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
-
Changing Url Removes Backlink
Hello MOZ Community, I have question regarding Bad Backlink Removal. My Site's Post's Image got 4 to 5k backlinks from unknown sites and also their is no contact details on their site so that i can contact them to remove. So, I have an idea for which i want suggestion " If I change the url that receieves backlinks" does this will remove backlinks? For Example: https://example.com/test/ got 5k backlinks if I change this url to https://examplee.com/test-failed/ does this will remove those 5k backlinks? If not then How Can I remove those Backlinks? I Know about disavow but this takes time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jackson210 -
Redirect Issue - Drop in ranking after CMS change
Hi Website - https://www.aasprint.com.au/ After we moved the site from wordpress to codeIgniter + angular there has been a huge drop in traffic and ranking. One of the thing we recently realized is the redirection - COULD THAT BE THE ISSUE? On the browser and sitemap the URL doesn't have "/" at the end When checked on redirection tool the URL seems to be redirecting to one with "/" at the end Attached are the screenshots. Also moz bar shows no redirection. However, the issue seems to be flagged by the site audit tool as 301 redirection. Not sure if it's the cause for the drop. What action to take? Any advice would be much appreciated. V7CNtqt j3dJ4TW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bhisshaun0 -
One domain - Multiple servers
Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?
Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number. I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same). Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses. I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input. Many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Are Bluehost servers slow or is it just me?
I have a ton of websites on Bluehosts servers... are my sites slow because I have so many sites on there? Or is Bluehost slow for everyone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe1 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
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