Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : How important is SEO?

[smoove.]

With slight advances in search engine spiders etc, just wondering weather good SEO site skills are still required?

My site has not been SEO optimized and I dont have any plans for the time being, as all my visitors are coming from search engines that I never submitted too.

Thoughts...?

[ImBae.net]

I don't think SEO service is required. just make sure you have meta descriptions and meta keywords on every page, and have contents on your site. content is king people say. with my site being up for less than 2 weeks, people are already finding me on search engines! all i did was create meta keywords and descriptions

[etechsupport2]

The online environment is becoming increasingly competitive day by day I think those companies who perform SEO will have a targeted advantage in visitors and customers.

[sabian1982]

Id say SEO is quite important to some extent even if its just something simple like adding meta tags or using the defined <h1><p> tags etc.

At the end of the day we all want our sites to be found and seen! Obviously in order to get people to our sites we need some form of seo how ever basic the seo might be... even if its simply submitting a link to a search engine.

Id personally id say SEO is really rather important especially if there is competition between ur site and others, which undoubtedly there is!!!

[crislem]

I agree with sabian1982 and say that I think SEO matters. If you want a high place in the search engines, I think a bit of time spent in that department would be very beneficial.

[Mall23]

I think sometimes SEO can become all-consuming and drain time/resources from other advertising avenues. In my limited experience, just following the basic rules (meta tags, high quality content, etc) really really works.

We were able to get our site into the top 10 (out of 8.7 million) for "ASP Ecommerce" in under two months (it was #2 for a while!!). And in the top 5 (out of 5.7 million) for "ASP Ecommerce Solution".

And we didn't use any fancy or underhanded tricks. Just good coding practices and quality content.

[sabian1982]

well done mall23... the good thing about ur key phrase is your targeting at a more specific audience of buyers. At the moment mine is rather general and aimed at all those that are looking for cheap uk web hosting. Still you have done very well to get so far!!!

[Mall23]

Thanks

But I'd bet you money (well, maybe not...) that if you create your site with a lot of really good content (nice, large paragraphs with well placed keywords - but not overdone and spammy) you can get pretty high too.

I think part of the key is to differenciate yourself. There are a zillion hosting companies (and a zillion ecommerce companies, so I understand) and they all have the same content -- more or less...packages, features, price list, support, forum, faq, about us, legaleze, blah blah...

We decided to do a 180 relative to our competition. They choose to focus on features. We want to tell a story -- so our customers fall in love with the product and our company (we are nice guys and have an awesome product). Not just a cold-steel tool with a bulleted list of features and pro-forma pages in the site.

It takes guts to go completely opposite to what everyone else is doing, but if you're intelligent about it, I think it works.

[Funkadelic]

Thats right. With my company <<Snipped>> we focused on link exchanges and advertising with other keywords that weren't the most widely searched for so it could be easier to get up higher. We just found out a few days ago that through our 4 days of hard work in January our PR will be 4!

[sabian1982]

Mall23, im quite impressed by ur search engine position but also by the design of the site... even ur images have alt tags, which i know sounds silly, but is usually something that gets missed especially by none designers without a good grasp of seo!!! Maybe i need to explore a more unique phase such as 'cheap uk unix web hosting' or something shorter... its definately something to think about!!!

[Mall23]

Thanks much. I've been developing on the internet since '93 -- can't get enough.

But seriously, I think you aught to go full-on. Pick a balzy phrase like "unix hosting". Because if you get it right, you'll have hit the jackpot. And because there is no reasonable way to use 'cheap uk unix web hosting' throughout your site in legible and comprehendable paragraphs. But it's fairly easy to use "unix hosting" in a ton of things on your site -- it's what you are and do, afterall...just my $.02 (or .02 euro, pound?)

Does take a lot of time though. All the text on our site took me about 2 weeks of painful writers-block to squeeeeze out of my brain. The mental gymnastics were harder than programming bit manipulations in LISP while riding horseback blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back.

[sabian1982]

yer i understand what your saying...

maybe i need to re-assess the textual content and not aim for the one key phrase of 'cheap uk web hosting' maybe i should look for one or two more that are more specific!!!