For those of you who are ready to build a website, whether it's a small, five-page site or a dynamic e-commerce catalog site, you would be wise to take search engine optimization into account at the outset.
There are many do's and don'ts that go along with creating a website that accomodates search engine optimization - and many of the "don'ts" are SEO technical issues that can prevent you from being indexed at all (preventing you from even entering the ranking race). It is important to consider a number of factors before you embark on the grand journey of launching your new website and promoting it within the search engines - taking care of the details at the outset gives you the greatest chance of success in the near term, and prevents you from having to undo, redo, and remedy mistakes that can hurt your SEO efforts in the long run.
Hosting -What does that have to do with Search Engine Optimization?
The hosting of your website can affect your search engine rankings. Choosing your hosting service is an important part of your site building process, as it is crucial that you have the right kind of hosting situation - namely, one which will provide you with as clean of a slate as possible when starting your search engine optimization journey.
The absolute best-case scenario for hosting your website is to have a clean, dedicated IP address on a dedicated server. By "clean" I mean that you have an IP address that has not been listed on any "Blocklists" - these are public lists of IP addresses that have been identified as hosting sites with spam-related content or those sites which have been engaged in spam-related activity on the web. The major search engines use these lists to help them keep their indexes free of spam offenders. However, while having a clean, dedicated IP is a fairly inexpensive hosting setup, having a fully dedicated server is not - because servers (and dedicated server hosting) are both fairly customized solutions that will require you to:
A. Purchase a server, and
B. Pay for your hosting company to provide dedicated bandwidth and support to your machine (or if you have your server in-house you will have to hire a server administrator to manage it).
If you are not looking to maintain your own server, do not fret - you still have options (which the majority of small to medium sized businesses employ with great success). You simply demand from your hosting company that you receive the kind of hosting that is conducive to SEO! Here is what to request from your hosting company so that you have a clean slate to work with when you are ready to create a search engine optimization friendly website:
You don't want:
-a sub-domain
-a C-level domain
You do want:
-a dedicated URL
-a dedicated IP address
-a clean, non-blocklisted IP address
There is a good chance that the hosting service representative you contact regarding the above will not understand your request or will pretend to understand - so be sure that you speak with either an IT manager or someone directly involved with the technical aspects of your hosting to be sure that you are getting the setup you need. Don't be discouraged - some hosting companies only have a couple of IP blocks and might only have IP's available on a block that is blocklisted - if this is the case, take your business elsewhere!
To check the Spam Blocklist status of your IP address, or of the one proposed by your hosting company, visit DNSStuff.com and enter your IP address into the top middle "Spam Database Lookup" field.
After you have addressed the hosting issue, you are ready to design and construct your website with search engine optimization in mind by following the principles of good SEO Design. Be sure also to check out the numerous SEO Technical Issues to consider when developing a website for search engine friendliness.
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Alchemist Media, Inc.
