000 sales for “domain names” and more than 2000 sales for the “hosting” market):

Remember Righthaven? That's the company with the business model of suing bloggers over copyright that ignited one of the more recent fair use controversy debates. A report last month from Fortune about the company asked questions like: "Could clicking a Like button lead to a lawsuit?" and "Are the days of posting stories to Facebook, emailing articles to friends, or printing out pieces numbered?" and suggested that social media could be "maimed". For further context read our previous coverage here and here.

Are you concerned with how others use your own content? Let us know.

While we even found that to be a bit sensational at the time, words from Copyright Clearance Center Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary Frederic Haber seem to confirm that. He shared some commentary on the subject with WebProNews.

When asked whether he though social media sharing and emailing of articles was in jeopardy, his response was: "In jeopardy from copyright? No, copyright helps make all of that possible. Without copyright, it's much less likely that either the software or the articles would have existed to be shared. Users have always shared materials that they read or experienced and wanted to bring to the notice of their friends and social circles, and copyright has never stopped that; on the other hand, going into the publishing business by distributing other people's creations to strangers with whom you have no connection rather than creating things yourself is another matter."

"Social media sharing between friends or within social circles shouldn't impede publishers' and creators' ability to profit from their content, and neither should wider sharing of focused selections where the person doing the sharing is actually saying something like 'look how great this is!' or 'can you believe that he said this?' Then the person doing the sharing is actually making a contribution to society, even if in only a small way, and that is exactly the kind of thing that fair use protects. Simply making a copy in order to save someone else from having to buy her own is something else."

The definition of fair use often seems a little blurry because of the gray areas (particularly online). When asked how fair use is defined for digital content, Haber said, "Fair use is a remarkable tool developed by federal judges over 170 years to balance the rights of copyright holders with the Constitutional injunction that copyright is intended 'to promote the progress of Science', which necessarily means that users must be able to use copyrighted works in some ways without being deemed infringers."

"In the Copyright Act of 1976, Congress finally enshrined fair use in statute, but did not define it because what is fair use and what is not vary so widely with circumstances," he continued. "Instead, Congress adopted and refined a test that judges had been developing over the years, directing a court to look at all the circumstances surrounding a use and make a judgment as to the appropriate way that a copyright holder's rights and a user's fair use privilege can best be balanced. That's the famous 'four factor' test of Section 107 of the Copyright Act."

"A fair use, then, is defined for digital content exactly as it's defined for all other content. It's a use that benefits society generally but does not unreasonably interfere with a copyright holder's right to exploit and protect its creative output (a right which is itself intended to encourage the creation of more creative output for the ultimate benefit of society). The four factor test is technology-neutral, much as copyright itself is technology-neutral, because it is intended to address the needs and rights of people (and not technologies) in as balanced a fashion as possible."

"The question as to whether a use is a fair use is always whether the use goes beyond that which is reasonable in the circumstances (with the four factors as a guide to doing that analysis) or unreasonably interferes with a copyright holder's rights to, for example, earn the money through selling copies of her work that she needs to earn to make MORE copyrighted works for others to experience and share. With that as the standard, social media sharing or emailing articles between friends shouldn't be at risk."

As for Righthaven's practices, Haber had the following to say: "Righthaven appears to be using the courts to test the fair use balance by responding to some users' use with an allegation that goes beyond that which is reasonable in the circumstances and interferes with the copyright holder's right to benefit from its own creative output. Here, the creator of content (the newspaper) is conveying its right to sue to another party - Righthaven - which appears to be more prepared to test the fair use claim (than a newspaper which would rather focus on its core business), but the issue should be the same. Copyright holders have long sought court protection against infringers, including those who allege fair use but are not in fact making fair use."

At last count, the number of Righthaven's lawsuits was up to 225, and they were also going after content providers that didn't even have sites.

Do you agree with Righthaven's practices? Tell us what you think.

bench craft company sales

About Me 0012

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Making Money Guide

SEO in the niche of web hosting and domain name registration

Market analysis and competitive researches. Finding potentially advantageous promotion directions

Features of keywords selection in the conditions of SEO-pressure

Selection of promotion strategy

Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated

Specialized kinds of hosting

Methods of getting links

Conversion of search traffic

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Obama to Friend Zuckerberg in San Fran - FoxNews.com

NBC Nightly <b>News</b> Report on Toomer's Poisoning - Track Em Tigers

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

No comments:

Post a Comment