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
-
Website Redesign - Duplicate Content?
I hired a company to redesign our website.there are many pages like the example below that we are downsizing content by 80%.(believe me, not my decision)Current page: https://servicechampions.com/air-conditioning/New page (on test server):https://servicechampions.mymwpdesign.com/air-conditioning/My question to you is, that 80% of content that i am losing in the redesign, can i republish it as a blog?I know that google has it indexed. The old page has been live for 5 years, but now 80% of it will no longer be live. so can it be a blog and gain new (keep) seo value?What should i do with the 80% of content i am losing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CamiloSC0 -
Changing URLs
URLs of my web pages are based on the titles of pages. For sampel, if a title page is called "product ABC", then the URL for this page is /product-abc. Google and all other search engines have indexed all pages. Now I want to change the titles of some sites. Should I change the URLs accordingly, or should I rather leave URLs as they are. SEO Best Practice says that keywords must be placed both in the title, and in the URL. I think that Google will think that pages have douplicate content with diffrent titles, and it comes to many 404 error, if I change the URLs. What do you recommend in this case?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kian_moz0 -
Schema for E-Commerce websites
Hi Guys. I am running a cleanup for the on page schema we use and will be moving the on page elements into tag manager. I have all the metas and schema for the products boxed off. My question today is what schema should I use for category pages. Granted there is Json-LD for aggregated reviews but I cant see or work out how or what to use for the category pages that have the lists of products on. Any assistance appreciated. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBGlobalSEO1 -
Merging websites
My company (A) is about the merge with another company (B). The long-term plan is not to keep their brand or website. In terms of the merge process, I have been doing a bit of research and this is how I'm thinking about doing it so far., which is open minded about changing... On the homepage of company B, do a 302 redirect to an information page on the same website which details the merger. This will only be for a year. After a year has passed, do a 301 redirect to the homepage of company A Do 301 redirects from all other pages to similar pages on company A. For pages that don't correspond, either do a 302 to the 'merger detail page', or do a 301 to the homepage of company A. Bring across any content that is effective at driving traffic. Contact all high authority websites that have links to company B and request for them to be updated. Any tips/corrections appreciated. Stu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stuart260 -
Change relative to absolute urls?
Is it worth the time to go through a site that was built in Dreamweaver and change the relative urls to absolute urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Website/SEO Audit Needed
We've been outsourcing our link building to India for the past 3 years and the results were pretty good up until beginning of this year. What they were essentially doing is putting links into directories, a few per month, and posting a few articles per month. Out of our top 10 keywords, 8 got into top 10. Then something happened around Jan 1 last year, our ranking started dropping, falling out of the top 50, before settling around 20-30ish. We disavowed most of the low quality links since then. Also, very odd, all the top ranking competitors all fell (including me) and were replaced by less "specialized" companies who sold a broad range of products (for example: all parts of the car, rather than someone who just focused on mufflers). Theres also other differences but again I can't put a finger on it. I'd like to find someone who can do a detailed audit of our site, and our competitors, what happened to cause the drop, and why the new top positions sites are ranked high. And I really don't have time to do an audit myself. Our site is American Hospitality Furniture dot com. Any feed back would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AHH8880 -
Website having same business and IP address
Hi All, How Google will react with the websites having condition as mentioned below: Two websites, Same owner, same business, same IP, Interlinking with each other ? Two websites, Same owner, same business, different IP, Interlinking with each other ? Also please elaborate best practices(Such as IP address, Physical address, look and feel etc.) if someone wants to run same business through more than one website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
URL formating is it worth changing?
One of my clients sites has almost OK URL's, set up something like the following: keyword2_keyword3_keyword1 Ideally the URL's would be more like this: keyword1-keyword2-keyword3 My question is is there any point in changing them and 301 redirecting them over just to get the target keywords in a better order and change the _ to a - ? Has anyone tried this and its worked or not worked, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrouchyKids0