Yes, changing the web hosting surely affect the search engine rankings, and it is obvious that it will happen due to multiple reasons. In this article, I’ll explain those reasons which are closely tested by myself.
In the earlier article, I tried to explain – Does web hosting affect SEO? There I’ve explained factors that matters.
That concluded with a big Yes, it does affect, and it totally depends upon the availability and speed of server. Now to extend the scenario, and I’ll be more focused on changing from one web host to another would have any effect on SEO. So, let’s read it out and let me know your experience as well.
Switching from Shared to Another Shared Web Hosting.
In the very first scenario, which is most common, switching from one shared host to another to get a better service or a better pricing. Here things do change by small margin, if there is any improvement in the server performance, surely there will be some improvement on SEO end.
But improvement won’t be visible in large scale, as basic things like web page loading speed and capacity to onboard more real-time users remains almost the same.
Switching from Shared to VPS Web Hosting.
In the second scenario, which is common with a growing website. Consider a website is being moved from shared web hosting to a VPS (Virtual Private Server).
Here many things will improve, like-better hardware resources and faster internet speeds that results in faster response time and more bandwidth for more real-time users. So, definitely in this scenario, changing web hosting affect SEO. The improvement will be on the high side.
Switching from VPS to Dedicated Web Hosing.
This is not a common scenario as rarely anyone switched to a dedicated web hosting, it is because VPS servers come in all sizes and one will prefer to upgrade their VPS servers instead of switching to the dedicated servers. But consider if someone makes a plan to switch to it due to too busy website.
The results will be same or may improve slightly from SEO point of view, as any performance penalty will be covered by a dedicated allocated resources and other improvements will remain the same.
In my opinion, utilizing better web server software will be a major scoring affect than getting a dedicated server, as VPS and Dedicated servers acts similarly, just dedicated server has higher throughput which is good for a too busy website like ecommerce, or some complex website.
Change in Web Hosting Location.
Assume, you have your core visitors in India, but your website is hosted in Singapore or some other far distanced country. But now you are changing the server location to Mumbai or any other state in India, that will have a good affect in SEO, because due to closer location to visitors you are making the website faster for them which results in better engagement, so this will have positive impact on SEO.
This may go in reverse if you do the opposite, so it is better to host a website near you or near your audience. Take CDN (Content Delivery Network) in account to improve speeds worldwide.
Reputation of a Web Hosting.
This is the major reason that your SEO rankings are dancing a lot. Avoid any bad host or poor host that allows bad things on their platform. Because everything is considered today in SEO as bad neighbors, a poor host that doesn’t safeguard you from basic network attacks, and one that keeps going down most of the time will damage the search engine rankings. It would be better to move out from such hosts.
So these are the different scenarios where they all affect the SEO rankings either by small or large way. Be always cautious when you make a switch from one host to another. Try to do as low as possible downtime and big downtime affect everything in bad way.
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