We are listing Top Web Hosting Categories as a follow-up to the post about Top Web Hosting Keywords.

These are Web hosting categories that are important to address within your Web Hosting site navigation and company solutions. And of course, these are the categories that you want to organize for and to target within your Web Hosting PPC campaigns.

It is striking how many searches occur for the keyword GoDaddy and this shows the effectiveness of their branding campaigns. GoDaddy is a top web hoster and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. To get an idea about how much GoDaddy dominates in the Web Hosting marketplace we’ll illustrate with search trends that indicate consumer search interest.

Consumer Search Interest in Hosting is Generally Declining

Or, as we will see, consumers are changing the way they search for Web hosting. They are searching more for apps such as WordPress.

VPS Hosting Searches have Surpassed Shared Hosting Searches

VPS Hosting technology is in high demand and the technology is very accessible thanks to Parallels Plesk.

Consumer Search Interest in Cloud Computing and Virtualization Grows Rapidly

Increasingly, Hosters are enabling and mixing in cloud-based apps along with their traditional hosting services.

GoDaddy-related Search Interest Exceeding All Hosting Categories

The GoDaddy February 2009 Superbowl advertisement helped to launch GoDaddy beyond the limitations of targeting domain registration and web hosting related interests. Their strategy is to create interest and not only to target interest.

Web Hosting Searches Supplanted by WordPress and other App Hosting?

Yes, clearly consumers are searching for popular site building tools and apps that make creating websites easier and more cost-effective than ever. Demand for WordPress increases and WordPress is now often used to build small business and even corporate websites.

Web Hosting Category PPC-related Data

It is imperative to use negative keywords in your Web Hosting PPC campaign. These are words that you do not want associated with your product or services, and by removing them you can be more certain that your Ads are more relevant and targeted. Negative keywords improve PPC campaign performance by increasing the CTR and Quality Score and reducing your CPC bid levels.

Especially if you are buying Head Terms, you must pay special attention to negative keywords. For instance, the phrase web hosting in a broad match without negative keywords will cause impressions for web hosting jobs, web hosting news, and web hosting software.

This video from Google, along with their other resources, helps to explain how to choose the right negative keywords and why they are important:

Was VMware really wanting to buy the phrase virtual machine sex? Of course they should have included the negative keyword “sex.” It turns out they do now.

Check your Google Adwords “Search Terms” report or other Analytics to see what paid keywords are sending traffic to your site. That’s the first place to look to identify negative keywords to bring into your Campaign and Ad Groups.

For your considerations, here are a few common negative keywords for your Web Hosting PPC campaign:

about, article, articles, association, associations, bargain, blog, blogger, blogs, book, books, career, careers, case studies, case study, cheap, clearance, clip, clips, close out, close outs, closeout, closeouts, complaint, complaints, crack, definition, diagram, discount, discounted, employment, example, examples, free, freeware, gif, gifs, guide, guides, hack, hacks, hate, hiring, illegal, image, images, indictment, inexpensive, intern, interns, internship, internships, job, jobs, journal, journals, liquidation, magazine, magazines, megaupload, metrics, news, news, odd lots, off-lease, opening, openings, overstock, parts, photo, photograph, photographs, pic, pics, picture, pictures, press, price, prices, pricing, problem, problems, protest, quote, quotes, rapidshare, recruiter, recruiting, remainder, remainders, research, resume, resumes, returns, review, reviews, salaries, salary, sample, samples, serial, serials, service, sex, specifications, specs, statistics, stats, success stories, success story, suck, sucks, support, torrent, torrents, tutorial, tutorials, video, warez, warranty, what are, what is, white paper, white papers, wiki, wikipedia

Any other ideas or comments to share? Please use the comments box below.

It is widely accepted that relevant long tail keywords, while they generate fewer clicks, yield higher click-through rates. Long Tail keywords can be very descriptive, and as a result long tail keywords can be more targeted towards your Web Hosting products or services. While leveraging long tail keywords it is very important to create corresponding ads and landing pages that are relevant.

You will need thousands of long tail keywords to generate traffic that approaches that of head terms. How do you generate lists of long tail keywords for your Web Hosting PPC activity? We suggest to use the following free keyword tools to generate long tail keywords:

• Google Keyword Tool – get keyword ideas
• Wikipedia – get other lists of data, such as the list of top level domains
• SEOBook Keyword List Generator – use keyword list and their permutations to conveniently create a large number of keywords

To get you started, we’ve listed some Long Tail keywords for Hosted Exchange, Web Hosting, and Domain Registration below. It is important to note that:

• We end each Word List with a comma so that the permutations can also include phrases without the words in that list.
• Consequently, these lists need to be pruned to remove single words and phrases that are head terms.
• These terms are for example purposes only and we do not recommend to use all of these, or only these, within a PPC campaign. Considerable steps would be required, including finding important, suitable negative keywords.
  

How to Generate Web Hosting Long Tail Keyword Lists

To learn more about Long Tail keywords and why they are important for generating ROAS in your PPC campaign, read the PPC Tailspin post at MarketFlare.

Top Web Hosters have made significant investments over time in order to establish a recognizable brand. The dividends from online branding activity include relatively lower CPC and higher conversion rates. The fact is that many interested consumers who see television, print, and even banner ads will next turn to Google Search to learn more. Big brands can then capture that search interest via PPC and realize a high CTR advantage on their branded terms, and consequently lower CPC and better Ad Position. The dynamic is explained concisely in a recent post about Brand Advantage at MarketFlare -

A stark reality of the “big fish” is that they usually have an advantage of an already recognizable brand. They benefit from significant number searches on their brand that they buy for less than anyone and their high CTR boosts their QS. They usually have a bigger budget. In short, big brands are perched at the top of a PPC upward spiral related to high CTR and Ad Position and low CPC. Consequently, good ROAS comes easier for recognizable brands.

Buying competitor brand terms can be a good strategy, and it is now permitted by Google to use trademarked terms within your Ad Texts if you do it in a non-competitive way. Be ready to pay a premium for those terms unless you make your Ads and Landing Pages very relevant to keywords you are buying.

Domain registration special offers have become increasingly aggressive over the years. Google is offering domain registration in a partnership with GoDaddy (and this has of course accelerated their amazing growth).  Here we’ll list the last year of top domain registration AdWords Description Texts.

To quickly see the most interesting domain registration offers, just type “1and1″ into the search box below. 1and1 has come up with some very compelling Ad texts.

Below is a comprehensive listing of actual domain registration competitor Ad Messages / Texts. Here you see an overview of current, active (last 12 months) Ad Messages.

Paid Search related Ad Messages, like most other marketing messages, work most effectively while applying the AIDA principle – capturing Attention by being relevant or personal, creating Interest and Desire by articulating features, benefits & value, thereby provoking Action.

All of AIDA revolves around the relevancy of what the user is searching for, and also the Ad Position – to ensure visibility. The principle applies just as well to the PPC landing page, and this is why if we are sure enough about the intent to “buy” we can take the user directly to the shopping cart.

The Power of Hot Deals & Why All Online Marketing Activities Must Leverage Them

Hot deals or special offers, especially in the Web Hosting industry, are increasingly a critical part of any successful Web marketing activity. It’s effective to allocate a portion of marketing budget towards offering Web  hosting  discounts, special coupons, or other hot deals in order to  increase CTR,  lower CPC, and increase Sales Conversion. Some examples of Hot Deals are seen in the Top Web Hosting Ads.

For Web Hosters, as we have learned, there are a few ways to think about budgeting online marketing activities:

• PPC. Deal exclusively with Paid Search costs directly to buy top Web Hosting keywords
• SEO. Drive traffic and sales by optimizing your site to rank in Search results naturally on select, primary keywords.
• SMO. Social Media Optimization means creating Social Profiles/Personas to grow and engage within Social Networks.
• ORM. Online Reputation Management is about monitoring, protecting, and proactively positively impacting the reputation of your hosting business.
• Affiliate Marketing is a long proven way to grow your hosting business through a managed network of reseller partners.
• Email Marketing is another proven way to keep connected to your existing hosting customers with relevant services and to target new leads.

Below is a comprehensive listing of top Domain Registration keywords based on a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). We have removed keywords that include the following words hosting, free, page.

Top Domain Registration Keywords

Below is a comprehensive listing of top Web Hosting keywords based on a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). We have removed keywords that include the following words domain, register, name, free, registration, page.

Top "Web Hosting" Keywords