Hosting & Seo, Does free effect pagerank or any other important factors? Options

[Joshua Sciarrino]

Okay, I have a few friends that use 'www . 000webhost . com' it's a web FREE web hosting company. This is just like paid hosting (no ads, mySQL databases, good amount of bandwidth, etc). The company's aim (so it claims) that they are 'giving back' to people.

Someone the other day asked me if this would effect any SEO efforts? Your thoughts

P.S. I said little to no effect.

[dazzlindonna]

No effect - assuming the host isn't pulling any shenanigans behind the scenes (like placing invisible links on each user's page, etc.). But assuming it's all straight-up, no effect.

[Black_Knight]

There's no 'penalty' as such for any free hosting. Not even the kind with the sub-domain name only (though that in itself can have an effect of course). The only real downside is that free hosts can tend to more easily become bad neighbourhoods. With spammers wanting to cross-link as many domains as possible, the free hosts tend to be an effectively irresistable lure for at least a few domains and sub-domains for linkage.

Let's face it, that's probably what the hosting company themselves are doing it for, and they have almost 500,000 backlinks to that domain already to show for it. Not bad for a site launched less than a year ago, huh?

Let's hope that it is indeed the building of a powerful backlink that the hosting company want, because if so, they'll probably be working hard to prevent it becoming a bad neighborhood, and keeping its SEO value as high as they can get it.

Just be warned that they might be building to sell, though, or at least, that the offers will come, and that the temptation will grow.

[EGOL]

I don't know what type of content you plan to put on this free host but if it is anything that you are working hard to produce I would not do it. You don't control the domain and they can close down or lock you out and all of your work is gone.

The small cost of hosting and a domain that you will own might be tiny to what you put in to the labor.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

Let's face it, that's probably what the hosting company themselves are doing it for, and they have almost 500,000 backlinks to that domain already to show for it. Not bad for a site launched less than a year ago, huh?

Haha, that would be crazy if they are doing that!

Thanks Dazzlindonna for the start forward reply.

Wow! EGOL, I really enjoyed that response. For this particular situation, they are thinking of using free hosting until it actually generates some revenue. For example, they are starting 2-4 different websites with different themes/types of content, web 2.0 ideas.

I think that would be kind of a wise idea, if it's 100% free hosting. Try different ideas, see what launches and becomes a success and then pay for solid hosting.

This post has been edited by Flying Monkeys: Jun 17 2008, 06:02 PM

[EGOL]

SEO is mainly about links... if you start on free hosting and then decide to switch when the money starts to roll in then when you jump to paid hosting you must start from scratch. You will also have a duplicate content problem when you decide to switch, and any person who was impressed by your site will find you missing when he returns for more.

Get some hosting for $29.00/month that allows you to keep multiple domains on it... do your experiments there then move to premium hosting when traffic merits.

The biggest mistake that I have made in making websites is not betting fully on myself from the start. I tried to save peanuts and a lot of elephants escaped.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

I heard from a few SEO's (big names) say that changing hosting is going to SEO efforts very LITTLE because it's the URL's that people link to and not the actually IP's.

Plus the duplicate content thing, that would only be like a day. The day of transferring information from one hosting site to another.

[EGOL]

There is a big difference from being on

flyingmonkeys.freehosting.com and flyingmonkeys.com

If you move from the freehosting.com to flyingmonkeys.com you probably have little ability to 301 redirect your linkage. The host could simply redirect to his own domain when you leave.

However, if you move from flyingmonkeys.com on one host to flyingmonkeys.com on another host you don't have to redirect anything.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

The 000webhost lets u use your own URL.

So it would NOT be 'flyingmonkeys.freehosting.com'. It WOULD be 'flyingmonkeys.com' and underneath it would be free hosting. . . then changed to paid as it grew, in traffic and content.

This post has been edited by Flying Monkeys: Jun 17 2008, 08:22 PM

[EGOL]

If that is true it is not as bad as I thought. Still skeptical however and would not use the service myself.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

I will do some investigation cause I know another web designer that used this with a client and he has used it with more than one. We will see how this all turns out. I'll let you tomorrow sometime.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

Sorry for not keeping to my word (I try my best in being a man of my word), I didn't have any bananas yesterday. Seriously, I ran out at home.

Anywho.

This is what I got back about the hosting. They give you 250 MB Disk Space, 100 GB Data Transfer; and two mySQL databases and has a crappy c-Panel. My friend told me that you can upgrade and pay 5$ and it gives you a lot more.

Hmm.

The 'free hosting' does provide a link to their website. See example. They don't cloak or do any sneaky tactics. My friend said he's been very impressed with their service and most-likely will suggest it to most, if not all, of his future clients.

If the site became pretty popular, I wouldn't upgrade with them (since I know a few outstanding hosting providers), I'd probably go somewhere else but I'd give them a nice long-winded email saying thanks for the free stuff.

Alright, I had Burger King today, does that count as a banana? (cCroaks over and dies of a cholesterol attack The music fades... )

[dimid]

the web hosting will reflect on your seo only in the case if it not available /down/ time to time or it is to slower and you pages can't be crawled normally.