Changing website providers
-
After increasing suffering down time from my current website provider, I am seriously considering finding a new one. My only concern is the effect on SERP. Does anyone have any experience with this and what to do and avoid?
-
Hi Brett. I haven't used IDX for my sites because it is not available for our real estate board. If your board has IDX available then you should be able to integrate it into your website. Or you can hire someone to do it for you.
Send me a personal message (via my profile) and I'll tell you who I host with. I can share some ideas with you too.
Marie
-
thanks Marie. my site is ranking in the top 3 for most keywords. Where did you go to create your own wordpress site (bluehost?). Also, how does one deal with the integrated IDX issue for a real estate site from an SEO perspective? thanks
-
Hi Brett,
I'll share with you my experiences. I recently changed hosts from one that gave me some down time issues to a better host and it has improved my site. In my case, my urls did not change at all when I moved from one host to another so once I was moved, I didn't have to worry about 301 redirects.
I have another real estate site that is a templated site by a real estate site provider. These sites are great for realtors who are just starting out and know nothing about web sites. But, I soon found that as I was learning SEO and wanted to apply it to my site that using a templated site was a challenge when it comes to applying SEO. In many cases you can't alter things like the title tag or url structure. What I did was bite the bullet and create my own site (in Wordpress). I then applied SEO to this site and it is doing really well and bringing us in a lot of leads.
Are you ranking well for your keywords? If you are ranking well then I'd build a new site and try to keep all of the urls the same as they were (or 301 them to the appropriate ones if keeping the original structure is not possible). Similarly, if you have backlinks built to multiple pages on your site then the same applies.
If you don't have many backlinks, and if you don't have crazy competition I'd be tempted to just start from scratch.
Like EGOL said, if you go with another templated site provider you're at their mercy. With your own site, you are in control.
Another point I'd like to add is that I have a Canadian real estate site that is hosted in the US and it does really well.
-
I would avoid any JoeSchmoe.com's sitebuilder program. They often become orphans when Joe moves on to other projects.
I would favor something like wordpress that is used by millions of people, installs on your domain and there are many many smart SEOs who can tweak it for top performance.
If you are not into servicing your own databases, templates, etc. there are plenty of people out there who will do that for you on an hourly or contract basis. The important thing is to get someone who knows what they are doing from an SEO perspective.
-
thanks I suspected that this might be the case. The only other major consideration is whether or not to create a site with which I do not have to rely on a hosted site-builder but not sure what my options may be in this regard.
-
OK... it sounds like your site was made with a hosted site-builder.
If that is the case then moving your site will require a lot more planning and care.
If this site has links and rankings then you will need to preserve the URL structure of the site and if that changes use 301 redirects to preserve rankings and linkvalue.
You will also need to preserve your page optimization to be sure that no rankings are lost.
All of this could involve a lot of work.
I would honestly use this as an opportunity to make a huge improvement in your site.
I would either study this very carefully myself and make the move or I would hire a pro to do it for me or to provide close consultation.
If your biz is in Canada and you want to be found by Canadian searchers then you want the server in Canada.
-
I should have been more specific. My website is provided by a company in Canada and the host server is located in the US. If I move to a different company I will essentially have to build a new site with the same (as much as possible) content as I now have. The new company is located in Canada and the server is in Canada. Not sure if this will make a difference?
-
Changing hosting companies is a very safe thing to do as long as you are going to a quality host and their servers will be in the same country as your current host.
If your site is down a lot it could have a positive effect on your SERPs - so going to a quality host could be a good thing.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URL Change Best Practice
I'm changing the url of some old pages to see if I can't get a little more organic out of them. After changing the url, and maybe title/desc tags as well, I plan to have Google fetch them. How does Google know that the old url is 301'd to the new url and the new url is not just a page of duplicate content? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Ranking in SERPs but not using terms on website.
As far as I know, it's not normally possible for a website to rank for a keyword that is not mentioned on the website. I have seen a website that ranks very well for key terms and yet they are not mentioned anywhere on the website, I have run advanced search & checked using tools including cloak checker on my findings. How can this be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lee-murphy0 -
How to know website is hit with panda or penguin?
My Website traffic and keywords dropped day by day. How can I know website is hit with panda or penguin. Website is - 24hourpassportandvisas. com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
SEO transfer to new website
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference? If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Souk0 -
Bing seriously hitting our website
Hi I have a strange query, Bing in the last four weeks have been seriously crawling our site, and while at the moment this isn't affecting our servers, coming into the busy time of the year I am just wondering if anyone else is seeing this. They are basically crawling the entire site (including nofollow pages) even though according to Bing Webmaster tools, they know our sitemap. Is anybody else seeing any unusual activity with the Bing bot. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Urls in Bilingual websites
1-I have a bilingual website. Suppose that I am targeting a page for keyword "book" and I have included it in that page url for the English version: English version: www.abc.com/book Can I use the translation of "book" in the second language of the website url instead of "book" ? Please let me know which of the following urls are right " French Verison: www.abc.com/fr/book or www.abc.com/fr/livre livre=Book in French 2- Does Google have any tool to check if the second language page of the website has exactly the same content as the English version. What I want to do is for example for a certain page in English version, my targeted keyword is "book" . So my content would be around books. But in the French version of this page, I want to focus on keyword "Pencil" in French instead of "book". Is it wrong or any consequences? That was the main reason for the question number one. Because if it is ok to do what I explained in item 2 then I will set my urls like: In English : www.abc.com/book In French: www.abc.com/fr/crayon crayon=Pencil in French
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Change Joomla to Wordpress (Better SEO)
Hi, I'd like to change my cms but I am afraid 😞 I have lots of content in Google, so I know I should make 301 list but what do you think about the change? Now I am in good position and I don't want to make bad my rank 😞 Please let me know which way is the best and secured 🙂 Thanks, Misi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netkreativ0 -
Purpose of a Blog in a website
How internal blog or external blog is helpful in SEO?why it is good to have a site with blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000