One of the ways that many web hosts fail to maximize the potential of their site is that they do not attract enough customers to it in the first place. You may have some of the best services and products around, but without potential customers visiting your site in the first place, how are you expected to sell? Therefore, getting sign ups is an extremely important part of web hosting, and with a little forethought and work, can be relatively easy. There are many ways to do this, but some of the best include:

Use a blog - although this may seem an unlikely way to get links and sign ups to your website, you'd be surprised. You could even make a dummy blog and sing the praises of your website or host, and that way interested or curious customers will start to visit.

Pay Per Click – this may be a little costly to start with, but in the long run the rewards far outshine the expense. Basically, Pay Per Click is where you pay a search engine like Google to make you a "featured" link on its front page, for instance. Then, when someone is looking for your product, your information is prominent. When an interested party clicks on your link, you pay Google a fee – for instance, ten cents per click. While this may seem like a lot, say you receive 100 visitors, at a cost of ten dollars, but you make a sale for double that. See how it makes sense?

Meta tags – this is one of the most under used yet important pieces of SEO that you can have. It's no good having a site without advertising it properly. Keywords and Meta tags are a way to do this – when submitting your site to Google and the like, write a good introduction and article about your site that uses keywords. So, if your business is Jim's Skate Boarding Store, write something along the lines of "For all your skate boarding needs, Jim's Skate Boarding Store can fix you up with all the latest skates, boards and other…". By mixing your business in this manner, you'll be far more successful in being picked up by search engines.

Advertise – although this may be common sense, advertising is still one of the key ways to attract new business and visitors. Advertise your services in online magazines and ezines; that way you will attract the exact type of people you're looking for.

Although there are a host of methods to enable you to increase your sign ups, each have their own plusses dependent on what your website offers, so look at who you wish to attract and this will make it easier to decide what way to proceed.