Popular web sites often have faster server response times compared to smaller unimportant sites. Search engines often index more pages from these quicker sites and give them prominence over slow sites.
Do you think that Google will allow a ’slug’ website to occupy a top ranking in its search engine results? Not likely. That’s why it’s important to host your website on a fast server – not to mention the fact that most ‘real’ visitors will be turned off by your website if it is too slow.
The best bet is to go for a dedicated server hosting plan – but they’re quite expensive if you have been used to paying for shared hosting. Most dedicated servers cost $400+ per month.
If that’s too expensive for you, there are plenty of shared hosting providers out there and most of them are very inexpensive – the trick is to find one with good, local customer support (in my experience most data centres are offshore, but some have local call centres). Look for a service that has phone support as well as email support, because it’s important that you are able to talk to a human when an emergency occurs (ie. your site goes down).
Another consideration is that websites hosted offshore will use IP addresses of the home country and this may impact on search engine rankings. There is evidence to suggest that websites hosted overseas will not be given as much credence in the target country as those websites hosted locally. For example, if my website was targeted at the Australian market, but it was hosted in the United States (regardless of whether I use a .com.au domain or not), then Google may not give me the level of importance (and hence the high rankings) that my website deserves in local search results on Google.com.au.
A further reason for caution when using shared hosting providers is that they use shared IP addresses, lumping your website in with a bunch of other sites hosted on the same server – over which you have no control. Again, there is evidence to suggest that shared IPs may impact on search engine rankings. If your website shares an IP with a blacklisted website in Google, then your credibility may be reduced in the eyes of Google.
I use Canberra-based company AussieHQ for my hosting and I have found their products and service to be impeccable. Their help desk response times are lightning fast. I felt compelled to move all of my hosting to a dedicated server with AussieHQ after a website mishap in a PlanetDomain data centre in the US (a number of servers caught fire). Until that time, I was relatively happy with PlanetDomain because they offer local telephone support and their shared hosting plans represent good value.
Ultimately, you choice of host will impact upon your search engine penetration, so choose wisely.
