subject: Will My Ranking In The Search Engines Going To Be Affected If I Switch Server Hosts? [print this page] At some point in time, a website owner may have to face the decision on whether or not they want to change to a different server host or not. If this is the case, one of the first things to ask yourself is if this is going to have some sort of effect on the rankings in the search engines. If you have finally managed to get your internet marketing blog to the number one spot on Google, now is not the right time to switch servers as you have worked so hard and long to get that spot for your chosen keywords. Listed here are a few tips to think about as far as SEO rankings as well as server changes.
Fortunately, there are several different methods to try as far as switching to a different server all without sacrificing your rankings. There's not many ways however, to decrease the chances of you losing your ranking when you do make the switch.
You should begin by making sure there is not a lot of downtime to your website as far as activity and posting is concerned. This is assuming that all other areas of you site are remaining the same and not changing, and include your domain name as well as other elements that are on the site. The less downtime you have to your site, the lower your chances are of losing your rankings. If you make the switch rather fast, and even with a spider noticing it's not there, before they even get around to hitting it again it should be up and running again.
If the option is available, keep some of the files on your old internet marketing blog on your old server for at most, a month as this can help mitigate and possible damage that you may or may not see in rankings.
For the most part, you should be fine as far as rankings, and you shouldn't lose too much by switching your blog to a new server. The most important thing is to only make one change at a time instead of more than one at a time. Avoid switching URLs and servers in one go around, as this can results in loss of traffic and it can be a bit much to handle. There are always people who are switching servers, and most of these people have very little to no loss in their rankings as long as the switch is done without having their site down for a long period of time.
