One fine day, you decided to take your business line. Search on the web and selected a domain name and bought shared web hosting. You selected shared hosting due to its low cost. Then, using a website builder or content management system like WordPress started designing the website.
If you have not done this yet and want to start, please refer
3 Quick Steps to be online with best web hosting Company
If you think selection of web hosting plan based on bandwidth, storage etc. is annoying, you may go for unlimited web hosting. Here you may not have to worry about users getting bad experience due to less bandwidth or shortage of space etc. Here is an example of unlimited web hosting plan.
Once your website is ready, start experimenting with it. You have started posting messages on your favourite social media. Your website and business started getting more likes and customers started visiting your web pages.
How to drive traffic from search engines to your website hosted using shared web hosting
Search engine can be used in two different ways to drive traffic to your website. One is called SEM or Search Engine Marketing and the other called SEO or search engine optimization. Search engines work on ‘search intention’ of the user. This makes the search keywords are important for both SEM and SEO.
With SEM, you are creating and using paid advertisements. Those advertisements are displayed on the top of Google search engine results pages. The main advantage of using Google ads or SEM is that it can be started almost instantaneously once you configure the account and the campaign. You can experiment with many different keywords to start with. Once you start running the campaigns, based on the response, you can fine tune the headlines, short pitch, highlights shown in the advertisements etc.
SEO or search engine optimization works in little different way as compared to SEM. Here results are not immediate. You study the most popular keywords which are ranking high on search engine related to your business offering. Then you focus on some of the keywords and distribute them across your website pages. Now, you need to work on designing contents of your website pages that is optimized for search engine.
Google My Business is a free tool where businesses can register themselves. Using these pages you can manage you online presence across Google including Google search and Google maps.
There is a concept of local SEO. When someone searches for businesses and places near their location, local results appear. For example, when you search for a clinic or food joint, Google search results show you the places near you. With this, you can improve your local ranking using Name, Address, Phone Number and local reviews.
You can use email marketing, even when you are using shared web hosting
When users start visiting your website, you can share with them more about your products. Additionally, you can also share more valuable information like how to best use your products, usage guidelines. To send this information you can get contact details like name and email id or phone number. This is called Opt-in database. It is a database which contains contact details i.e. email of visitors whom have given us permission to send them additional details. An absolutely valuable asset: list of potential customers for business.
Using the opt-in database and/or buying more contact details from the market, you can increase your potential customer base. You need to keep them engaged by sending regular information which is useful for them and also related to your products and services.
You can send mailers to this list and try to get them to your website. Some of them who are interested would surely get converted into buyers for you. Once you understand that this channel is giving you results, you can get expert help to configure and use email marketing automation. This is one of the channels which has very high ROI compared to others.
What more after SEM, SEO and email automation?
Till now we have seen SEM, SEO, social media marketing and email marketing as four key channels to attract potential customers and convert them into buyers. Beyond this, there are many things one can do to augment customer base and sales.
Following are some of such activities.
• You can build your reputation as expert in the online world by writing blogs with valuable insights about your industry, products etc.
• In a normal business we have sales partners who bring in sales for us. Likewise, we can appoint affiliates in the online world.
• Using conventional mediums like press releases in print medium and in online is also one of the effective way of doing advertising.
In summary, once you start with a shared hosting and create a website, you have won half the battle. Now, search engine, social media, email marketing, blogs, affiliate partner programs, press releases are the channel to expand your business and take it to the next orbit. As your business grows, you can upgrade you web hosting from shared to dedicated based on market response.
