Today people are really mad because most choosen cheap servers in HG or BH. Me unlike others is not. Of course i DO use hostgator, but mayority of my sites is not with them – i lost almost nothing today due to sites beeing down. Also there is 1 method that not many people use and that should be for such cases – backup server.
I will explain it in a second. But for start here is hosts that i use:
Hostnine with coupon bhpwnage15 for 15% off – for small blogs, aff pages, landing pages.
IPXCore with bhpwnage for 15% off recurring - for small VPS with sites that have a bit more traffic or just big number of LPs
WiredTree – for most important sites and ones with big traffic
Namecheap - same as HG, literally
HG i use for small blogs and aff sites.
So lets say we rank top10 for buy viagra with 5 pages small site and our host dies for 24h. Theres 2 things. 1 that wil lsurely happen – you loose 24h money on such decent keyword. 2 – google may decide your site sukcks due to beeing down and you will loose your rank by spot or even few.. Risky right?
The method to keep servers up and rankings is simple. Keep backup of sites that rank/bring you constant money on other servers ie HG – > H9 transition makes sense here as they have similar packages.
Then when server dies for too long and their support says ‘dont know when it will eb back’, you dont give a fuck and change DNS. If you have domain at registrar like Godaddy or Namecheap an the domain is .com + the server is in USA [like hosts i mentioned] the DNS propagation will literally take MINUTES.
So if you have backup of your sites somewhere better switch domains right now before tommorow you may see ranks lost.
There is HUGE chance that due to Google algo tweaks on site load speed, site availability vs rankings, tommorow many people will loose their usual Google rank spot.
Keep in midn that VPSes often are not ‘right away’ sold so go for shared hostings and change NSes even before fully ordering to speedup the situation. ALso domain in NC + NC host = fast switch if you are in trouble right now.
For fast help with the hosts mentioned their generic dnses/nameservers are:
ns7.hostnine.com
ns8.hostnine.com
ns9.hostnine.com
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dns1.namecheaphosting.com
dns2.namecheaphosting.com