In the early days of e-business, marketing your Web site simply meant getting listed in a handful of search engines. Most of these engines were free, and the only thing required for a listing was patience - submit your site, and visitors arrived in four to six weeks.

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These days, marketing an online business is much more difficult - particularly for Web hosting companies and their resellers, who compete in a very crowded industry. As such, it is important to develop a diverse, targeted marketing strategy to ensure you get the most value for your marketing dollars.

Developing a marketing strategy

One of the keys to a successful marketing strategy is focus. If you decide to launch a low-end, one-size-fits-all "vanilla" host, for example, it will be difficult for customers to discern the difference between the services you offer and the thousands of other hosting companies that offer similar features. As such, you should try to establish a value-added and/or niche service that distinguishes your company from most others, whether it is catering to a specific demographic, or offering services most other hosts do not. Companies like Rackspace Managed Hosting and Rackshack adopted unique business models early in their business life (Rackspace by offering managed dedicated servers ahead of most of the industry, and Rackshack by selling low-end dedicated machines), and their unique focus has paid off in spades - both are leading companies in their industry segments.

Search engines

Although the industry landscape has changed, search engine success is still at the core of most companies' marketing strategy. While search engines have proven less fruitful for most online businesses in recent years, they are still an essential component to a well-rounded campaign. To achieve maximum success with search engines, make sure you are listed with all the major ones that still accept free submissions. These include Google, Altavista and Alltheweb.com, three major search destinations where you can still submit your site for free (albeit without any guarantee of a listing).

To double you chances of becoming included in most major search engine indexes, submit your site to the Open Directory Project, also popularly known as DMOZ. While you will receive little traffic directly from DMOZ, most major search engines, including Google, consider a DMOZ listing to be a positive influence when calculating where your site should be ranked in their index. What's more, Google places a great deal of importance on its own site directory, which uses results from DMOZ; therefore, if you become listed in Google's own directory through your DMOZ listing, the chances of your site receiving an improved ranking increase greatly.

These days, however, submitting your site to search engines for free is merely the tip of the iceberg. Any Web hosting company that is serious about generating sales leads from search engines also designates a budget to ensure their site is listed in every major search destination, regardless of whether submissions can be made for free. This is known as "paid inclusion", and virtually every major search engine aside from Google offers some sort of paid inclusion program. Paid inclusion guarantees that the search engine will re-index your Web site every several days for a set period of time, thereby indexing any changes or updates to your site in a quick and efficient manner (free submissions sometimes take six to eight weeks to be added - and sometimes never get added at all).

Pay per click (PPC) marketing

Pay per click marketing affords Web hosting firms and resellers a cost-efficient and reliable way to generate targeted traffic and sales leads. By bidding and associating your site only with keywords you want, you can ensure that most visitors to your site are in search of the types of services you offer. With the advent of Overture (a PPC leader) in Germany, Britain and other European nations, PPC marketing can also help your company establish a worldwide footprint. Of course, regardless of the where you choose to market your services, a strong keyword strategy is still required.

Hosting-specific PPC engines are also emerging as popular marketing tools and should also be considered as part of any host's advertising campaign. Sites like Findyourhosting.com and ISPCheck offer only hosting-based keywords and categories to targeted audiences.

Keywords and strategy

Because of the hosting industry's hyper-competitive nature, it is important to associate your site with well-chosen keywords. Terms like "Web hosting" and "dedicated servers" are very broad and difficult to penetrate in search engines. It is therefore a good idea to use tools like the Overture suggestion tool and Wordtracker to find keywords that yield strong search volumes, but are not difficult to generate solid rankings with. Efficient use of META and ALT tags will ensure this can be accomplished. Your keywords should always be directly tied in to your business strategy.

Hosting directories

Web hosting directories, such as theWHIR's Find Web Hosts have also developed over the past two to three years as effective marketing channels for hosting companies seeking end users and businesses. Most offer listings inside different "spotlights" that are structured in a categorical manner - shared, dedicated, virtual, etc. - and charge hosting companies by the month, click, sales lead or a combination of all three. Many hosting directories garner significant amounts of traffic and offer reasonable introductory rates, allowing even smaller reseller operations to benefit from targeted traffic. You can find profiles of most major Web hosting directories here.

In conclusion

There is no one "magic source" for site traffic and sales leads; it takes organic growth, word of mouth referrals based on stellar service and a well-rounded marketing plan. Mix and match your paid inclusion and pay per click strategies with standard search engine submissions and you'll have an advantage over a significant number of hosting firms with no clear objectives. Remember to stay on top of the industry's marketing and search alliances, however; they are constantly in a state of flux, and if you're not on top of each and every update you could miss the boat entirely on key marketing developments.