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PROTECTING YOUR SEO RANKINGOk, so you have invested a lot of time and money creating and implementing your SEO - search engine optimisation strategies, with the sole aim of improving your websites online visibility. As part of the process, you may well have created an online blog, established a link exchange network and may be even incorporated social book marking techniques ( My Space, Digg, Twitter etc ). Eventually after all your hard work, your website manages to rank well in major search engines for your targeted keywords and with any luck, ends up on page 1 in Google. You make sure that you remain on top of your SEO strategies and possibly implement new techniques in order to make sure that you maintain and hopefully increase your Google page rank. Everything seems to be in place an going to plan. But have you thought of everything? Maybe not! Google ranking can be affected by website downtime! It’s no good spending all that time and money optimising your website and then skimping on the hosting side of the equation! There are so many cheap hosting packages available today, unfortunately many of which have their servers / infrastructure located overseas. Not to mention that some of them can only be contacted by submitting an online email ticket. As a result, you may not receive a reply for hours or even days. Especially on weekends. With that in mind, in the event that your website is offline for regular lengthy periods of time, Google may decide to lower your page rank and in some cases completely remove your website from their main index. If this was to happen then all your hard work, money and time spent on your SEO could very well be at risk. The million dollars questions then become: 1/ Will my website reappear in Google and if so when? 2/ Will this affect my Google Page Rank? Just goes to make you aware as to what other critical factors that can be overlooked and as a result impact on your SEO strategies and ranking. CHOOSING THE RIGHT DOMAIN NAME REGISTRARAnother key element with SEO that is continually overlooked is your Domain Name and where it was purchased. No matter how complex your SEO strategies are, they will not work if your domain name is not active. When your domain name is inactive, your website cannot be viewed. ie offline. Consider the scenario that if for whatever reason it’s a Friday evening and your website goes down, it’s offline and being outside normal business hours, there’s nobody available to investigate and rectify the fault. Not a good situation! Ideally you need to put certain steps in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen. The best piece of advise would be to purchase your domain name through a certified 'registrar' and not a 'reseller'. Doing so will cost a bit more, but it’s well worthwhile! In some cases, buying your domain name through a reseller for another company means that should there be an issue then they will need to contact the actual registrar themselves, which could add to the downtime period. In short, spend a bit more money and make sure that your registrar provides 24/7 assistance and that they are not simply a reseller for another domain registrar. www.melbourneit.com.au is a great choice. RENEWING YOUR DOMAIN NAMEOf course once you have your domain it’s vital you keep it. This means knowing exactly when your domain name is due for renewal and that you renew it before it expires. Keep some sort of calendar with the renewal date and make sure the contact information you have provided to your domain registrar is kept up to date. Especially the contact email address. Don’t forget, you domain name is your business and as such extremely important, so you never want to miss the renewal date and have someone else jump in a purchase it for themselves. The effects of this occurring could be rather devastating to say the least. HOW HOSTING CAN AFFECT YOUR WEBSITES SEO RANKINGIt’s all well and good to have your domain name and website, but both are useless absolutely unless without the right hosting. With that in mind, it cannot be emphasised strongly enough how selecting the right hosting company and package can be to your website, security and SEO. With so many companies offering cheap hosting packages with Plesk and Cpanel options, many businesses fall into the trap of selecting a budget hosting service. Don’t get me wrong, these can be great for small websites, Non shopping cart sites or for those just starting out. But is cheaper really better? More often than not the answer is NO! Uptime is something you really need to take into account when selecting your hosting company, so take some time and do your homework before making the final decision. Ask questions, search Google, look at their track history, reviews and client testimonials etc Don’t forget that many of these cheaper options are in fact resellers and that the actual servers are located overseas and not in Australia. As a result any communication needs to be done via an online ticket system. This method can mean lengthy delays in correcting any issues that may have arisen. Make sure the hosting company can be contacted by phone and even ask what type of security they have in place to prevent your website being hacked. HOW WEBSITE HOSTING & SECURITY CAN AFFECT SEO RANKINGAs mentioned above there are hundreds of hosting options available, each with their own pros and cons. With all the hacking going on these days, you need to make sure that whatever hosting company you use, ensure that they have adequate security measures in place. Please note that those companies offering Ftp access are more prone to being hacked! If you do require Ftp hosting, make sure that you select a password that contains both upper & lower case characters and numbers. It’s also a good idea to update the password every few months. Doing this will help prevent your own site from being hacked, but not the actual hosting server. Hackers will often spend their day searching for open ftp ports which they can exploit. Once in they can upload Trojans, corrupting multiple sites on the same server. In many cases the hacker modifies the code on your default, index page so when viewed the users PC is infected. The repercussion is that the user then blames you and may very well seek financial reimbursement for any damages caused. Effects of Spammers / hackers on SEO Unfortunately there are people out there who have nothing better to do with their time that hack websites. These hackers / spammers accomplish this by forming links to adult sites through existing pages in your websites or in some cases by creating landing pages on your website. These landing pages are totally invisible and cannot be seen, so you have no idea that they actually exist. As a result, if these pages are discovered by Google then they will automatically be removed from the index until such time as your website has been clean and all offensive content / links have been completely removed. In some cases Google will amend your link result information to include a warning comment stating that your site has been hacked. This comment will remain until Google is satisfied that your site is clean. Only then will Google consider removing the warning and adding your website and reinstating your site back into the main index. This process could take weeks, perhaps months. CONCLUDING COMMENTSAs you can see there are a number of aspects which you need to get right in order to protect not only your website, but all the hard work money and time spent on your SEO campaign. Unfortunately, the reality is that many businesses aren’t aware and or understand the adverse affects that can occur as a result of overlooking even the most obvious aspects of having a website. If you are an online business then it’s imperative that you stay alert, don’t skimp on the hosting, purchase you domain through a reliable registrar and most of all, ensure that you website is always online and secure at all times. Hopefully you will be one of the fortunate ones and never experience any of the above situations. PROTECTING YOUR GOOGLE SEO WEBSITE RANKING - CHOOSE THE RIGHT HOSTING & DOMAIN REGISTRAR |
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