Changing hosting and its affect on SEO.

Hi all.

I am currently running a site on a Windows server, and will be moving host soon and deploying a redeveloped version of the site on a Linux box - before (or currently) the site was ASP, when redeployed on the new server it will be using PHP (the php version is developed and ready to go). My site as it stands is currently ranked well in some fairly competitive 1-2 word keyword combos. Will such a change (main change is IP address, and language) have any, or MUCH of a negative affect with my sites ranking in the major SE (G,Y!, msn)? PR be lost?

If there will be any negative changes will it be a fairly quick climb back or will it be sandboxed and months away from getting back to where it was before (assuming it does get back).

The site will be fairly similar page wise, page count, content. A few pages may be missing, but a few more added too. BTW, the main page will be changes from index.asp to index.php.

Btw, I have no choice on the change of host and thus IP.

 

The change of IP/Host shouldn't have an effect.

Just make sure that the files are in both places still when you do the transfer.

 

I'd suggest keeping the site identical for now. When switching to PHP I would mask ASP pages as PHP.

So basically your PHP scripts are contained within files with *.asp extensions:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .asp

 

I would suggest if you are going to have 2 servers, keep a robots.txt in place on the old server to block the "Duplicate Content" penalties.