SEO Step By Step Guide– 79. Will Change of Web Host Affect your Website Ranking?

Another change that can happen to your website during its lifecycle is change of web hosting. Many webmasters have this doubt, whether changing their web host affect their search engine ranking. If all the other things remain the same, then changing your web host will not affect your search engine ranking in anyway. However, there are number of other factors that can lead to change in your website’s ranking which you need to pay attention to before changing your service provider.

As you would have already known, your web server’s uptime is very crucial for your site’s ranking. If your website resides on an unreliable host, then your website’s uptime will be poor. If your website is down for to often or if it times out too often before the pages load, it will frustrate your website’s visitors affecting your traffic rate. This will also affect your indexing. When search engine bots visit your website your website should be up and running only then they will be able to access your site. If your website should be down too frequently and if it coincides with the search bot’s visit, then it will affect your site’s ranking very badly.

The next important factor is that you should make sure that your website is not hosted in blacklisted servers. Blacklisted servers are nothing but servers that were healthy once but been used for sending spam mails and for spreading malicious software and virus. Such servers will be blacklisted by the search engines and this will create a bad hosting space. Websites hosted in such servers will always be looked at with suspicion. Therefore, you should not go for hosting services just because they are cheap. You will find hosting packages in eBay that are astonishingly low. How are they able to offer at such low prices? Hosting service providers try to salvage what ever is possible from blacklisted servers by offering it for almost nothing while the same service costs you 20 to 30 times more elsewhere. You know what you are likely to get by going for such hosting services. Never walk yourself into traps that you cannot relieve yourself from. Being identified with a bad neighborhood is one of the worst things that can happen to your brand new website or a website that has gained good reputation and online visibility after years of hard work.

Another problem that is common while changing the hosting service is the proper transfer of the website to the new host. Small brochure websites will not have any problem but there are websites that are massive with thousands of pages and if they have to be moved, it is a pretty complicated task. Extra care and attention is required to ensure a fully functional website without any 404 errors. So do plan your migration carefully and have a backup in place so that your files are safe in case of any mishaps while transferring your website.

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