What's best hosting option for web design company targeting UK market?

[jjtech]

Hi,

What would be the best hosting company to go with if I want to promote my site in the UK? Right now it's hostgator and I know I'll have to change it. Should I get something located in the UK (logic would suggest it) and rather dedicated server (very expensive, especially if you're using wordpress) or shared hosting will do?

Thanks in advance,

JJ

[jjtech]

Thank you guys. I'll move to the UK based company and keep it on shared server so far. I just need to do some reasearch on which company is reliable over here.

Regards,

Jan

[ewanTHH]

Hi JJ,

most definitely you want to have hosting from UK if this is your target audience as this is going to help you in a number of ways.

First it will help with speed - faster page loads for users in UK

Help with search engine positions for Google UK - most people searching in the UK use Google UK, however not all so you still want to keep a track on Google COM too.

With regards to the second part of your question, dedicated or shared hosting. Dedicated hosting, from my understanding is really designed for large websites getting large amounts of traffic or even eCommerce sites where they're better with dedicated hosting. From my limited knowledge I think that for a -web design company' website shared hosting is ok, but see what others say first:)

[RobertFisher]

Jan

I will leave it to those who live and work in the UK to suggest a hosting company there. As to do you have to host there to target there, no you do not. You can have a .co.uk domain if available as that is a good indicator for those searching as well and no matter what way you go, you will set your domain to target the UK in GWMT. (Go into Configurations>Settings>Geographic Target and then select UK.

Here is a great place to start if you want to be really clear how to set this up the correct way:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

It is updated so the material is relevant and quite helpful.

As to the dedicated server, we use dedicated servers as an agency as we want to insure our clients are protected. If I had a single site, that was not huge in traffic, revenues, etc. I would simply find a quality hosting company and get the best backup, recovery, etc. package they have as that is much more cost effective.

Hope this helps,