Changing your Hosting Company does not have to be difficult.

There maybe a variety of Reasons you would like to change:

One of my clients recently had to change their website’s Hosting Company (and therefor also the IP Address) after 6 years. He was rightfully concerned what would happen to his organic ranking in the search engines which he spent so many years building up. Below are the steps I took to ensure that his search engine ranking would not change due to the new IP Address.

Pre work:
1. A copy of the site was installed on the new server and website links were tested on the test server using a temporary URL
2. I identified when the site is normally visited by the spiders to ensure that the move if possible is actioned afterwards
3. Using web analytics software I identified when the site had the least amount of visitors and conversions (not surprisingly between Friday mid night to Saturday morning)

Moving:
4. A temporary site maintenance message was placed on the old site (to ensure the site isn’t returning a 404 message during the move)
5. DNS entry was updated to point to new IP address
6. It took 30 minutes for the new DNS settings to take effect and the site was accessible via the domain name

Testing:
6. I tested the site’s URL including, sub-domains, sub-folders, long tail etc
7. I tested website 3rd part payment gateway.

Result:
8. The website ranking were not effected negatively
9. The website was inaccessible for only 30 minutes
10. Due to obtaining a new IP address which is country specific, the client’s organic ranking has improved considerably in this territory

Don’t go switching hosts without a sound plan, as downtime for only one day can impact your search rankings for weeks.
Why not contact me for more details or request a quote.