[fitkoh]

I see several good discussion comments coming from this thread here so I thought maybe it would be beneficial to continue in its own topic. I'll quote a few comments; forgive me if I don't include specific @ mentions.

I wonder the forum structure giving wrong vibes to Google search bots. Because we have about 36 boards under 6 forums i think. Only one forum has the word " VPS " and none has important keyword phrases like free VPS, Free Hosting etc. Word 'VPS' is mention it about 9 boards out of 36. Same goes for board descriptions. I don't see words like Web Hosting, VPS Hosting at all. Same goes for Title tag and Meta Description tag which is too long and says Free VPS too many times plus has no other related phrases.

I took the initiative to run a free SEO audit. The results weren't terrible - 76/100, but still plenty of room for improvement. There were 17 critical flags, all of which were the same: duplicate titles.  I imagine it has something to do with the forum software (mybb if I'm not mistaken?) and the theme used. Without looking at the backend, I don't know exactly how to fix it, but there should be a way. I guess google likes it better if each page has a unique title, rather than all pages having the same title.

Another thing is I think the forum need few pillar type pages about important keywords we are targeting. For example a page for 'Free Game Server Hosting' with lots of details about game servers how to get a free one here, or getting cheap one from one of our sponsors and game server related urls, common problems etc. Pages like these will rank well in Google search and attract more new members.

I can definitely see the benefit of this, if I'm understanding correctly. Gigarocket was set up much the same way - with a landing page and a few other pages describing the services offered and requirements for obtaining them, legal pages, as well as links to the community/forums.  Maybe we could run the forums on a subdomain/directory and use a wordpress blog or some small flat file cms (like grav?) to create the "pillar" pages for post4vps.

Also a better social media presence. Like details of monthly give aways should be posted in FB fan page etc.

A brilliant suggestion, if we can sort out a way to implement this effectively. I use a plugin on my wordpress blog to cross post weekly to my facebook page - but it can be scheduled/programmed in different ways. For example, to only post  from a specific category, to post the most recent, or choose at random. The plugin I'm referring to is called "Revive Old Posts" and can be found at https://revive.social/
It's licensed GPL 2 so it's okay to modify for your own purpose.

I wonder if a similar plugin exists that could be used with the forums at p4v, or if the plugin could be modified to work  here. In lieu of automation it could turn into a bit of work once a month to keep a few social sites current with giveaways, etc, but still very possible, and also maybe a good idea for someone willing to work for a second vps or substitute some of their posting requirements.

Now for the post quality. Okay! here we can't expect everyone to comply with that all the time, but we can see a pattern on how much hard they're trying over time. A look at the ratio of Credit_point over total_posts will tell you a lot about that. Simple unmistakable Math.

A valid point. Perhaps the script that counts/scores the posts could be made to sort through this information as well. If it were, there would be a possibility to create a minimum credit_point over post_amount for a post to be credited, encouraging better posting over time. Of course it'd have to be set up to not count posts in off-topic areas. The downside of this is that it may discourage some people from trying to post here: particularly persons that aren't very strong in English and may feel insecure about making a long post with deep explanations. As a note I'd like to add that I appreciate very much the non-native English speakers that post here. Your task is double difficult: not only do you have to make quality posts, you have to do it in a language in which you aren't completely comfortable. Cheers to those that make the effort through the struggle.

The value in VPS that one can get here far exceeds the time it takes to write those posts.  Imagine a VPS with 8GB RAM, 2 cores, and 100 GB disk space.  How much would that cost in a month and how expensive would the 20 posts be in comparison time wise?  The VPS I have would be a minimum of 25-30 US$ a month. 


We have a whole cache of VPSs that are not working for any one.  We need to do something with those.

You raise an interesting point here, and I really want to drive it home.  Now considering we have a few VPS that are really high specs and probably would sell for easily 20-30 VPS, and we have a lot of smaller ones worth easy 5-10$ a month. And over 20 vps not doing anything... I could ballpark it and say there's easily 2-3k a year in vps that could be doing something... anything at all. If you think about it like that was your money, in your wallet... 2-3000$ USD going to waste, doing nothing. Who among us would squander so much for no gain? 

So Google Algo probably thinks this forum is not directly connect to web hosting but just a General Forum with web hosting part. We don't even have boards about Web Hosting generally.

With the recent loss of gigarocket, there's a big empty hole in the free hosting market. Perhaps we could snatch up a piece of it? One of the nicer vps could be set up for shared hosting, and we could offer it to members in addition to a vps... perhaps with a posting requirement of 1 good post a week for a decent shared hosting package, enough to host a small-medium sized blog. Of course this suggestion comes with a lot of work involved - work for the moderators with a new category of posters to track, as well as a lot of admin work to set up the shared hosting service. But it's just an idea for discussion. Maybe it would be a fun community project for a few dedicated individuals

On the other hand there is also the deeper dimension of being a contributing member of a community of VPS Holders, who like to help one another, and also would like to support the owner, Dynamo, so the business can continue.  If anything should happen similar to freevps.us, it will be a huge loss to me as I really love my VPS.  I also like the quality support from our specialist members and am learning from every one on a daily basis.

In my opinion, the ads are very minimal. That's how the site makes money. While no one wants to visit a forum overburdened with ads, I think p4v could handle a few more without being distasteful. Just my opinion.

Another option would be affiliate marketting. Like anything else, there's a bit of work involved. One would have to search through the providers list, determine which ones have an affiliate reseller plan, sign up, etc etc. However, it could work - If the affiliate accounts are properly set up, you could even give members an affiliate link to share rather than the vanilla link to their providers, if a web site is hosted. Sales that are created through member sites would then be credited to p4v and used to offset hosting costs or maybe even get a small paycheck on occasion.

[xdude]

The problem with those free audits if those are just code once and left forever. Means they rarely update these with new algo changes plus doesn't provide deep and practical analytics. Don't relay much on those. The most basic SEO test you can do is write down 5-10 important related keyword phrases and search those in Google. If you don't rank for those, that means Google doesn't believe your site is for that keyword group. Important thing is Google doesn't look at just one keyword, it checks the whole cluster and see what content the site has about those.

There are things that can be changed easily and there are things more complicated. I will write down those later with details. Plus Its not all about SEO. There are different problems also there might be some other approaches too.

Having a free shared hosting service is a good idea too. With limited resources with a chance to upgrade into Sponsors paid hosting with a good discount. I don't think Post4VPS staff can do it and better use the sponsor method for that too if sponsors are willing. Otherwise it could be way too much work for staff. Plus it needs an cPanel license. Sponsors already have these and providing few shared accounts is more economical and cheaper for them too.

[fChk]

A valid point. Perhaps the script that counts/scores the posts could be made to sort through this information as well. If it were, there would be a possibility to create a minimum credit_point over post_amount for a post to be credited, encouraging better posting over time. Of course it'd have to be set up to not count posts in off-topic areas.

Glad you've picked up on that quote of mine :-) Which will allow me to expand a bit on the why a ratio of that kind is critical -if anything- just to avoid trashing this P4V service. I've already made this point in 'Uses of Credits':
https://post4vps.com/Thread-PENDING-Uses...8#pid36318
https://post4vps.com/Thread-PENDING-Uses...8#pid36438

It's in the nature of human-beings to 'trash' free stuff (or anything that's too easy to get.) It's a fact! P4V forum was standing on the shoulders of less than a handful of contributers; most prominently, of course, Hidden_Refuge with his beginners tutorials and overall presence to animate the forum.

I've noticed when I came back this fall that he's starting to drift away from this community which is bad news for the forum, unless hosted members step up their efforts and contribute more to fill that huge void; and it won't be done by doing business as usual (2/3 liners posts commenting on other peoples comment to OP.)

As I previously stated: content is king; without it SEO won't help much. What this forum needs is content generators which may trigger further discussions and so on in an upward spiral (generating more forum activity, more traffic, more sponsors exposure and potentially more positive fallout for the service as a whole.) The quality content will get indexed and search engines will send you the AdHoc audience looking for it without needing any SEO optimization gimmickry.

Obviously it's the owner's decision and all we can do here is sounding the alarm and giving few pointers. Mine is to point at the forum's content and as a content generator, I can only advice once again (and for the last time) for the introduction of the ratio credit_points over total_posts and at least set a value of 3 or 3.5 or 4 to remain a VPS holder (even higher for high spec VPSs.)

The idea here is to 'motivate' the most reluctant members into sharing their time/expertise (if any) and in a meaningful way with the rest of the community, or lose their VPS.

The downside of this is that it may discourage some people from trying to post here: particularly persons that aren't very strong in English and may feel insecure about making a long post with deep explanations. As a note I'd like to add that I appreciate very much the non-native English speakers that post here. Your task is double difficult: not only do you have to make quality posts, you have to do it in a language in which you aren't completely comfortable. Cheers to those that make the effort through the struggle.

I would agree with you if it were for any other language than the English language.

As things stand, the English language is the World's lingua-franca of the day (yesterday, it was French, before it was Spanish, before it was Arabic, before it was Latin and so on and so forth.) Thus we should look at this as an opportunity to master the World lingua-franca among an international audience.

Again, my 2 cents! :-)

[fitkoh]

Content is king

I think this is a good general rule to live by in terms of SEO. Quality, regular content is surely the best way to get high ranking; but is there still some benefit to be gained from structuring keywords, titles, and descriptions in the best way possible?

As one example: gigarocket cancelled their free vps service nearly a year ago, but it still ranks page 2 on google, and even gets a spot on the first page for duckduckgo. There's not a ton of content behind "free vps" at gigarocket (some, but only a small percentage of overall content) and yet that one "pillar page" seems to continue to perform very well. And of course there's the numerous scam sites like vpsgratis or vpswala that clog up the first few pages of google search, have no real content, haven't been updated, and continue to perform well in rankings.

There was also an expirement I conducted a few years ago on an automotive website. Over a period of months, I watched the website climb from page 10 to page 2 in google, but it wasn't the result of good, original content. I was using an autoblogging tool to scrape articles in the public domain and post them to blogs created around keywords related to automotive subjects. Each of the blogs was them used for backlinks to the ecommerce automotive site I wanted to boost in rankings.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while good content is surely the best way to go, there may be other avenues worth considering.

The problem with those free audits if those are just code once and left forever. Means they rarely update these with new algo changes plus doesn't provide deep and practical analytics. Don't relay much on those. The most basic SEO test you can do is write down 5-10 important related keyword phrases and search those in Google.

This is a good thing to keep in mind. Sometimes it's better to use your head than rely on some complicated tool. Google is nice enough to give you important related keywords; you can copy and paste instead of writing them down.

   

Using this it should be easy to come up with a few ideal keywords, and sort which are applicable to p4v and which are not.

Also this reminds me while google is the market champion in search, other search engines are still growing; perhaps there is some wisdom in studying some of the alternatives.

Using the term "free vps" I did some investigating on yahoo & duckduckgo.

Duckduckgo returned post4vps on page 5 compared to google at page 7, and I couldn't find it anywhere on the first 10 pages for yahoo (it is possible I missed it, around 3am here).

What I noticed when browsing is that each of these engines appear to perform very differently.

Google picked up on a lot of the free vps scams, or at least it seemed like I noticed quite a bit of those, moreso than on yahoo or duckduckgo.

Duckduckgo was very interested in the "forex trading vps" offers: vps specifically used for brokering financial transactions.

yahoo seemed to put a lot of weight to link directories/discussion boards/reddits.

I wonder if it would be an ideal strategy using "pillar pages" to engineer a series of pages to work well on a different search engines.

While I'm a bit confused with the results, it is also turning into a fascinating puzzle. There wasn't a whole lot of overlap between the 3 engines using the term "free vps". I had expected the results to be very similar, yet definitely not the case.

[fChk]

I think this is a good general rule to live by in terms of SEO. Quality, regular content is surely the best way to get high ranking; but is there still some benefit to be gained from structuring keywords, titles, and descriptions in the best way possible?

As one example: gigarocket cancelled their free vps service nearly a year ago, but it still ranks page 2 on google, and even gets a spot on the first page for duckduckgo. There's not a ton of content behind "free vps" at gigarocket (some, but only a small percentage of overall content) and yet that one "pillar page" seems to continue to perform very well. And of course there's the numerous scam sites like vpsgratis or vpswala that clog up the first few pages of google search, have no real content, haven't been updated, and continue to perform well in rankings.

There was also an expirement I conducted a few years ago on an automotive website. Over a period of months, I watched the website climb from page 10 to page 2 in google, but it wasn't the result of good, original content. I was using an autoblogging tool to scrape articles in the public domain and post them to blogs created around keywords related to automotive subjects. Each of the blogs was them used for backlinks to the ecommerce automotive site I wanted to boost in rankings.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while good content is surely the best way to go, there may be other avenues worth considering.

In the age of Machine Learning and AI, I think the mere content would cut it. The proof?

Check -for yourself- what 'post for vps' as a query will bring about (instead of 'free VPS'):
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=post+for+vps&ia=web
> https://www.google.com/search?q=post+for+vps

They both have this forum as the first hit. It's all about the use of the right keywords to hit the target.

It would seem that to those 2 search engines P4V is a Post4VPS service as its domain name screams.

Just to be clear, I'm not against the 'right dose' of SEO in promoting any site; I just think that right now P4V is starving for quality content, such as this thread :-)

[xdude]

@fitkoh

The real truth about todays SEO is it's all about Google Search, nothing else. When we say search engine optimization it's Google search we are talking about. Whatever traffic you get from any their search engine is just bonus.

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in 2020, Google is till holding the reins of the market share with 88.5% of it, Bing is following with 6.12%, Yahoo! is third with 4.11% and DuckDuckGo is forthwith 0.99% of the market share.

@fChk

What you said about 'Post for VPS' is good example of wrong SEO. The problem is nobody search for Post for VPS. So ranking for that keyword is totally useless. Same goes for even ranking for post4vps. To have any use the site needs to rank for keyword people use. Like Everyone look for Free VPS also there are plenty of other related keywords. What you get as Google suggestions are what people search for most.
I still remember long long time ago when i was learning about SEO I was thrilled to see my sites rank for keywords I liked. But for months I had no traffic from Google. That taught be the one of the very basics of SEO and Marketing. You cater what people ask or want not what you want.

I do agree about quality post theory in theory but in reality it's really hard to apply for a forum like this. For example a quality post, the whole definition is depend on the person. In general i would say well detailed conversation starter posts are quality posts. But its like that above problem with wrong SEO. what's the point of making amazing quality post if nobody has interest in the subject. For example I have tried to started so many topics about various things. SEO, python etc. But here not many have big interest in these so those haven't given expected result.

Maybe some might think posts related to web hosting would be quality posts. But here not many are experts in that field or wanted to be. Many just want to know enough to run their servers to do what they want. Lets say Those SEO or Hosting posts start ranking in Google. We will get new visitors? Yes we will. How many will join not many. Because they come here to get information or check that tutorial. If they want to join they would go for a specialize place like Blackhatworld.com or webhostingtalk.com. To make it worse forums are not getting popular anymore. People prefer things like FB Groups etc.


So There are things we can do SEO wise to improve the forum but other things too. For example today people use Youtube nearly as much as Google search. Sometimes you search Google and then get a Youtube video at top move on to that and then end up watching related videos. This can be used here too. Like can make hosting or game server related videos and then tell your audience about post4vps at end of the video with a link to the forum. Can even make a channel for post4vps where u can upload some quality tutorial videos. Ofc there is a whole process finding correct search phrases, doing quality video and then pushing visitors this way. Like there should be a good promo copy which doesn't look spammy, for exmaple,

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Hey hope you enjoyed this video about game servers! Are you looking for a place to host a game server but can't pay? Check Post4VPS where you can get high-end servers which you can use for running game servers. You don't need a paypal or credit card or pay for it at all. Just stay action in the forum and you get an amazing VPS for your own use!

[fChk]

@fChk

What you said about 'Post for VPS' is good example of wrong SEO. The problem is nobody search for Post for VPS. So ranking for that keyword is totally useless. Same goes for even ranking for post4vps. To have any use the site needs to rank for keyword people use. Like Everyone look for Free VPS also there are plenty of other related keywords. What you get as Google suggestions are what people search for most.
I still remember long long time ago when i was learning about SEO I was thrilled to see my sites rank for keywords I liked. But for months I had no traffic from Google. That taught be the one of the very basics of SEO and Marketing. You cater what people ask or want not what you want.

Okay! i have to quote the relevant part here!

In the age of Machine Learning and AI, I think the mere content would cut it. The proof?

Check -for yourself- what 'post for vps' as a query will bring about (instead of 'free VPS'):
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=post+for+vps&ia=web
> https://www.google.com/search?q=post+for+vps

They both have this forum as the first hit. It's all about the use of the right keywords to hit the target.

It would seem that to those 2 search engines P4V is a Post4VPS service as its domain name screams.

This was posted in reply of this question:

.. is there still some benefit to be gained from structuring keywords, titles, and descriptions in the best way possible?

I was referring to the use of AI and machine Learning in analysing Website's content to approximate the relevance of websites towards Web queries. And I've chosen 'post for vps' as the query in this case because it puts the website as the first hit, the reason being that it's the website's own domain name.

In my normal web searches I would have most probably chosen the more generic: 'vps + post' or 'post + vps' as a search query when tracking post4VPS kind of services.

In this case:
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vps+%2B+post&ia=web
post4vps.com ranks fourth
> https://www.google.com/search?q=vps+%2B+post
post4vps.com ranks second or third (depending on your location)

... Which is not that bad!

Again, the most appropriate query for searching services live post4vps.com is 'vps + post' not 'free vps'.

I do agree about quality post theory in theory but in reality it's really hard to apply for a forum like this. For example a quality post, the whole definition is depend on the person. (..)

I don't agree with this premise at all. Quality content isn't something subjective that depends on the beholder's eyes. It's objective by its own nature and even if everybody in the forum fail to appreciate it, rest assured that Search engines won't miss it and sooner or later will accumulates a sizeable amount of views/traffic from outside the community (ie, if you're really interested in a topic and want to share it with the community just do it..)

Personally when I post I do it with the whole netizens in mind and I can go on in that subject for as long as the topic matters to me. From my experience in this forum, I generally don't expect much interaction from P4V members which is sad to say the least!..

I think there is a generational shift among the younger generation as to their expectations and the way they use Web forums. On this point, I'm 100% agreeing with you on the deceasing popularity of forums among that generation (I think it's called gen. Z) who grow up with the Internet as a home commodity.

[xdude]

Ok I think I did miss read the part about structure and AI. I prefer to call it Algorithm rather than AI for certain reason which need another whole topic. But ranking in duckduckgo for 'post for vps' or 'vps post' is not a great achievement at all. Like I mentioned before SEO is all about Google's 88%+ market share. Monthly search volume is what we look at. We don't get even 100 searches internationally for those phrases.

Just because this a post for vps service it doesn't mean people search for that. Most people don't even know what's that. What most people search for it Free VPS Hosting space. So that's what they search for. That's why Free VPS has 4500 monthly searches and even VPS Free has 1000+. Other popular search terms are free vps server, free vps hosting, vps free trial, best free vps, free vps windows etc.

Quality is a relative term. It's like a standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind. We make these standards depending on what we think about it. If we generalize it we can make a quality post about anything like say in our Movie thread. Still if nobody less has interest it is a problem the thread will just get buried. Yes Google will pick it and rank for it's keywords. But it won't be useful for us much since people who check those wont join the forum in most cases. Most of them would come for reading the thread to get info not to get a free vps. This is why some pillar pages might come handy for the forum. That way we can get traffic who has interest in getting a free vps.

Well i do agree with what you say about our lot. There aren't many who get into meaningful discussion. We get lots of generic comments at end of the month trying to complete posting quota.

We do need to adjust to the new generation. Yes this whole new generation is about internet and mobiles. No longer download things but watch or listen online. Mostly using mobiles and tabs rather than desktops and laptops. I still hate search things on phone, That's from someone who use 7 phones including 4 smart phones. Plus a Tab. But we have to reach these platforms and social networks if we want to survive.

[fitkoh]

Ok I think I did miss read the part about structure and AI. I prefer to call it Algorithm rather than AI for certain reason which need another whole topic. But ranking in duckduckgo for 'post for vps' or 'vps post' is not a great achievement at all. Like I mentioned before SEO is all about Google's 88%+ market share. Monthly search volume is what we look at. We don't get even 100 searches internationally for those phrases.

Just because this a post for vps service it doesn't mean people search for that. Most people don't even know what's that. What most people search for it Free VPS Hosting space. So that's what they search for. That's why Free VPS has 4500 monthly searches and even VPS Free has 1000+. Other popular search terms are free vps server, free vps hosting, vps free trial, best free vps, free vps windows etc.

We do need to adjust to the new generation. Yes this whole new generation is about internet and mobiles. No longer download things but watch or listen online. Mostly using mobiles and tabs rather than desktops and laptops. I still hate search things on phone, That's from someone who use 7 phones including 4 smart phones. Plus a Tab. But we have to reach these platforms and social networks if we want to survive.

I tend to agree about search volume and SEO; but it's a double edged sword. Lower volume search terms are easier to rank, but yield less results. Higher volume search terms are harder to rank, but yield more results. It may be inexperience talking, but perhaps a combination of the two would give the best chance of success?

As far as adjusting to the new generation: this gives me an idea. Perhaps a topic in general chat forum like "Things to do with a free VPS" and in that topic try to think of ways to relate "things to do with a free vps" with the topic of tablets and mobiles. Basically what I'm suggesting is that we can use related search terms to create topics, and direct those topics towards things of interest of the modern web.

Regarding social networks: I think there are 2 possible ways to manage this.
1: a volunteer from p4v to actively maintain a facebook page and post to related groups
2: automation

I generally prefer automation because it's easier and less labor intensive; but it isn't as good for generating original content. The best you can hope for is cross posting backlinks.

On the subject, a simple search of facebook groups using the term "VPS" - I'll only list a few public groups, there are a lot of private groups I didn't look into.

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/1351513114865520
SSD dedicated server and SSD VPS Hosting
1.7k members
10 posts a day
You can advertise your SSD VPS and dedicated server ads here, you can share knowledge about VPS and dedicated server here. Our group members are keen to help. Anyone can contribute to this group and help anyone are welcome.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nexgenhosting
Domain | VPS | Cloud Hosting | Dedicated Server | SSL | SEO | SMM
593 members
7 posts a day
Our group is created to provide support for people who are looking for Domain | VPS | Cloud Hosting | Dedicated Server | SSL | SEO | SMM. Also we love to connect with people who are service providers for the above.So we invite Web Developers, Designers, Domain & Hosting Companies to join us and share your knowledge with us

https://www.facebook.com/groups/723635844434413
Web Servers - VPS, Dedicated and Cloud Infrastructures
357 members
7 posts a day
This group is dedicated in sharing techniques and knowledge about customizing web servers.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/cnethost
Domain Names and Web Hosting Servers
5.8k members
30 posts a day
Post anything related to Web, Servers, Hosting, Domains only.
I find very few groups contain discussion about Domain name Buy, Sale, Auction and Web hosting. So a step to make a community of domain n hosting people.
If you find any post looks like spam, illegal, porn or repeatedly duplicated post, please report that post. The user and the post will be deleted from the group.?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/912987732163633
WebHostingServices
3.6k members
10 posts a day
Save Time & Money · Compare The Best Hosting · Compare Technology · Get a Domain Name . Sales Hosting and Domain . Get Great Deals and offers . Get Best Designs and Logos

Curiously, facebook doesn't seem to have the detail that google does and doesn't seem to make much distinction between 'vps' and 'free vps'. Most of these results are the same. But I think it would be beneficial if p4v had some a few posts now and then in any of these groups - at the very least, I don't think it would hurt and it wouldn't cost anything but a little time.

[xdude]

I tend to agree about search volume and SEO; but it's a double edged sword. Lower volume search terms are easier to rank, but yield less results. Higher volume search terms are harder to rank, but yield more results. It may be inexperience talking, but perhaps a combination of the two would give the best chance of success?

Remember we are talking about a free service so it's little easier to rank than with highly competitive keywords like Web Hosting or VPS Hosting. There aren't many real free hosting providers ranked for those keywords so it give us even better chance.

I know we can't do a real SEO process here. But, There are several simple techniques we can use for these. For example we can create a 'Vibe'. This is how u do it,

01. Make a list of practical keywords. Phrases people use for search.
02. Check first 4-5 pages and save urls of page where you can leave a comment.
03. Then write a small comment about Post4VPS. Not copy and paste but something different in each page.
04. Don't use Post4vps url. All you have to do it mention the keyword 'Post4VPS'.
05. Share the list with others who are willing do the same. But never post the list in public.

This doesn't have a huge impact on ranking but it does have a psychological impact on those who read comments in those pages. They see the word in different places and start wondering about it. Also it helps on Google bot in a minor way too since it pick up the keyword in many different domain names.

Your idea about FB is good but carefull not to spam. There are other ways to do it too. Create a FB group like 'Game Server Support Group' or 'Game Server User Base'. Post about related stuff and leave a pinned post about Post4VPS  give aways.