Why You Need a Great Host for SEO?

Many people overlook the importance of having a good host, not only for security and up-time…but also for SEO.  Even though we (Internet Marketers) have come to a consensuses that hosting does not play a huge factor in rankings, I thought I would let you in on a little secret as to why you NEED to use a great host!

The majority of website owners overlook the difference it makes to be on a dedicated server, compared to a shared hosting environment.  When you are on your own server, you don’t have to worry about sharing server resources with hundreds of other sites…and most importantly, don’t have to worry about another website doing anything unethical that could hurt your website.

One Website Taking Down All Sites

Grant it, this has been a rare occurrence, but I have seen it where a website could not rank higher than the 12 page of Google for a key-phrase that wasn’t all that competitive.  For the longest time, me and some of my business partners were baffled by why the site would not go past the 12th page.

We ask the client…

What was the history of the website? Been around for 6 years.

Did you do anything blackhat or unethical that could have gotten your website penalized?   No.

Have you recently changed hosting companies or relaunched a site?  No, been the same hosting and website since we launched it 6 years ago.

As you could see we were a bit puzzled by why we could not get this website to improve in the organic results.

…until we did a reverse IP lookup on the domain.  We saw that there were over 2200 other domains on the same server as our clients.  Little did we know or forgot to ask, but he was using one of those $2/month hosting companies that you had never heard of.

We also noticed some of the other websites that were on the same server as him.  Over 35 porn sites and another 10-20 questionable sites that you didn’t want to even know what was on them.

What We Did

After seeing all of the suspect domains that were sharing the same server as him, we quickly took action and switch the client’s site over to a Brainhost dedicated hosting account.  Within one week, after Google had a chance to re-index the site on the new hosting platform, we shot up from page 12 to #6 on page 1..overnight.

The Lesson

So if you haven’t already done it…go to Brainhost or another reputable hosting company and transfer your domain to a dedicated server….TODAY.  The last thing you want to do is shoot yourself in the foot by hurting your SEO potential by other websites doing suspect tactics that is hurting everyone else!