Liam Eagle: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

We’ve had a lot of fun doing thematic issues in the past, and they have tended to engender a pretty positive reaction. So we’re especially excited to have put together a very focused issue with the Web Host’s Marketing Toolbox.

Web hosts are in the business of marketing almost as much as they are in the business of technology – more so, in the case of the small reseller operations that make up a very large part of the Web hosting business.

For most of those smaller hosts, marketing is a vast and multi-faceted undertaking – a very big job for a usually very small staff.

In this issue, we’ve assembled more than just a marketing overview. We’ve put together an online marketing guide, designed most specifically for those small hosting shops in which a staff of just a few, or even one, wears many hats.

It’s hands-on, specific and informative. My intention is for you to have this issue open on your desk while you assess your Web site’s SEO effectiveness, or plan a banner advertising campaign.

Our marketing toolkit includes four parts, each dealing with a specific area of marketing that, among smaller hosts, is often less than 100 percent fulfilled.

Regular WHIR magazine contributor Wayne Epperson offers a guide to adCenter, the pay-per-click advertising system that Microsoft rolled out over the course of 2006, describing the service’s features, and how it can be integrated into your existing PPC spending.

Given the effectiveness of pay-per-click advertising, many hosting providers neglect the optimization of their site for search engine algorithms. WHIR regular Dennis McCafferty offers an overview of simple search engine optimization techniques that can help you to generate more organic Web site traffic.

Of course, search engine spiders are a small, albeit significant, part of a Web site’s traffic. In his first contribution to the print publication, WHIR blogger Paul Hirsch discusses design techniques that will enable you to better convert visitors into customers, streamlining your checkout area, and delivering a consistent message throughout your site.

Our final guide is a re-examination of an old standard. While banner advertising and directory listings have given way in recent years to more complex and exacting forms of online advertising, the Web hosting business is well set up to benefit from some of the simpler forms of advertising. WHIR regular Esther Bauer discusses some of the techniques and programs that can drive targeted traffic to your Web site.

The number of improvements a given company can make to its marketing efforts at a given time is, I suspect, close to infinite. And these additions to your marketing toolbox will enable you to start making some of those improvements today.