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Most SEO advice tends to focus primarily on link building techniques, on-page factors, and search engine trends. This is all very good information, but what about Web Hosting? Every now and then neighborhoods are mentioned, but never with enough emphasis.

Not all servers are created equal and many are not search engine friendly. It would be pointless to waste time and money building links and refining code when your website is being hosted from a slow, unreliable server that is full of spammy neighbors (who you WILL be associated with by the search engines). Servers are one of the cheapest components of a website, but they are very important.

Here are a few things to consider before you choose a server.

• Does the web host have 301 Redirect capabilities? This is absolutely necessary to avoid the possibility of duplicate content penalties.
• The uptime of your server is vital. There are several providers that guarantee their servers to be up 99.9% of the time.
• Your IP Class can and will be used by search engines to determine the quality of your neighborhood. Your web host should be analyzed to determine if there are any spam sites associated with its IP Class.
• Does the web host have clean name servers? You want your website to be associated with others who have clean names.
• Look for a server that provides each reseller with their own IP addresses. Hosting on a server with large amounts of sites using one IP address will significantly increase your chances of being associated with spammers.
• Does the web host support the Date Modified attribute? Search engines like to know when your pages are being modified and the Date Modified attribute makes this possible.
• Choose a server with a fast response time. This will allow search engines to crawl further into your website because they are not spending time waiting for pages to load.

Services like SEO Certified Servers are available to help you determine if your server meets these criteria. They check and certify servers for the sole purpose of SEO.

I think that it would be wise to take a closer look at your web host before launching your SEO campaign.

Good Luck
Paul

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 8:08 pm and is filed under SEO Design, SEO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.