Web Hosting and SEO

A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO

Following on from my introduction, part two of my guide is all about web hosting and SEO. Choosing the right web hosting solution is an important starting stage for a new online business and I will cover the reasons why this has SEO ramifications.

This guide assumes that you have not yet produced the website you plan on optimising for the search engines. Those who have an existing website may wish to skip this stage, although I would recommend to anyone uncertain about their current or planned web hosting solution to consider the following advice.

Choose a Reputable Web Host

In order to be certain that you will not adversely affect your SEO plans, you need to choose a reputable web hosting company that offers a dedicated IP to host your domain. Shared IP addresses, although common for many small to medium size businesses, are risky from an SEO point of view. Choosing a blacklisted hosting provider will risk placing your website in a “bad neighbourhood”. This is because sharing the same web server as spam sites can have a negative effect on your site too – possibly even leading to your own business from being banned by Google.

If you currently own a website that you are trying to develop, I would highly recommend running a check to see if your site is shared. You can do this using Axandra’s shared hosting checker.

If you’re planning a new site and you’re not sure which web hosting provider to choose, I would recommend firing some of the following questions at your shortlist of potential providers:

What kind of management control panel is offered? A good quality hosting package should include cPanel or a similar quality control panel.
Can you offer any data on network downtimes or load times? The provision of a consistently fast loading website is now a search engine ranking factor. You need to ensure that your host can deliver on this front.
Where are your data centres located? If your website is based in the UK, it’s preferable to ensure that your site is hosted in the UK too. This has implications for local search (see below).
Can 301 redirects be set-up? This is important in the event that you need to change a particular URL or location of a webpage on your website. Links to your webpages from external websites are absolutely crucial to your SEO performance. In the event that you need to change the URL or location of a specific webpage you need to be able to redirect these links.
Are custom (404) error pages allowed? The problem of dead links (links pointing to URLs on your website that don’t exist) can be remedied by optimising your 404 error pages.
Does the server accept mod_rewrite and mod_alias directives? If your web host allows these directives you will be able to create search engine friendly URLs that also make sense to website users, and to manipulate and control URL requests. More on this later.

It’s also important to clarify how much web space you will get for your money. Content development should be central to any small business SEO strategy, so you need to make sure you’ve got a package that offers enough room for your site to grow.

Local Hosting

Finally, it is advisable to choose a web hosting company which is located in the same country as your business. Targeting local search is another effective SEO strategy for small businesses; and the search engines are able to provide more relevant local search results partly based on the location of a website’s domain host. For UK based businesses I would highly recommend the following:

UK Fast
RackSpace
Just Host Me

Dedicated IP hosting can be significantly more expensive, however, the last company referenced on the list offer this for just £2 extra per month. This is worth the investment to be absolutely certain your SEO plans will not be affected.

Web Hosting and SEO Checklist

• Choose a reputable web host
• Host your website on a dedicated IP address
• Ask your web host questions that pertain to possible SEO issues
• Ensure your host can deliver fast load times and performance
• Choose a hosting package that allows for content growth
• Choose a host that’s based in the same country as your business

Part Three

In part three I will cover the topic of domains and the SEO considerations when selecting one. Click here to go to part three.