Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer's Guide to SEO

Chapter 13. Coping with Technical Issues

This chapter deals with a few common technical issues that relate to SEO efforts:

• Unreliable hosting or DNS

• Changing hosting providers

• Cross-linking

• Split testing

• Broken links (and how to detect them)

Unreliable Web Hosting or DNS

It is common sense that if a web site is down it cannot get spidered, but we'll state it regardless: When a site is down, it cannot get spidered. And when your domain's designated DNS is down, your site cannot get spidered either — even if your web server is up. Reliable hosting and DNS, then, is critical to your web site's well-being. A web site that is down will irritate users and result directly in fewer users visiting your web site. It may also reflect badly on your business, and users may not be back. Likewise, if a search engine spider visits your web site and it does not respond after quite a few unsuccessful attempts, it may result in your web site getting dropped from the index. For this reason we recommend cutting costs elsewhere.

This underscores the need to find reliable hosting. In a field that is ultra-competitive, many web hosting providers choose to provide large amounts of bandwidth and features while compromising service and support. Two dollars per month for hosting will likely get you just that — two dollars worth of web hosting. A lot can be gleaned from the list compiled by NetCraft of "Hosting Providers' Network Performance." You can find this information at http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters ...