Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Changing Server IP Addresses. Should I be concerned?
-
Hello Mozers
Our site has been on a dedicated server for about four years now. (no other sites, just ours on the server)
I have made the decision to move it to a much better and faster server than the current server we are on for more than one reason.
My big fear is Google will lose trust for my site because of the IP change. Ip's stay with the server at 1and1 they do not follow the website.
So, I have done my due diligence and copied over all code and databases and have tested it completely to insure there are no issues when I change the DNS to point to the new server. Made sure 1and1 is giving me an IP that has never been used, I am Keeping the old server on until cached DNS records expire for it.
Is there anything else I need to do to make sure I do not lose current rankings in Google? I have heard nightmare stories about making these kinds of changes but at this point for our site there is no turning back this is a change that must take place.
Any pointers and advice would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
-
Hey Robbie,
Of course you're never entirely sure what Google will do, but if you're only changing host - nothing else - you should have no problem.
Do not:
- Change ownership of the domain;
- Make any major content changes (such as titles);
- Add large chunks of content - keep it to a minimum;
- Make any website template changes;
It's very important that all that's changing is the host. And of course keep an eye on your rankings while doing the migration. Perhaps use a SEOmoz campaign for that. They also do crawl tests so that should be good.
Good luck!
-
If you are only changing to a new hosting provider and you had a dedicated server as well as a dedicated IP. In the content will not be changed there’s not much to worry about at all. Google not lose any trust in you because of an IP address change if you are changing to a white listed IP. the only ways you could actually hurt your site would be if
1St If you moved from a dedicated server to a shared server and had a bad neighbor
"Google recognizes the server’s IP address. If the majority of websites are of ill-repute (porn sites are automatically marked as spammers), then unfortunately this law-abiding client gets lumped in with a bad crowd. Read more: http://online-sales-marketing.com/seo-issues-caused-by-bad-neighbors#ixzz22SZ2T5cA
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution”2nd if you keep both sites up at the same time obviously you get duplicate content. You want to index the new site as soon as possible. Thus inform Google that will allow the Google bot to crawl it and therefore like Google no you are no longer on your old IP.
3rd you could move to a slower host I noticed not talk about right often however slow DNS and slow web hosting both play a role in how Google rank your website. I hope whatever deal you made you are on a host that can provideThe same or better speed at delivering your content. Obviously if you lost a content delivery network or happen to luckily add one those types of things matter to Google. You can check with tools like http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ or http://www.webpagetest.org I tend to use the hosts SEOmoz recommends in their pro perks you cannot go wrong with any of them.
4th make sure your DNS is as good if not better it should be better if you’re moving this will keep speed up and problems to a minimum. Here a list of hosted DNS providers http://dns.nuvvo.com/lesson/12509-list-of-hosted-dns-providers I use ultraDNS and DYN if you are looking to use a provider with any cast DNS and not spend much money at all and still have fantastic speeds Amazon Route 53 is a couple dollars a month on average and has an excellent reputation. http://aws.amazon.com/route53/
I hope I have been of some help in just remember people who don’t have dedicated IP’s rank extremely high regardless of the IP address changing.
Sincerely,
Thomas Zickell
-
Generally speaking, if you transition it correctly, have the exact same site up and running on the new IP before you change the DNS you should be fine. I did some Googling on the subject, and Mark D. has a much more specific and detailed description of what you should do as far as making sure you have the exact same site running
http://malteseo.com/seo/changing-ip-address-without-losing-google-ranking/
What you do not want to do at this point is change up your URL structure, title tags etc. Those changes alone can impact your rankings and you don't want to compound the issues. Less change, more gradual change is always better.
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
-
Is there a benefit to changing .com domain to .edu?
Hey All! I'm wondering if there is any benefit (or if benefit could possibly outweigh the cost) to changing a domain from .com to a new .edu domain. The current .com domain has decent credibility already, and the .edu will have never been used before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankandmaven1 -
Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!0 -
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
Howdy Moz, We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example: http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/ We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to: http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/ Would this be an appropriate solution? RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanOBrien0 -
The benefits from having a dedicated IP
Is the true? Claim by SiteGround Having a dedicated IP for each website is considered by some experts as an advantage for search engine optimization. There is a common believe that sites with dedicated IP addresses do better in the search engine results than those on shared IPs. Such sites do not share the risk of being banned for sharing the same IP in case another website hosted on the same server gets banned by a search engine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
Cons and pros of changing your e-commerce store domain name?
We have an online toy store, the domain is old over 10 years and we have some traffic, we are considering to change our domain name. There are two reasons why. First of all, we expand our product category, before we were only a puzzle store now we sell almost any kind of toy. And at this point, our current domain, PuzzleZoo.com is not representing our capacity. We also have toyzoo.com domain registered, that is also an old domain but there has been no activity with that domain. Our concern is, how do we avoid to lose ranking and keyword authority, are we going to start from the ground? What are the correct procedures to follow during this switch if we prefer to switch? As an alternative scenario, if we decide to keep both and open another e-store with toyzoo domain name and continue operating PuzzleZoo.com, with same products, will taht be a duplicate issue? If it is what are the consequences? (Just to add a note here, our PuzzleZoo is also a small brick and mortar store chain in CA and TX) ToyZoo will only be an online store. Even in this case at the eyes of Google, are we going to have a duplicate store that can potentially be penalized or PuzzleZoo being a brick and mortar store chain might help us to avoid being penalized? Should we switch the domain and redirect PuzzleZoo to ToyZoo, should we keep them both and running separately? We need to give a decision and I was wondering if there are any expert here that can give us a good intelligent advise on which path to go?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PuzzleZoo0 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Should I change my product titles from singular to plural to satisfy optimisation?
At present most of our products are listed in the singular form. http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels-bath-towels/aztex/turkish-cotton-bath-towel_ct473bd182pd2744.htm However we are optimising for the plural form after carrying out keyword research The question is should I update the product title to reflect this change? This would then change the URL of the page, H1 tag, H2 tag (both auto generated from the product title) My concern here is that these pages will then become "new pages" and will need to index and rank, albeit they don't rank well as they have never been optimised until now. I could put 301 re-directs in place on the old URL's or i could just let the return a 404. What do people think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0