Website Hosting and Google Rank - Virtual Shared IPs
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Virtual shared IP is a system by which a web server uses the same IP address for different domains. Instead of having a new computer for a server multiple virtual servers are made to reside on the same computer. Some web hosts can host 2000 domains on a single IP address; it all depends on the processing power and resources available to the server and the quality of service that the host wishes to provide to its clients. In this case the web pages feed to the search engines would be very slow. However these days virtual shared hosting is a common scene as being a cheap and reliable option and mostly accepted by engines especially Google. Google does not ban sites by virtue of their sharing an IP address with a misbehaving site.
In the words of Craig Silverstein of Google, "Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you'll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misconception." This makes it quite clear that Google does not penalize a site on account of virtual hosting if it is configured the proper way.
Intelligent Domain Selection
Domain name selection should be very cunning and wise, if your website has to serve local market. (For example, if your services are aimed at people in the UK then a .uk domain is preferable.) If the website is intended for a global market, then a top level domain of .com is preferred. Domain selection will directly affect the ranking of your website at Google. In the above example, if a UK shoe company has a .uk domain, it would rank higher for UK shoes search. If the UK shoe company had a .com domain, it would be in the competition for general search terms from all over the world, not just the local market.
URL Restructuring
Maintaining the proper structure of your URL's is also important. Search engines face problems while indexing dynamic URL's (URL's having many parameters or long query strings). Google is considered to be happy only with one or two parameters. The more parameters the more difficult it is to index them. Try to convert your dynamic pages to static ones, or let the server do it for you the other way to reduce the number of parameters passed and thus assisting the spiders' job of indexing.
Apache is the most popular web server and employs a special "rewrite" module that allows you to convert the dynamic long URL's to search engine friendly web addresses, this module (mod_rewrite) is not installed by default on the server. Many hosting companies offer it. Once it is installed it can convert the following dynamic URL
http://www.ittips.com/index.php?page=index_v2&id=632&c=13
into:
http://www.ittips.com/computersindex_v2-632-13.htm
(Shameless Self Promotion, ITTips.com is owned by the author of this article)
The new URL generated by the server is more SEO friendly and much desired by crawlers. Ensure that your host has this module working to enjoy the benefits.
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