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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.

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.

Most web hosting service providers offer a wide variety of hosting plans that can meet everyone’s needs. All web hosts strive to provide service that is satisfactory and prices that are affordable, however each one has a different set of plans to offer, and the inner workings of the hosting account can be significantly different. Perhaps most importantly is whether or not your hosting account is search engine friendly. While this may not make sense to many webmasters, there are certain aspects of a web server that may make it more susceptible to higher or lower search engine rankings. The following information should help you understand exactly why some web hosting accounts are not liked by the search engines.

Shared IPs

Shared web hosting accounts in particular are risky when it comes to search engine optimization because they require you to share an IP address with other webmasters, which means you can be viewed as the same entity by search engine bots. Also, shared web hosting accounts stand a  greater chance of  causing server downtime, which can cause the search engine bots to fail to index important site updates. In general, all shared web hosting plans are not recommended for serious online business owners are those looking to get high rankings in the search engines.

Free Web Hosting Accounts

Just like shared web hosting accounts, free hosting accounts are also frowned upon by the search engines, not only because they are a form of shared hosting but because the servers are generally sub-par. As mentioned web servers that perform poorly are not ideal for search engine optimization, simply because they reduce the quality of web surfing, both in the perspective of the visitor and the search engine crawlers. Free web hosting accounts also tend to have many limitations that will keep you form updating your site regularly, which is an important factor when trying to rank highly for a particular keyword.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a file that dictates who can and cannot view your website. The file has the ability to block all search engine crawlers from your site, so it can be devastating for your search engine optimization campaign if formatted incorrectly.  Most hosting accounts will have this file created and formatted for you by default, however some hosting providers will have the file set to block all search engines by default. Virtually any hosting account can have this problem, depending upon the provider. Most hosting providers have taken steps to prevent this, however if you notice that your robots.txt is automatically configured to block search engines you should immediately correct it and notify the support staff so that the problem can be fixed.

Conclusion

Although search engine optimization relies on seemingly countless factors, the fact is your entire campaign can be doomed right from the start if you encounter any of the above web hosting pitfalls. It is always best to make sure you have covered all of the basics before you begin structuring your site for the search engines.