Sunday 16 December 2012

How Your Web Host Can Affect Your Search Rankings

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Your choice of web host is one of the more important factors behind your website's search engine rankings. A good choice can boost them, while a bad or even sub-optimal choice can cause those rankings to plummet.

Here is a short examination of how your web host can affect your search engine rankings:


* Geographic location has a role in determining search engine rankings. Since the IP address of the web host can be used to determine its geographic location, your choice of web host determines the geographic location of your website and thus its search engine rankings. In general, websites are placed higher in rankings if their geographic location is closer to that of the searcher.


* A server is a computer with limited computing resources. Depending on the setup of your choice in web host, your website may or may not get enough computing resources to satisfy all requests made to it in a timely fashion. A sluggish response coming from your website not only deters visitors, but it can also cause your website's search engine rankings to fall.



* Uptime is another impact of web hosting on your website's search engine rankings. True to its name, uptime is the amount of time that the server is up and thus able to service requests. Similar to a sluggish website, a website that is unable to respond to requests is penalized by the search engines. Your website can encounter downtime for a number of reasons, including the failure to purchase enough bandwidth and problems with the server.

Researching Your Web Host


Given the importance of uptime and the other aforementioned factors to your website's search engine rankings, it should come as no surprise that you should be careful when it comes to choosing a web host. Doing so is as simple as researching each prospective candidate and then choosing among the ones that are reputable. You have a range of possible options for finding out such information about your prospective web hosts.


Here are some suggestions:


* The simplest solution is to send an email to your web host and ask them for information such as their uptime percentage. However, you should ask for a screenshot of the statistic because words alone are insufficient proof. If your prospective web host refuses to respond to a politely worded inquiry or attempts to worm out of a direct response, then you should consider it a warning sign.


* You can also use third-party services found on the Internet to monitor certain statistics such as the uptime percentage of your website. For example, ServiceUptime.com offers a free monitoring service that lets you know instantly if the website being monitored is down. Similarly, you can also often find information such as uptime percentage on web host review sites.


* Search for the web host on the Internet. Go to review sites and check the discussions to see if their past customers have posted information about them. If the discussions are active, pop in to ask the participants questions about their experience with the web host.

Conclusion

In the end, it is important to remember that no web host is able to guarantee 100% uptime. Instead, a 99% uptime is more than adequate to fulfill the need of almost all websites out there.


About The Author :

Erik Gaandt is a freelance tech writer and SEO enthusiast. He enjoys sharing his insights on various blogs. More than 90% of webmasters read reviews when deciding on webhost. The WhoIsHostingThis search engine is home to hundreds of reviews on the most popular webhosts.


1 comment:

  1. I was only little bit aware that slow down of page down may cause site ranking because if page become slow then there may chances of increasing bounce rate, so web host server should be choose depend on it.... above info will make me more aware of my web hosting....

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete

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