It is well known that a website’s “history” is a significant factor in how a website ranks in organic search results, especially in Google. Factors such as the age of the domain, how long the domain has been registered to the same owner, the age of URLs on the site and how long the site has been hosted on the same IP address have long been considered factors in SEO rankings.

For these reasons, when a website is being moved to new hosting or there is otherwise going to be a change in IP address, there is the question of whether the SEO rankings for that site will go down. In the past, I have seen temporary dips (3-6 weeks) in rankings for site moves, but I had not moved a website recently so that is old data.

Recently we moved the LeadQual website to a new hosting facility (so we could more easily launch this blog), so this gave us the opportunity to carefully measure the impact of a site move.

We had done some prior optimization on the site and let that settle, then we did the site move and measured rankings for 6 weeks. Over that period, there was no significant change in rankings on any of the big 3 engines (Google, Yahoo! or MSN Live). If anything, we drifted up a little after the move:

Just to see if Google was paying attention, we did some minor optimization for a few keywords such as “lead qualification“, and within a couple weeks we saw a positive impact:

So, while this is only one data point, it does seem that the age of the IP address for a website has little, if any, impact on SEO rankings, at least for a website like ours. Because there are so many factors for SEO rankings, it is hard to extrapolate this one test to other websites. However, from this and prior experiences I think it is generally safe to move websites when needed, since the impact on rankings is likely to be temporary or no impact at all. Of course, you do need to consider other factors, such as the history of the new IP address (e.g., whether it has been banned or penalized in the past), so there are still other risks to be considered.

John Erickson
VP SEO
www.LeadQual.com

This is my first post to the LeadQual SEO blog. I thought I’d start out with a top level view of how we at LeadQual approach Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for our customers. You can find more information about our SEO services here.

First, we take a long term view. We want our customers to be successful over the long term, rather that a quick fix. This of course means we take a “white hat” approach to SEO, using what we consider to be “best practices” for SEO (which of course change over time as the SEO landscape changes). It means we really try to understand our customer’s business and objectives, so we can focus our efforts on meeting their goals. It also means we give recommendations that are focused on achieving high SEO rankings over the long term.

How we approach an SEO engagment varies significantly depending on the needs and objectives of the customer. This can range from a detailed analysis of a current website, to working in an agile and iterative fashion as a member of a team launching a new or redesigned site. We pride ourselves on being flexible in working in whatever mode is needed to make our customers successful.

Regardless of how we approach SEO for a given customer, we find it will always involve the following areas:

1) Keyword analysis
2) Website structural analysis and recommendations
3) Website content analysis and recommendations
4) Linkbuilding

It is critical that each of these areas be done well in order to achieve good SEO rankings. You need to do all of these to succeed.

First, keywords are critical for SEO. You need to target keywords that will bring the right users to the website. You also need to be sure you choose keywords and phrases where it is possible for the website to compete, based on the relative link popularity of the website and the competition. You may choose to go after very competitive terms, or you may go after less competitive terms where you can achieve high rankings.

Second, a website needs to have a structure that search engine spiders can crawl and index. The site needs good navigation and clean links, without “spider traps” such as redirects, JavaScript links, Flash navigation, excess query parameters and the many other things that can prevent spiders from finding a page. The linking hierarchy of the site also needs to be structured so that each page can be reached from the home page within a few clicks, and so that each page does not have too many links. Spiders favor “top level” pages, and will only follow so many links on a page.

Next, the site has to have good content, and that content must have keywords. “Content is King” is an old addage for SEO, and it is true. You need to make sure each page has a unique title and meta description tag that contains keywords, and that you make effective use of on-page elements such as headings, body text, and alt attributes. You also need to avoid “hiding” content via images, Flash, AJAX and other methods where search engines cannot read the text.

Finally, the site needs to have good link popularity in order to rank well. Inbound links to a site are a “vote” for the site, and the search engines, especially Google, place a lot of importance on inbound links. Link building is hard, because you need to convince other sites to place a link to your site on theirs. The search engines work hard to discount “artificial” linking strategies such as reciprocal links, paid links, directories, link farms, etc. You need good links from good sites. The best way to get links is to attract them by having great content — build a site that others want to link to. There are also many other things you can do to attract good links — we’ll get into that in later posts.

There are of courses many other things we do to help our customers succeed at SEO, but starting with keywords, structure, content and linking gives a good basis for virtually all of our SEO engagements.

Stay tuned to this blog for many more posts with information, tips and techniques about SEO. If you need help, feel free to contact us.

John Erickson
VP SEO
www.LeadQual.com