I received this question recently: you’re transferring your site from one hosting plan to another – is there a problem in search engine rankings?

In my experience, the biggest SEO issue I’ve ever encountered in transferring web hosts is changing the URL of posts – either by changing the blog’s permalink, or the blog’s root address.

I once moved a blog from a \blog\ directory to a root directory – and watched my links disappear from a search engine! Now, older and (somewhat) wiser, I would use redirection entries in my .htaccess file to fix that, but at the time I just watched it all go away.

Some people mention that there are certain locations that Google ranks less – but the problem is, if Google really does rate certain ‘neighborhoods’ bad, then they may be overlooking a site or two that is good – and NOT indexing vital information, their bread and butter. So I’m skeptical of that being a major factor.

However, one big bugaboo with URLs is in the domain – moving a www. prefixed domain to one without, or vice versa. www.ActiveBlogging.com and ActiveBlogging.com are not exactly the same in Google’s eyes, and so make sure your URL stays exactly the same to avoid problems.

So when moving, keep the same permalink, keep the same address (with or without the www. as specified in the General Settings tab (the Settings section of your WordPress Admin), and place the blog in the same location as in your old site (that is, make the subdirectory or root the same).

Keep this in mind, and the transfer should go fine as far as SEO goes.