In “The Information of Cloud Pt. 1: Who to Trust?” we ended with a question:
If a company invests heavily in SEO strategy, SEM strategies and keyword rich web hosting content production, does that alone prove the reliability of their Cloud hosting platform?
The answer is no. Although SEO and SEM practices have evolved over the past few years, the simple answer is web hosting providers can still game the system by providing stellar keyword rich content, paid advertising and social media signals (more on this later) to game the system. It can be said that providers who supply the marketplace with stellar content and information rich content most likely know what they are doing and yet, that isn’t always the case. Just because a Cloud VPS provider ranks near the top of your Google search results, doesn’t mean that provider:
– Has the best solutions for your needs
– Has the best solutions for your needs at your budget level
– Has the best support options for your needs at your budget level
– Has the best internal content/knowledgebase for your needs at your budget level
The truth is, Google search results can’t be trusted as a clear indicator of who is or who is not the best Cloud hosting provider on the web. Content, keywords, paid advertising and site structures influence Google SERP’s. Don’t let SEO be your deciding factor.
This said, social media is another major factor into how clients pick and choose their Cloud hosting providers. While social media signals help boost the profile and visibility of any web hosting solution, just like SEO, social signals can prove a false indicator of web hosting services.
Social Media and Cloud Hosting
The main difference between VPS Cloud hosting Google search content and social search content (Twitter) is the sheer amount of content producers available for access. If you think about it for a moment, for content to be shown on the first or second page of Google, that content has to be coming from a body capable of producing enough content and organic/paid traffic for Google to take notice. For this reason, the majority of VPS Cloud hosting content on the first and second page Google SERP pages comes directly from organizations with the means of producing said content.
This is the main reason why when you search for “best Linux Cloud provider” instead of finding a blog from Joe Smith about the “best Linux Cloud provider” search results yield actual providers like RackSpace, Linode, DigitalOcean and VPS.net. While this search paradigm remains true for Cloud content on Google, it doesn’t hold true for web hosting content posted on social media networks.
Note: For the sake of this conversation, we are going to focus on Cloud content posted via Twitter. Any reference to “social media networks” or the like, unless otherwise indicated, will refer to Twitter.
In terms of available content, social media has leveled the playing field. Sure, companies on Twitter advertise as they do through Google. We all know paid Twitter advertisements and content when we see it. Aside from the social content appearing at the top of social search results with the footer “promoted by Insert_Company_Name_Here” content on Twitter isn’t listed by the companies with resources to invest in robust content production strategies, rather, it is shown in the order of posting.
We could get into a pissing match concerning how Cloud hosting content is promoted across Twitter – more retweets and shares means more visibility across the social network – however for all intents and purposes, content is posted and promoted on its own strength.
With a level playing field, how should consumers know what VPS Cloud solutions content on Twitter to trust and which to pass by?
We answer that question in “The Information of Cloud Pt. 3: Who To Trust?”