This is a guest post by Borko Simms from WebmasterFormat.com in which he guides us on how to choose a web hosting that’s seo friendly.
As you wade through the endless array of web hosting options and rank them in order of your particular criteria, it’s important to take your potential search engine ranking into account.
You might be wondering how a web host could possibly affect your search engine ranking.
In fact, there are several aspects of your ranking that can be influenced by your chosen host, so it’s important to learn what they are and rate a potential host accordingly.
IP Address
The most potentially damaging impact a host can have on your search-engine ranking is if your assigned IP address happens to have been previously occupied by a spammer, black-hat SEO practitioner or anyone who has gotten themselves banned or blacklisted from search engines and directories.
This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s a major headache to resolve.
There are several services like Barracuda Central and Spamhaus that maintain databases of banned IP addresses that you can search once you’re given your new IP.
That’s the easiest way to find out if there’s a problem. If your address matches a banned IP, you’ll either need to buy a new address, preferably on a different subnet, or resubmit your site to the search engines, which can take several weeks. The process is cumbersome and slow, and major search engine players like Google are working on ways to eliminate this unfortunate situation.
Down Time
This almost goes without mentioning, but unscheduled down time is unacceptable in a web host for several reasons, including the fact that if a search engine doesn’t receive a response from your host after a certain number of consecutive attempts, it may remove your site from the index or at least lower its rank.
Odds are, you’ll stay far away from hosts with downtime problems severe enough to affect your search engine ranking. In fact, there are probably very few such hosts out there, at least among the reputable providers.
But if you’re trying to run your site on a shoestring budget, and/or you’re a non-profit organization receiving free service, you might find yourself in a situation where this becomes a factor. There are plenty of other inexpensive hosting providers that are reliable, so there is no reason for you to put up with excessive down time.
Speed
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve read about Google’s new Caffeine search ranking system. They’ve gone out of their way to explain that speed isn’t everything and that most sites won’t see a drop in their search ranking due to speed alone. However, if you can tell that your site is slow, chances are Google, and soon other search engines, will take notice and rank your site accordingly.
With the advent of cloud web hosting, there’s really no excuse to be saddled with a slow site. Many providers offer affordable cloud hosting packages that will only charge you for the resources utilized by your server. If that’s still overkill, there are plenty of hosts that are fast enough to serve up a simple website. Hosts slow enough to be penalized by Google are by far the exception rather than the rule.
Admin Tip: Use a CDN service like MaxCDN to accelerate your website at very affordable rates. Read our article: “How To Speed Up WordPress Blog In 3 Simple Steps“.
Geotargeting
This goes right along with speed. Geotargeting is simply the practice of ensuring that your primary target audience is served the quickest by your website.
Before you select a host, take the time to research your target audience, and try to locate your host as close as possible to that area. If your site is local, such as a service site that serves a small geographic area, select a host that is headquartered within this area or nearby.
Although it usually won’t make a big difference where in the U.S. or E.U. your host is located, as long as it has multiple fast internet links, it can’t hurt to locate the host in close proximity to its primary traffic.
Last Words…
Your web host should not have a significant impact on your search ranking. These tips will help you to minimize any impact it does have or to switch to a new hosting before your rank is negatively affected.
Do read: “How to rank high on Google for your targeted country users“.
Hey BSimms,
Nice Post. Great tips on choosing a good web host.
I’m using hostgator and it’s really awesome hosting.
Thanks for sharing this great Post.
~Dev
As someone who works as an SEO specialist I have found this information to be somewhat helpful. Yes there are factors that play into it, but hosting doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with the rankings or how google will effect you.
Wow I had no idea that your web host could affect your search engine rankings. I mean I know it’s in the smallest way, but it can be prevented. Thank you for this article, I definitely learned something new today!
Great guest post. Picking out the right hosting company is very important. Have you found any that you particularly prefer or try to avoid? So far the majority of the websites I’ve worked with have been through ATT or Bluehost, and I haven’t had any hiccups.
Our website WebmasterFormat.com is hosted at eApps virtual private server and I can highly recommend them. They offer VPSs and dedicated servers. If you want recommendation for a shared hosting, you might take a look at this poll we created: http://webmasterformat.com/find-a-host/poll-who-is-the-best-host. WebHostingPad and JustHost are the main vote getters. I personally didn’t have any experience with any of those listed.
I have no answer to another part of your question, which one to avoid, as I have never had negative experience with web hosting company. Pure luck, or maybe I have been choosing wisely.
I am not a highly technical person though by years of being online I have understood some common parameters of hosting. But I never knew that banned IP addresses could be assigned by the host to a new site. I think if the IP address is banned, the host should be careful enough not to assign it to anyone else.
Truly it pays off really well to go with established and well reputed host. It saves lot of headache later on.
The problem is the host often doesn’t know if the IP he’s selling is having problems. The client who was using it and who is responsible for the problems is probably aware of it, but he will not come shouting to his host: “hey I was sending tons of spam and seeded malware from IP you assigned to me”.
nice post simms….hosting is only given importance when it comes to considering factors like budget and disk space and bandwidth,…..this post will surely force blog admins to give more thought before selecting web hosting
Hi,
Great information which I haven’t read anywhere before. I specially did not know about ‘Geo targeting’. This does make sense, so I guess next time I will try to locate a host close to home.
But, imo, most country specific hosts are not as as good as the top hosts.
Kindest,
Nabeel
It is good to have site hosted on the IP which is in country you’re targeting. Search engines will give you slightly better positions for searches made from that country. However, I am also aware of the fact that in some countries you can have problems finding quality host with all the features you need. No quick and easy solution to that.
I think choosing a good web host is very very important for bloggers. I really did not know about SpamHaus and Barracuda Central. Thanks a lot for sharing that part since I think it is very important to check a blacklisted IP when choosing a webhost
I also didn’t know about SpamHaus and Barracuda until recently. I discovered them when doing research for a web hosting for a friend. Great anti-spam services.
I have had some excellent luck with hosting for a long time. It’s because I have my own rented server and have always had a server. I find a lot of regular hosting companies are not always compatible with the site I am trying to create.
I understand you completely. That’s why we started WebmasterFormat on the VPS from the beginning, even when we had no visitors at all during our first days. Running a site with no root access feels to developers like driving a race with a flat tire.
Downtime and speed are a big deal. We have had issues with one host where both issues had us concerned enough to find another host. Not only does Google not like it, but of course, visitors might be lost.
Great article. I agree with your comments on page speed. Although Google do not openly use it in their rankings, the truth is that the robots will only spend so long crawling your site before moving on to the next one… if your server is slow or has a lot of problems this may mean that your content isn’t indexed at all.