SEO Hosting Guide - Part 1

 - a guide to hosting for SEO, and CMS hosting

  
Part 1: Website Hosting For SEO Guide  [this page]
Part 2: Web Hosting SEO features in detail
Part 3: Additional website host factors affecting search potential
          (and not forgetting The Crucial Hosting Test)
Part 4: SEO implications when moving to a new web host
          SEO implications of changing domain name

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about search engine friendly website hosting. It applies to all types of websites, but because we are SEO and CMS specialists, it is especially valid in the areas of CMS hosting and ecommerce hosting.

This series of pages points out the issues that should be considered when choosing a web hosting service. Since our focus is always on the SEO aspects of any question - this being the foundation of commercial success online - it is inevitable that there will be a search-optimising slant to anything we discuss. Unsurprisingly, then, these articles will give you a very good idea of what to look for and what to avoid in your hunt for the best search-friendly web-hosting service.

One of the key factors we identify is how little real information (i.e. technical) the vast majority of hosts provide, and how much flannel and flim-flam they advertise instead of what you actually need to know. A lot of the detail they give you is comparatively useless; and much of the vital data you need appears to be secret.

Don't make the mistake of paying before you know the full story.

You'll find some things apparent after a little research:
  1. There are a very large number of web hosts.
  2. There is a huge range of deals, packages and features on offer.
  3. The majority of hosts don't tell you what you really want to know.

Therefore: do your research, and caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. Don't be afraid to email potential hosts and have them confirm their package details for you. All reputable web hosts have an email contact address for pre-sales enquiries.

Choosing a web host

Choosing a host for your website can be a difficult and worrying experience, the first time round. One reason for this is that you may not understand the issues, and therefore you will be uncomfortably aware that a wrong decision will cost you money, or worse, the success of your website.

Here, we aim to simplify these issues and point you toward the right decision. We're mainly looking at what a small to medium size website with under 35,000 visitors a day will need (under 1 million visits per month), since at that scale other factors enter the equation.

A mid-size ecommerce site with 20,000 pages might have fewer than 2,000 visitors a day, so having a lot of pages is not related in any way to high traffic.

The issues are similar for larger sites, and only the scale is bigger; the website will need the same facilities but with higher bandwidth, more webspace, and probably more servers. It is important to realise very clearly that just because your site only receives 500 visitors a day, you should not have to accept third-class service.

Hosting: where to start?

Firstly, hosting decisions have to be based on cost before anything else. Once you have decided your budget, then every other answer becomes clearer. If you cannot achieve your required minimum standards at your chosen price point, then you must decide whether to accept the lower level of service offered or pay more.

If you cannot afford more than £40 a year, or $80, then your choices are limited. This is the first 'break point' in hosting costs, and means simply that below this level you can't choose what you get. You can certainly find most of your requirements below this price break (especially if your requirements are limited) - but you will have to work hard to do so, be good at research, and compromise on some of the points; or simply accept what's on offer.

At £40 to £120 per year (just double the figures for US$, and then maybe knock off 25% because the market is bigger), you can get anything you need for a website with up to 5,000 visitors a day. There is no need to pay anything like the top end of this figure unless you insist on the best options, which are listed below. Indeed, top-quality hosts can offer all the options listed, at the lower end of the price scale. You just have to find them. This may not of course be true in your country of choice.

Below are your core requirements, if you can find a host who can provide them at your price point, in your required geographical region. Once again, there are hosts who provide most (or all) of these options at around £60 - £80 per year, so you should be able to get what you need - if you look around.

Never accept second best in a webhosting package - there is absolutely no need to do so, the sole exception being for a particular deal in a particular country, which may restrict your options somewhat. You can get any deal you want, in the UK and USA, which are the most active Internet markets in the world - but this does not apply to every other country.

Here are the basic requirements of a business seeking normal shared hosting:

• Server location - the hosting must be located in your main country of business.
  
  
• LAMP server - which includes variations such as Zeus or Lighttpd server, or Unix.
  
  
• Unique IP, if necessary with an SSL certificate (which can be bought for under $20).
  
  
• Apache 2.0 +.
  
  
• PHP 5 (PHP4 is acceptable if your main website application only runs on this older version).
  
  
• FTP access.
  
  
• A recognised full-facility Control Panel such as cPanel or Ensim.
  
  
• Normal File Manager facilities via the control panel, allowing file access, file upload, and directory password protection.
  
  
• A minimum of one free statistics package (the best free one is probably AWstats).
  
  
• Minimum 10GB transfer bandwidth per month. This will suit a small site start-up or a small ecommerce site - bigger sites need more.
  
  
• Two or more MySQL databases.
  
  
• Basic Apache modules in operation (mod_rewrite etc.).
  
  
• Default PHP security in place.
  
  
• Hosting in the geotargeted area.
  
  
• Your own domain name - not a subdomain.
  
  
• Your own website - not a rented website.
  
  

And much less important:

1. 500MB disk space or more.
2. 50 email addresses.

Every single one of these points is debatable - the business won't fail if your webhost cannot supply them. But it is a fact that the people who want to debate the value of these factors most, are hosts that don't provide them. Fair comment?

More importantly, these points are the ones that experienced website owners always look for when getting a better deal; they didn't know about them the first time round, but now they know just how valuable they are.

Hosting companies are notoriously unwilling to show you what they provide in advance - especially with regard to some of these technical details. They are more than happy to bombard you with showers of detail about less important things like how much webspace you get, or how many email addresses. The simple fact is that just about any figure currently on offer for those things will do for a new business, so it doesn't matter.

If you need to move hosts later, there are few negatives - you don't lose your links or your search engine page rank, for instance - so it basically doesn't matter about minor details such as the number of email addresses. The primary items detailed above are vital for any business, new or old, and often can't be upgraded once you've signed - at least, at minimum cost. You'll most likely find you will be charged more. If you have particular requirements for a huge number of email aliases or suchlike (which is any more than 50) you'll be well aware of it, and will no doubt choose a host to suit.

Server location

The physical location of the server is critical, because search results are prioritised for the enquirer's region. If someone searches for a product or service in South Africa, the search engine serves up a set of results that it 'thinks' will be best for that location. Normally, shipping or language issues mean that this is the best choice. However if you are an SA business you wouldn't want to be hosted in Australia - your local SA customers won't see much of you in the search results.

From this it can be seen that you absolutely must have your proposed host confirm the server location prior to signing up. This catches out many businesses who sign up with hosts who operate on the edge of ethical practice by not telling UK customers they will be hosted in Germany, for example.

Bad hosting deals

One last point for this section: some of the worst hosts and the worst deals we have ever seen are provided by the biggest UK names in Internet services, who have also been around the longest - the big-name ISPs. We have had clients come to us with sites hosted at nearly £250 a year (that's nearly $500 if you're reading this in the US), with no control panel, no file manager, every other user's folder on the server visible via FTP, and so on. The server set-ups, facilities, and even security were terrible - the only way to describe these hosting packages is a rip-off.

The sites were all hosted by major ISPs, in the business for longer than most, who obviously couldn't care less about their hosted customers. Some of these were on Sun servers; which is no reflection on Sun's quality, of course - simply the poor quality, operating software and practices of these ISPs, who not only masquerade as hosts, but also charge ridiculous prices for their 'service'. A fair price for a service like this would be $1 a year. Since there is at least one host who charges £5 a year and offers a better service (5quidhost.co.uk/hosting.php), there can't be much argument about this.

Another type of host to avoid is one who uses their own home-built control panel, avoiding the need to pay for a real one like cPanel. Some of these host-built panels are awful, just like the facilities this type of host usually (doesn't) offer. Unbelievably, there are even hosts with no control panel at all, just FTP access.

Make sure that your proposed host uses a well-known control panel such as Ensim or cPanel, and states this in the feature list. A mention of a 'custom-built control panel' should set the alarm bells ringing.

Caveat emptor.

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Part 2: Web Hosting SEO features in detail
Part 3: Additional website host factors affecting search potential

Go here for hosting resources