Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : Game Servers : Best way to advertise your GSP?

[integrii]

I have been able to setup a GSP and get things stable, but when it comes to advertising I've found my biggest challenge. I've read lots of SEO things and been able to improve my rank in google a lot. It takes weeks after each change and gets really painstaking. I have bitten off my finger nails a number of times to speak.

Then, one night I had a breakthrough. For whatever reason, google set me to page one for 'game servers' and other searches similar to it. Because i became an important site all the sudden, google decided to do a FULL crawl of my website. For those of you that don't know, google wont even crawl every page on your site for sometimes a year if they don't think you're important enough. They judge this by linkbacks.

Anyway, google crawled my sitemap and found a link for an old MW2 pre-order page that was a 404. It hit the 404 and left my site instantly. It de-indexed 6 pages of my site and REMOVED me from ALL google search result rankings completely. For 'game server' I went from page 1 to not listed. For other searches I had a similar result.

In the couple hours I was on first page I had about 40 hits.

I've tried a myriad of other things I won't bore everyone here with including sponsorships, but nothing has turned viral or provides a steady customer flow on its own.

So what have you guys done, if you don't mind sharing, to increase sales for your GSP?

[XFactorServers]

Google Adwords

[serverFFS]

The really best way is getting happy and loyal customers who will do mouth to mouth advertising for you.
Nothing beats that

[phil_virtualbright]

It is a very viral market, get a good reputation amongst gamers and you will be rewarded.

[Defcon|Rich]

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising IMO. Treat your customers right and they will treat you right.

[BarackObama]

Yeah...happy customer would be your best advertising ambassador

Originally Posted by Defcon|Rich

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising IMO. Treat your customers right and they will treat you right.

[phil_virtualbright]

Word of mouth can also be a curse with GSP, because if someone better comes along all your customers will move very quickly.

[†-Slash-†]

An idea would be to use the unused power from your server(s), to host servers that plays only 1 map 24/7.

Players love these servers, cause they get to play their favourite map any time of the day.

Then get an advertisement addon for the game engine, that posts a message saying "Server by <insert slogan here> - Only $<price> per slot! - <website url>" once every 5th minute or so.

On your website, you then include a status of the server, and some text saying "Try it before you buy it!" so that people can see if your service fits what they want.

Edit:

Visited your website, and you already have that apparently. :/

[phil_virtualbright]

Have you thought about sponsoring some clans by giving them free servers in return for promoting your brand?

[scelo]

I advertise my company on google adwords and some e-esports companys...I got huge results.

[ms-warren]

Originally Posted by phil_virtualbright

Have you thought about sponsoring some clans by giving them free servers in return for promoting your brand?

Be careful with this and if you are to sponsor clans, make sure you do the ones that are at the very top of their respected games as well as making sure they can actually get your name out there. For the past couple of years most sponsorship requests you get are not even worth considering as well as you will find out most people will make up stuff just to get free services

Originally Posted by scelo

I advertise my company on google adwords and some e-esports companys...I got huge results.

This is a great way to gain traffic.

Also as many other people said, word of mouth. Amaze your clients and they will talk about you to others and might even persuade them faster then any ad on any search engine

[scelo]

Take care about giving sponsors to clans, personally i just give sponsor to big e-sports websites.

[The Lax Forums]

Go to GameBattles. It's where all the kids play with their teams. They have all types of games for every system imaginable. I'd say 250,000+ unique visitors are on their a month at least. They have a forum their to post things maybe post a link to your site there.

[userkiller]

Youtube go for it tiger