I’ve recently moved a site from a hosting package with Network Solutions. Don’t ask me why I used Network Solutions. It was just one of those, ‘try it and see what happens’ things. The site was a static site. 4-5 pages. I figured okay NetworkSolutions. Why not.

We eventually changed the site over to a WordPress site. Network Solutions does a horrible job hosting WordPress sites. As a matter of fact they are crazy strict with their servers and I’ll never host with them again. So the switch had to be done but I didn’t expect the suprising results.

I’d been trying to rank this site for some time. Right out of the box, no links to it. It was a keyword dense site.
Everything was above board. Copy was good, professionally written copy. Nothing overly done. I was running Adsense.

The site was up for six or 8 months on NetworkSolutions. I had garnered a few natural links (it was good content) and I had one paid link. Organic traffic was horrible. I just figured, “Man, I better get some more links!” So I putzed around with that for a while. Actually the term was so niche that my Adwords spend had gotten down to 2 cents a click. So I didn’t worry about it. I figured fine, move on. I’ll just pay for traffic.

When I switched host though, boom. Organic traffic. Nowehere in Google, all of a sudden number 11, number 5, number 21. I’m scratching my head. Did I de-link some stuff, did I…ah, what happened? And then oh..the server switch.

You probably are not hosting with Network Solutions. I don’t know anyone who does. If you are, get off. If you search engine marketing has stalled after 6-8 months then look toward the host. I’d suspected always that the host plays a part but once your up and running you think of a thousand other things other than the host. Changing host has become a new tool in my seo strategy.