Will changing hosts kill SEO?

If i move my website to another host, will it hurt my SEO? PageRank? If so, will it all come back?

 

When we changed one site, PR stayed (perhaps because it didn't get updated since?), SERPs stayed, BLs stayed. Basically nothing changed. Noticably that is. Actually things changed for the better because of internal linking now from different IP.

 

NO moving to another host should have no effect on your rankings or PR if properly done.

Leave the existing site as is, then set up your site on the new server, and as soon as it is active change the Domain Name Servers with your domain provider, once you can verify that everything is resolving to the new server (check the ip address), it may be safe to take down the old site but I prefer to leave it up for another week or so.

 

I honestly doubt that it hurts your optimization, unless of course, that the new IP block has already been blacklisted by the SE’s, but this is rather improbable.

And in the event that it does hurt SERPs, it would just be for a short while, but again, I see no reason why it would affect the results at all.

Maybe the only thing you should consider is that if you have several sites, and use some cross linking structure, moving all the sites to the same IP block might eventually hurt the results, as SEs might see the relation between sites and then filter out some of the results. But again, this is mostly speculation (as most SEO things) and is rather improbable that it would affect your optimization efforts all by itself.

 

Made the change successfully, and remembered to remove the links to the sites already on that IP.
Maybe I was lucky, but absolutely no problems.
Pictures of Houses : Andalucian horses for sale

 

Humm thanks for the advice. You make it all sound so easy. I'm still contemplating but I'm not sure what to do yet. It just seems like I can get so much more for the same price someplace else. For me, working and paying for the site, I wanna move it, however, I'm not sure what I'll screw up.

Also, how can I move my email then? It's all IMAP so it's on the server somewhere.

 

You can always run a test on the new server here DNS Report. Use a website hosted on their servers and then test yours. Make sure things workout.

 

No, it makes no difference. All you're doing is moving from one "location" to another. The SE's don't care (unless you host with a known spaming firm).

Your email gets moved, usually automatically. Your new host will give you new pop and/or smtp info to get your mail.

 

I have moved a few times with no affect on the serps or anything. Just do as instructed by Mel in the above post.

 

as said by Mel earlier is totally correct ...

- first new site up - all files setup correctly
- then change your DNS records to point to new host
- then leave old a few days to allow all TTL to expire and point to new host.

i did it several times during the past 7+ years and never any negative effect at all - there is absolutely no reason for such. last time i moved just a few weeks back around august 8 or so - always change your host with ZERO downtime to make sure all SE find you at any time during host change.

good luck

 

Any good way to find out if a host is a "spamming firm"?

 

even if your site goes down for a short time, everything should remain the same when it goes back up.

 

in my case, PR turned from 2 to zero, but backed to zero after 2 weeks. i guess it is only my PR is too low and for higher PRs there may be no effects.

i heard google will recrawl you if the IP changes.

 

Had our first noticible outage last week at 14 minutes - I didn't see anything change. BUT - I dare ask, how long down do you feel comfortable with? Like what if the site is down, and the bot makes a few attempts to visit? How long is ok ya think?

Glad the overall question was asked, we are considering moving as well. We have everything with GoDaddy, found out they dont do 301 redirects, only 302's. Wierd, eh?

 

PR has nothing to do with it, but if you changed your directory structure and/or your page names then of course your PR will fall, but that is not a function of the move, but of restructuring.

If you did not do your move correctly (in other words making sure that there were identical sets of pages visible to the bots at all time on both servers) then there is no reason for PR or rankings go drop.

 

Well I think i have all my bandwidth issues figured out, hopefully, so I won't have to move.