in SEO Tips by Jeffrey_Smith

Google Rankings are based on finding the “most relevant” websites for keyword searches. Shared Hosting plans have many features – disk space, bandwidth and programming languages supported – that will determine whether your website will interest visitors.

SEO Hosting

Picking the wrong hosting company could sabotage SEO efforts.

If your market niche requires text, images and applications that are best created using a specific programming language, it is essential that your hosting plan supports that language. If you don’t find the best hosting company that fits your needs, it could hurt your Google Rankings.

1) Making Sure Hosting Plans Support Your Programming Language

Before selecting a Web Hosting company, it is wise to do your research on what features are supported. The website, “MyBestRatedWebhosting.com“, lists the programming languages supported by different hosting companies. Programming code scripts are the building blocks of your website. Make sure that your foundation is strong by using the most effective programming language.

Ruby markets itself as “A Programmer’s Best Friend.” It uses a simple, elegant, natural syntax for easy reading and writing. Certain programming languages, like Rails, are better at handling session IDs so they don’t mess up URLs. They are also tied to specific Web applications that might add powerful functionality, features and options.

Programming Language SEO

Using Rails, programmers can create cleaner URLs, which are good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines can easily crawl clean code and deliver high SEO rankings. Good programming languages hide ugly script or links from bots.

A website’s page load speed can be improved with page caching. Establishing intuitive Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provides a solid template for site construction. SEO is a continual, long-term strategy that improves a website’s structure by removing failed features and retaining successful features.

2) How Does Your Host’s Server Downtime Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

According to the website Consumer Rankings.com, “Of primary importance to the success of your website is whether or not your visitors will be able to load your site’s pages quickly and to see at a glance what your site is all about.” While a 24/7/365, always-on, World Wide Web is certainly attractive for e-commerce, your business won’t benefit if your Host’s Server experiences significant downtime.

The industry standard for Hosting Server uptime rates is 99.9%. While the Internet has an advantage over a 9-to-5 brick-and-mortar business in terms of availability, it also has serious problems due to “random” server crashes. While a physical store can “post” its open hours, a website is assumed to be “always open.” As a result, any periods of downtime can seriously damage the website’s reputation.

SEO is an on-going process aimed at attracting traffic, maintaining interest and completing the sale. If the server fails at any point, the marketing investment would be wasted. Web visitors are extremely fickle and will quickly leave any website that is “experiencing difficulties.”

Successful, authentic websites must have high uptime rates. If your website isn’t accessible, your business is invisible. All marketing is wasted; products will gather dust. No spider or bots can crawl your site so search engines can’t cache your website. Your SEO ranking will fall and could disappear if your downtime continues.

3) What Concerns Should You Have With a Shared Hosting Network?

According to Wikipedia, a shared web hosting service provides space so that “each site ‘sits’ on its own partition” or section of the server. This provide a certain level of security by “separating” sites from one another.

Many website owners are concerned that there will be a “guilt of association” if they are located on a Shared Hosting Network with “unsavory, spammy websites.” Search engines understand the business model of Shared Hosting and are unlikely to punish a site due to its proximity to a “spammy site” on a server. Even blacklisted sites might not affect others on the network.

Website owners must develop Shared Hosting SEO plans that optimize features which they can control. They must establish the legitimacy of their sites by using features that complement their market niche for disk space, bandwidth, e-mail boxes and applications. The affordability of Shared Hosting can’t be beat. Once cost-effective features are combined to optimize website speed and performance, SEO will be successful.

4) What Affect Does Your Host’s IP Address Have on SEO?

The World Wide Web continues to evolve as technology expands the realm of possibilities. Originally, the concept of “anonymous, anywhere” surfing was appealing because it evoked images of great freedom. With the proliferation of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), online companies have become able to “estimate” your geographical location in order to sell you “location-based” products and services.

According to Webopedia, the Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique identifier for a computer (or hardware device) that shows a physical, geographical location. According to Wikipedia, the IP address designates both the network and physical location of the computing device down to the city, state and country.

Search engines use technology to match the most relevant websites with keyword searches by matching the Hosted Web server’s location to the customer’s location. The Google search result will rank relevant websites based on widening concentric circles. Google assumes that most websites target customers in the country where they are located.

Google Webmaster Tools GeoTargeting

There are exceptions to the location-based relevance rule for language-based searches, information blogs and “non-location-based products or services.” Realizing that some websites are located in countries with cheaper Internet Hosting services but want to target customers in a different location – Google has added a feature called “GeoTargeting” to its Webmaster Tools. This feature enables websites to notify Google of the geographical location they wish to target.

Most countries have been assigned a two-letter suffix, called a Top Level Domain (TLD), which identifies the website’s national origin (i.e. the TLD for Kenya is .ke). Google looks at a number of factors for PageRank – TLD, IP address, languages and links – to match sites with keywords. 

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About Jeffrey_Smith

In 2006, Jeffrey Smith founded SEO Design Solutions (An SEO Provider who now develops SEO Software for WordPress).

Jeffrey has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and marketing strategies to increase rankings, revenue and reach.

4 thoughts on “How Could Your Hosting Company Hurt Your Google Rankings?
  1. Awesome!I was just having giant pleasure reading your site. It was great time for me indeed.Honestly,I did not anticipate that hosting company can affect website in google ranking. Now! I am aware! thanks for sharing

  2. Amanda says:

    Thanks for the great information. I am not sure if you field questions, but here goes….

    I host my site with webs.com because it is so easy to build and to change quickly. I have been told by a friend who is a successful food blogger that webs.com sites do not do well in search engines because they are all put together in one big pool and viewed as one big website. Is this true, even if you have a paid account with a real domain name. Any help you could provide would be appreciated. I am looking to add another site soon and don’t want to go with webs.com again if this is a problem.

    Thanks!

  3. You should try WordPress and use a 1 click installation (HostGator) to set it up, once done, you can download a free theme and publish content easily (rather than using a free provider). Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and with free sites, you can’t expect much.

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