The Effects Of Hosting On Your Website Rankings

By Author: Rob Gagnon
Total Articles: 4762
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When most searchers look for a hosting service, you'll find the most common interest in the search and decision is COST. They all want a bargain, and to get the biggest bang for their buck.

While that may sound like a natural desire, especially given our economic times, you need to beware: Sometimes you get exactly what you've paid for - and a bargain isn't always a bargain.

A website is useless if it can't be found! You may come across the expression when looking for information about search engines, rankings, optimization, and website promoting; but have you taken time to give it serious thought and consideration? If not, then you had better take a moment to think about how your own site would be affected if nobody ever looked at it.

BIG RACE FOR TOP POSITIONS

It's a simple fact that if you aren't in the first few pages of search engines, then your competition will get most of the traffic you missed out on. Companies, organizations, and small businesses know how critical it is to be ranked high in search engines.

It's become part of our daily life to automatically head online to 'search' ...
... when we want to find something; whether it's information, a product, or even just a contact. We may not always get what we we're looking for on the first try, but we'll usually find it within the first few clicks displayed in the search engine listings.

Okay, fine, so the obvious has been stated - everybody wants first place in the search engines; we're not dumb, so what was the whole point of restating the obvious?

The simple truth is, while most people focus on all the tweaks and tricks to get higher listings, submitting their website link everywhere they can, making sure the search engines know where their site is; they've usually overlooked the difference their Hosting choice can have on their ranking results.

CHEAP AND SLOW CAN RESULT IN A 'NO SHOW'

According to Netcraft, there were 182,226,259 sites online as of October 2008 (up almost a million sites from just the previous month.) Now that's a lot of competition! Don't forget, that's just site domains. Try considering in the fact that each site could be running tens, hundreds, or (in some cases) even thousands of pages on their site!

That's an incredible amount of information and content for the search engines to go through, and index. You had better be absolutely sure your site is ready when Google and the others come knocking to check yours out - they haven't got time to wait around.

So it's great that you found a bargain basement rate Hosting service, but what corners did they need to cut in order to offer you "this great deal"?

Back in the not-long-ago days of dial-up service, websites had to keep all their files small because people became frustrated having to wait for heavy pages to load in what felt like 'forever'. Server speed wasn't as critical because it only needed to run as fast as the receiving computer could receive. With broadband, however, people want and expect everything to show immediately.

If your site is on a shared host server, sometimes with a thousand other websites on the same line, chances are your pages are also slowed down because the server is also trying to supply users with requested data from all the other adjacent sites at the same time. If speed is imperative, you should absolutely consider getting hosting through a dedicated server and IP so you won't have to share the bandwidth.

If your hosting company is running older equipment, it may not be handling the demand fast enough. If a page takes too long to load, the user will simply walk away because they know another site can probably get them what they want, and faster. It's the same with search engines: they have a lot of sites and pages to go through, and set limits in how many seconds they will spend checking yours.

404: CLOSED FOR THE DAY

The 404 "Page Not Found" is the most dreaded result to experience when the search engines show up. Old and improperly maintained server equipment can become your worst nightmare if they break down often. Not only does it tell users your site is gone (they don't know whether it's permanent because they followed an outdated link, or whether it's temporary and when they should try again), for the search engines it's like receiving a closed for the day.

The search engines will usually try again the next time your site is scheduled for rechecking (sometimes weeks or even months later), but it doesn't take too many visits to a 404 'not found' page before they change your listing flag from 'Closed' to 'Out Of Business'.

You need to make sure your host has the highest quality up-to-date equipment, and the tech support to immediately handle any breakdowns or disruptions. If you don't, the search engines may give up checking on your site.

BLACKLISTED BY ASSOCIATION

Lastly, but also the most critical: shared hosting on a blacklisted server. You're sharing the same IP address with all the other sites on a shared server. If a search engine encounters a site which it considers illegal or risk suspicious, it can flag that site (and the IP itself) as not acceptable for indexing and/or including in its listings. Since your site originates from the same IP connection, the engines could flag your website as potentially guilty by association coming from the same origin.

You and/or your host will need to file a request to have your site removed from the blacklisting status as well. A good host may be able to do so relatively quickly, but even your email could be blocked as potential spam in the meantime.

Don't risk your rankings: get dedicated hosting if you want to protect your clean record.
About Author:
We Do Hosting offers top-quality support and pricing for all virtual hosting needs. All of our servers and experienced technicians are located in Victoria, BC and unlike many other web hosting companies, we built and own our data centre. High storage, Virtual Dedicated Servers, and linux hosting are among a few of our quality services. Visit us at www.wedohosting.com for more information.