Small websites often go through nightmarish times when planning to shift from one web server to the other. Although most developers avoid such situations, it sometimes becomes inevitable to host a website through a different server altogether. Even as most of us focus on the expected downtime that the site may have to encounter, there are a few important things that demand our attention in this regard. The biggest problem crops up when you are shifting server to a different country altogether. With search engines becoming increasingly geographic savvy, you cannot avoid the impact this can have on traffic generated from them.
To cite an example, suppose you have two websites – abcxyz.in and abcxys.com - that are hosted on an Indian server because this is your niche market. If you decide to shift to an Australian server, both these websites will be affected, at least in terms of search engine traffic. This is mainly because most search engines provide the geographic result listing option by default nowadays. If you search for something from your particular country, you will be automatically redirected to the search engine domain of your country.
Even if a user performs a country-specific search, the search engine will give more weightage to sites that have specific domain names indicating the country in question. Therefore, once you shift the sites to the Australian server, you will have to lose out on some of your regular traffic influx. The only possible solution in this case is that you should buy domain names that are specific to your target country.
You should also be clear as to what all services will be provided by the new web host. Find out if they will move your files for you, because many of them actually offer these services for free. Experts dealing in web development services insist on cleaning up websites before shifting. Check each and every file and folder and do away with the unwanted ones. It is always better to carry less weight when shifting 'houses'.
All these essential tips will ensure that web developers don't get goosebumps when shifting their websites to new servers.
About the Author Lalita Negi is associated with Rupiz Media, that caters to a wide range of web development services like Flash Designing, ecommerce web development, Community Web Site Development and other web application development etc.
