Changing Servers + Effect on SEO

[MangoMan16]

Hi,

I am currently with a very slow server. Our website takes quite a while to load, FTP is very slow and content changes with Wordpress are slow because even the database connection takes a lot of time.

However, my website ranks very well. Traffic has doubled in the last year. Our domain has been registered with this company for over 10 years. I am wondering if changing to a different hosting provider would have an effect on my rankings due to the change in IP.

[MangoMan16]

It's not my website, it's the server but thanks for the advice!

[NakulGoyal]

I second that. You need to look into optimizing your website. In most cases it's not a server/hosting company issue. Check their main website or other sites on the same server / IP and see if they have the same issue as yours. But to directly answer your question, no it would not impact as long as the country of the hosting company stays the same. I hope that helps.

[MangoMan16]

I use WP Super Cache but it hasn't helped.

[Matthew_Edgar]

Like the other responses said, moving servers or hosting companies won't affect your rankings or search performance. That is assuming everything else stays the same during the move obviously.

EGOL's response is right though - it may not be the fault of the host. Have you talked to your host about the server? Many times there are configuration changes that can speed things up, especially if you are on a dedicated or VPS environment.

When it comes to your code, since you are in WordPress, have you tried the Super Cache plugin? I've had success with this to help speed up WP sites, even on slow, shared hosting environments. Here is a link to that: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

The other tool I've had some luck with when it comes to load issues is Cloud Flare. You might want to check that out as well. Here is the link to that: http://www.cloudflare.com/

[EGOL]

If you simply move a site from Server A to Server B or from Hosting Company A to Hosting Company B there should be no change in your rankings.

Sometimes slowness is not the fault of the server or the host.  There are lots of things that you can do to speed up your site.  These include: optimizing images, removing code bloat, caching pages on the server, reducing the number of files called per page, and much more.

We cut average load time by nearly two seconds per page by doing the above.

If you are calling in widgets, images or data from other domains they can really add to your load time.

[ParagonDigital]

Hi Mango Man,

If your hosting provider is in the same country there shouldn't be any negative affects as long as you do the technical part right.

I've moved sites more times than I can remember and never seen any negative affects.

I've attached a video from Matt Cutts explaining this.

Hope this helps!

watch?v=w41dsE87CfY