Is SEO affected when hosting service is changed?
-
I put my plan to change web hosts on abeyance when an SEO friend of mine told me that it would negatively impact the sites SEO. I am not changing the url or anathing, just the host.
-
All things being equal, your SEO would not be be affected at all purely because of a host change. Let me clarify the "all things being equal" part:
-
will your new server offer the same performance as the old server? As Cody suggests, if the new server offers better overall performance that would be good, and if it is worse that would be bad.
-
will there be any downtime during the change? Ideally your should be able to make the move with zero downtime. Any downtime would obviously not be good.
-
is your new server physically located in a significantly different location? If your current server is located in England, it can offer better local results for visitors located in England. If you then move your server to the US, your local SERP can be affected.
-
there are many server settings which can impact SEO and performance. These can easily be taken for granted. If you use any form of shared hosting, you should try to thoroughly understand your current settings and ensure you are aware of your new host's settings. Webmasters are often surprised to learn about changes after they have moved.
-
-
On a short term basis, I suppose it's possible if your site is down while your domain propogates to the new host, but on a long term basis this shouldn't be an issue, especially if your site performance is improved due to the change.
If your new host is known to have poor performance or is at risk of frequent outages it could negatively affect your SEO. Page load times do factor into your rankings.
Did your friend give you any kind of specific reasoning why he/she believes that changing your webhost will negatively affect your SEO?
The question to ask even if a slight drop in rankings may occur is - Why are you thinking about changing hosts in the first place, and will the small chance of a potential drop in rankings trump your reasoning for switching hosts?
I don't think you have anything to worry about, but if you do, think of the long term positive effects, not the short term (potential) negative effects.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Questions About The Right Hosting
Hi All, I have a few questions about the right type of hosting that I should be using. I understand that many people say we should be using the best hosting that we can afford. However, when I have a website with just 650 pages / posts is it really worth worrying too much about where I am hosting. I am UK based so at the moment I am using a UK host along with a CDN. I have a unique IP address and on a server that has a limited amount of websites on it. The main question is there really any need to be looking at anything else. The truth is I have used cloud hosting before and the website loaded slower around the world with that than it does with my current setup. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TTGUK0 -
SEO for Parallax Website
Hi, Are there any implications of having a parallax website and the URL not changing as you scroll down the page? So basically the whole site is under the same URL? However, when you click on the menu the URL does change? Cheers
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Changing URIs
About 2 months ago, my client changed its domain—using 301 redirect—and took the hit in search results. Here's my question: If I convince the client to revert to their old URI, will that help or hurt their SEO? Follow-up, can it hurt to change interior URIs to something that better reflects the page content? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Changing Wordpress theme page
I hear that when moving your posts from one website to another, if it is done incorrectly it can hurt your ranking on search engines. With this mind. Does changing from on theme to another affect a websites ranking?
Technical SEO | | johnmoon61 -
Changing Domain Name
Hi all, A client has just got their .edu domain and they want to change their current domain name (a .com) to this new .edu domain. The domain's CMS is Wordpress. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but basically I will need to create a new site (but they want to keep current design), move everything across to the new domain name, and 301 URL per URL? What about all the citations that the old URLs have gotten? The website is listed on Google listings/maps for some of their local keywords. Is there anyway to preserve this? Thank you all in advance.
Technical SEO | | EdwardDennis0 -
Duplicate Content on SEO Pages
I'm trying to create a bunch of content pages, and I want to know if the shortcut I took is going to penalize me for duplicate content. Some background: we are an airport ground transportation search engine(www.mozio.com), and we constructed several airport transportation pages with the providers in a particular area listed. However, the problem is, sometimes in a certain region multiple of the same providers serve the same places. For instance, NYAS serves both JFK and LGA, and obviously SuperShuttle serves ~200 airports. So this means for every airport's page, they have the super shuttle box. All the provider info is stored in a database with tags for the airports they serve, and then we dynamically create the page. A good example follows: http://www.mozio.com/lga_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/jfk_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/ewr_airport_transportation/ All 3 of those pages have a lot in common. Now, I'm not sure, but they started out working decently, but as I added more and more pages the efficacy of them went down on the whole. Is what I've done qualify as "duplicate content", and would I be better off getting rid of some of the pages or somehow consolidating the info into a master page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Should I change a 301 redirect?
I recently moved all the content from an old site to a new site on a new domain. I lost a significant amount of traffic as a result. There are 301 redirects for every page on the old site. Generally, these point to the same content as was on the relevant page of the old site. However, the 301 redirect for the homepage on the old site points to the homepage on the new site, not to the content from the old site homepage. I'm wondering whether to change the 301 to point at the content from the old site homepage. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | seqal0 -
Fast hosting
Hi everyone, The host I use is OK, but looking for something lightning fast for a new project. Any know which hosts are the fastest and best for SEO?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220