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Coping with

Technical Issues

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

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Unreliable hosting or DNS

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Changing hosting providers

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Cross-linking

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Split testing

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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 host-

ing providers choose to provide large amounts of bandwidth and features while compromising serv-

ice 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

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