SEO Blog

Nobody is perfect. Online, accidents do happen and sometimes servers malfunction. However, if you find your site’s host is faultier than most, it could be time to move on.

Unreliability is a pet hate for visitors and webmasters everywhere. Whether you’re already on the site or just trying to visit it, server failure will ensure that you go no further. This unexpected downtime can have a dramatic effect on your site’s performance and could well undermine the hard work you’ve been doing behind the scenes.

SEO takes time and effort to implement. If you’ve managed to get your site to rank up near the top of the search engines for all your key phrases and have experienced a major rise in traffic, the last thing you want is for unexpected downtime to send visitors packing.

On the Internet you have a brief window of opportunity to sell yourself. Your website is the ideal platform from which to do that. So if your website isn’t working, what kind of first impression will that leave? More importantly, will that also be the last impression too?

Ecommerce sites are often the hardest hit. Whilst any business is likely to suffer, those who rely on the Internet to sell goods are going to lose out on vital custom if the servers goes down. It is for this reason that the most visited sites often have their own dedicated servers that are tested to destruction. However, even the best of the best aren’t entirely bullet proof.

Choosing a web host is a bit of a percentage game. Yes, you could immediately go for one of the leading companies and have smooth, seamless connection. But that will cost you. In fact it could well run into the thousands of pounds. If you aren’t getting a lot of traffic, then that excess cost isn’t going to provide any benefit whatsoever.

However, there is also an opposite extreme. You don’t want your site to be hosted by a shady company with no testimonials and hundreds of clients on one server. This is a one way ticket to disaster. With an overburdened server, the likelihood of downtime is increased hugely. You could also have your site tarnished by association.

Some servers will host a multitude of sites. Within this mishmash there could be some very dodgy content. Whether it is a website swamped with blackhat faux pas or something even worse, you could be deemed guilty by association - being as though you are all running off of a single, shared server. This can lead to penalties from the search engines, which even the best SEO can’t remedy.

If you’re in ecommerce, you have to really consider a dedicated server option. Whilst it might cost you money in the short-term, you might well find that it makes you far more in the long-term.

Nothing’s guaranteed in the world of online business, but you can certainly do yourself a favour by eliminating web hosting problems. Find a company with the best testimonials and a proven track record for delivering as close to 100% uptime.