TurnKey Internet is famous for top-notch customer service and heroic support.

Welcome to part four of my SEO-fu experiment series. If you haven’t read the earlier installments, find them here: part 1, part 2, and part 3. In this last installment, I’ll outline some techniques that can help you quickly evaluate the authenticity and reputation of a web host. You don’t have to make uninformed decisions, even with limited time. With just a few clicks in the right places, you can learn a lot, and it’s worth the extra little effort. Choosing a web hosting company is like choosing an employee. You have to be able to trust this company with your business information. If their network goes down, your business suffers. It is an important time to make sure you’re going to get excellent service from people you can trust.

Third Party Reviews

As I mentioned in a previous post (HERE) third-party reviews are a great sign that a business is on the up-and-up. When a company posts customer reviews on their website without any kind of vetting process there isn’t any way to know if they’re authentic. Look for third-party company logos or links to leave a review of your own. If you’re really feeling sporty, go ahead and leave a review and see what happens. It may not appear immediately, but it should appear within an hour or two. If it doesn’t, you might want to look elsewhere for hosting.

Test Customer Support

Many web hosting companies offer live chat support, or so they say on their websites. Frankly, it’s shocking how many companies don’t man their live chat. Click on the support link and see how long it takes for a real person to come online. If it’s under five minutes, you know your real support questions will be answered in a timely fashion.

Contact Information

Real, legitimate companies should offer you several ways to get in touch with them. Look for a phone number and a physical address. If you have the time, throw that physical address into Google streetview and see what shakes loose. Is it an office building or a sketchy-looking house? Sure, if they thought about it, scammy web hosts could give you a fake address to an office park, but chances are good they’re betting you won’t check.

Guarantees

We offer our customers a 30-day money-back guarantee. We can offer this because the vast majority of our customers won’t ever need to use it. We know our products and customer support are excellent, and we are happy to refund customers who don’t agree. If a company doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, you’re taking an awfully big risk giving them your money.

Affiliations

At TurnKey Internet, we have registered with several third-party companies to help potential customers easily recognize our legitimacy. Visit our website and you will see the following logos:

We proudly display our affiliations and so do other companies that have them. If you don’t see these logos, there’s no affiliation. Beware!

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With SEO, there are innumerable factors that contribute to your page rank, and keeping on top of them is the only way to make sure you’re doing all you can to optimize your website. One critical and often overlooked angle to investigate when it comes to SEO, is your web host.

Server Reliability

It may seem obvious, but uptime is one of the fundamental aspects of your hosting experience that will effect your site rank. Search engine spiders are unpredictable and could be crawling your website at any time. If your site is down when they stop by, you’re not getting indexed. All of your hard work means nothing if your site is m.i.a when it matters most. As a quick aside, I would like to mention that TurnKey Internet offers 100% uptime 🙂

Robot Text

Robot text is another important factor for SEO that is often overlooked. Robot text is a document that tells your server how to deal with search engine crawlers. Make sure your host has the document set to allow crawlers, otherwise you won’t be indexed.

IP Address Reputability

Another SEO factor you should consider when researching a new web host is your IP address. With some hosting plans you have your own address, while with others you share an IP. Sharing an IP address brings with it a substantial risk. Search engines penalize IP addresses that are linked to non-reputable sites, and, if you happen to be sharing one of these penalized IP’s, it can dramatically affect your SEO. If SEO really matters to you (and if you have any kind of online business, it should) the safest bet is to talk to your hosting provider about purchasing your own dedicated IP.

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