image(Flickr/masochismtango)
For businesses new to the SEO world, the process of optimizing a site can be confusing. SEO is a technical process and for those without the necessary understanding, there is the potential for exploitation by unscrupulous practitioners. One of the questions that frequently arises is: “Do I need to switch hosts to work with an SEO company?”
The one word answer is “no,” and a slightly more expanded response would be “Definitely not, and if anyone tells you otherwise, exercise caution.”
What Does A Hosting Company Do?
A web hosting company provides the servers that a site’s files reside on. They also provide the bandwidth that allows people to visit that site in their browser. Web hosting is a separate service to search engine optimization. An SEO can optimize a site for search regardless of where it’s hosted.
The smartest practice for buying web services is to use different vendors for each service: web hosting, DNS registration, DNS hosting, and SEO should be secured from different sources because then they can be swapped out separately. If you are not happy with your SEO, you can fire him, but doing so is fraught with problems if he or she also holds all the keys to your site’s hosting.
That said, there are both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for an SEO to advise that a site is moved to a different hosting company.
Illegitimate: The SEO Has A Close Relationship With A Hosting Company
What this usually means is that the SEO is an affiliate of the hosting company (i.e., they get a payment if they bring in new clients). If you’re happy with your present hosting company, then there is no need to change to suit a particular SEO.
Legitimate: You Are Unhappy With Your Current Hosting
The only real reason to leave a hosting company is that you are not happy with it. This can because of poor support, an excessively slow site, or unscheduled and frequent downtime. Site availability and performance do have an impact on SEO.
In many cases, it’s possible to improve site performance without moving to a new host, but if other options have been exhausted then you may have no choice.
Moving Hosts
The only legitimate reason to move to a new web hosting company is because you are not happy with the current host. If you are keeping the same domain, the process of moving is fairly straightforward. If you want to take the opportunity to change domains, much more work is involved.
Related articles
