Web Hosting Box

Search engine optimization is the best way to get consistent traffic to your web site without having to continuously invest money in advertising and other forms of marketing and promotion. By optimizing your web sites properly you can bring in a steady flow of traffic and forget about marketing and other annoying and repetitive aspects of online business. In fact, many webmasters spend the majority of their time trying to find more ways to increase their search engine ranking and traffic. Unfortunately, many webmasters don’t realize they’ve already hurt their chances of being as successful online by choosing the wrong web hosting plan. Contrary to popular belief, there is a solid connection between web hosting and search engine optimization.

IP Addresses and SEO

For the advanced SEO expert that routinely does link building through various web 2.0 properties, the most obvious aspect of a web hosting plan that has an impact on SEO is the amount of IP addresses given to each webmaster. When search engines index web pages they do so with automated crawlers that index every aspect of the page and site, including the web site’s IP address. If you own a network of web sites and you would like to build a link network using these sites, then you will need to have a separate IP address for each web site. Fortunately, IP addresses are not a major factor for webmasters that don’t own a lot of web sites that are interlinking in the same niche.

Hosting Reliability and Features

Most people don’t realize that an unreliable hosting network can have a negative impact on a web site’s search engine ranking and site indexing. When your web site is down (as it often may be with unreliable web hosting) search engine robots will be unable to index your new pages. This may have a very negative impact on the amount of pages that are indexed for your site, and how often updated pages are indexed in the search engine results.

A powerful hosting plan will also be able to handle more software installations and tasks, which can be especially useful if you are using automated software for link building or to perform  other mundane tasks involved with SEO.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is another overlooked connection between your web hosting plan and your SEO efforts. The robots.txt file is a file that is located on your web server, which dictates how robots (particularly search engine bots) interact with your web site. If the robot.txt file is set to dis-allow all robots then your site will not be able to get ranked by any search engine, leaving you without any form of SEO traffic. Most hosting companies leave this file blank or do not include, so it is important to verify whether or not the robots.txt file is present in the web server that hosts your web site.

As multiple-domain hosting becomes a more affordable and popular option, hosting shoppers are flocking to those hosts that offer this solution.  Since most shared hosting providers offer a multiple-domain hosting choice, clients are utilizing this to their advantage.

Although there are a few forms of multiple-domain hosting, the most popular version is to host all domains on a single IP address. There are many critics that argue this is not good practice. There are many pros and cons to this method of hosting. The pros include:

• One billing account
• Faster access to multiple sites
• Basic packages save money

The cons include:

• Search engine issues
• Adding features costs significantly more

One useful feature is that all the domains are charged onto one billing account. That way its easier to keep track of which sites had overages charges, thus allowing the client to upgrade those sites with a good deal of traffic. Having one account also allows the client to find all statistics in one place.

Also when linking from one site to the next on the same server, the connection will be faster due to less access time. This is a helpful feature for the client that has a network of sites all connected from a main page.

Finally, the basic multiple-domain hosting packages save money. Since the client doesn’t have to pay for one hosting plan per website all on different servers, they are able to save much more money by paying one bill for all, on the same server.

One disadvantage of multiple-domain hosting is the search engine issues that arise. If a website is banned from a search engine due to a violation of terms and conditions, the entire IP address will be banned, thus not indexing all websites under that account. This can cause major problems especially if the sites are posted on major search engines.

Another disadvantage is that adding various features can cost significantly more money. For instance, since most multiple-domain providers offer dynamic IP addresses. If the client needs a static IP address, they will have to spend a good portion of extra money to obtain it. This would be a requirement for the configuration of SSL on the website.

Despite the few cons associated with multiple-domain hosting, there are many pros that make this an attractive option. Since the basic packages are an economical decision, this has become one of the most popular hosting methods currently available.

Many fail to find the connection between web hosting and search engine optimization, however there is a very real association between the two. There are various aspects of your web hosting control panel, your web host’s policies, and the overall features of your hosting plan that contribute to the rise and fall of your rankings in the search engines. For example, your robots.txt file (which can be edited from the file manager in your hosting control panel) dictates whether or not search engines and other bots can browse your site. Some web hosts include an  already modified robots.txt file which blocks search engines from visiting your site. Unfortunately, there have been many people who struggled for months on end only to find that their robots.txt file was not allowing search engines to index their site. This is just one example of the way a web hosting plan can affect your search engine ranking.

Site IP Addresses and Link Building

One of the most powerful ways to raise your site’s PR and search engine ranking is through link building, which is the practice of building backlinks to your site online. The more links you have pointing to your site, the more powerful your site appears to be to the search engines. Thus, many webmasters try to build links back to their own sites in a failed attempt to create what are known as link wheels. These are networks of self-owned sites that you have control over, through which you can dictate backlinking and the PR that results from those links.

Link Wheel Anonymity

However, search engines can see which IP address the links are hosted on, and if they are all on the same IP address, then this could negatively impact your site’s ranking. Of course there are other factors that come into play such as the number of outbound links on each page, and the PR of every page that links back to your site. The main issue is having control over sites that are located on different IP addresses.

Hostgator’s SEO Hosting

Luckily Host Gator is no dinosaur when it comes to search engine optimization, and they understand the eds of their clients. Thus, they have established SEO hosting, which gives you access to various C class IP addresses. This means you will be able to have many sites under your control which are hosted on various IP addresses. In other words, you will have control over a network of sites that appear to be unique entities. The plans offered by Host Gator’s SEO hosting are suitable for a wide range of site owners, with plans starting at only $35 per month for 5 C-class IP addresses. Of course each plan also includes a web hosting control panel and all of the other features you have come to know and love with your current hosting plan. If you are looking for a reliable web hosting plan then you can be sure that Host Gator can offer you everything you need with their new hosting company – SEO hosting.

Properly building an online empire seems nearly impossible to most people, especially if you are trying to do it all over night. There are so many factors that contribute to the success of a site in the search engine rankings, and it can be very difficult to pinpoint which strategies work, and which methods are  a complete waste of time. If you have been researching web hosting and search engine optimization, then I am sure you are familiar with the importance of unique IP addresses in relation to backlink building.

Backlinks that originate from the same hosting IP address will not be credited by search engines like Google, thus SEO web hosting has been created to give webmasters access to several class C IP addresses for their domains. However, simply having access to plenty of IP addresses and multiple domains is not going to let you build a massive empire of links that point back to your main site.

Two Schools of Thought

There are two different schools of thought in regards to link building. One side believes that it is possible to establish many backlinks in a short period of time, while still achieving positive results in the search engine results pages. On the other hand, many believe that quick backlink building does nothing more than place your site in the sandbox, thus causing it’s ranking to plummet for months at a time. The sandbox is a term used by many webmasters to describe the process of being completely removed from the search engine rankings – a process which can occur for a variety of reasons. So which way really works, quick and easy, or slow and calculated?

Quick and Easy

Most people that employ the quick and easy method of building links do so by using automated linkbuilding software. This software spreads links across the web at a phenomenal rate, giving the site a huge amount of backlinks virtually overnight. The main problem with the quick and easy method, is that the links are not being hosted on authoritative sites within the target niche. In fact, in many cases the links are being scattered mindlessly onto sites that have already been spammed, and have a low PR. Although it is possible to gain a substantial amount of proper backlinks in a short amount of time, doing so usually involves some sort of hard work. Since may automated linkbuilding tools run on your web server, there is a distinct possibility of your web hosting account being banned for link spamming.

Slow and Calculated

The slow and calculated method of building links usually involves populating your site with useful content that people will naturally link to. Content that provides value to your readers will easily gain backlinks over time, and in some cases a good piece of content that is related to a trending topic can generate a lot of backlinks in very little time. A site that is updated regularly with good content will have a much better chance of adding wealth to the internet, thus gradually assuming a higher position in the search engine rankings.