11 replies to this topic

[christelle]

hey all, Okay...I was wondering, I am thinking of signing up with one of those free web hosting sites in order to test some of my "SEO theories". Purely for SEO testing. Now, I know that these 'free' space hosting thingies sometimes have their own banners and may only allow me a LIMITED amount of space. But like I said, I only want to test out SEO stuff so I have a chance to test what I've learned, so to speak. Is this at all a good idea? Will I only be wasting my time? What are the pros and cons? Or is there a more effective way to get sites only for SEO testing? I need them only to test some stuff and ditch them after. Thanks!

[rolf]

Interesting idea.

I can't help but I wonder if the same thing applies to subdomains? With a subdomain you could entirely control the on-page factors with no banners etc. but would there be a chance of adversely affecting the main domain?

[MaKa]

Instead of free hosting I would opt for some ad free, cheap hoster and your own testing domain name. Then you can make sure that the free hosting, adverts, whatever else do not influence your tests.

Just my 2p

[donp]

hosting is cheap enough, if you are testing, you will want some stats programs, the more the merrier. I wouldn't think you get much stats reporting from freebie hosting

[christelle]

That's a good point. thanks

[linux_lover]

Yup you can get hosting for £1.99 per month from a fair few companies

Free hosting is always iffy in my experience.

You can get dedicated servers for £35 a month now, which is what I use. Then you are not limited at all... but you need a bit of Linux know how.

[MaKa]

You can get dedicated servers for £35 a month now, which is what I use. Then you are not limited at all... but you need a bit of Linux know how.

Hi LiLo, would you mind PMing me with the url of the people you use? I'm not actively looking at the moment, but am considering "upgrading" from shared hosting in the near future. Thanks.

[Christian_SEO]

It's a great idea, but I don't think that free hosting would make a good environment. On the other hand, if you can find things that work good there, it should work really good on a domain at a regular hosting account.

One thing you have to ask is how serious is the testing you want to do? The problem with SEO testing on a small scale is that there are so many variables that can affect the results. These include:

domain name and age of registration
links in
links out
use of images
site structure and things like HTML errors and page load time
links within the site
content

To be scientific, you would like to have everything be the same and then change one thing and record the results. The problem is that you can't have duplicate sites, so you can't have any real "controls". You may change something on the site and notice something happen. But you won't know if it was what you did, or something with the search engines. If you change more than one thing, then you could see results from one of them happen at some point when you change something else.

If not saying you can't do it and you can't get some information, I'm just saying that it's a bit tricky.

If you decided to go ahead, I would get a reseller account where you can have unlimited sites for about $25. You are limited by disk and bandwidth, but you can put a large number of sites under one account. You can also do the same thing with some accounts that let you "add-on" domains. Functionally that should be the same, even though all the files are in one place. That can make it a little easier to move files from site to site with a single FTP access.

If you want a larger test bed, I would be willing to let you "use" some domains that I have, where I can point them to your server and you can put a site on it for testing. Or you can just buy domains with .infos going for about $2. Domains don't cost much, but the domains I have were purchased at different times and have some "age".

[customs]

With free hosting you have an advantage which can skew your results. Usually free hosting companies provide you a web space on a subdomain or a directory on their domain.
Sometimes their domain is listed in yahoo or DMOZ and especially if your site in a directory (example freehost.com/yoursite) you will definitely receive a boost to rankings.

[andrei_med]

Boost for being on a free host? It sounds right in theory, but is it really? I'd say unlikely...

[identity]

My impression, possibly incorrect, has always been that free hosting may be more harmful than helpful, under the assumption that the SEs might see the site as being less credible.

This of course assumes that the SEs are some how flagging which sites are using free hosting services, but certainly not impossible.

[Jill]

Sometimes their domain is listed in yahoo or DMOZ and especially if your site in a directory (example freehost.com/yoursite) you will definitely receive a boost to rankings.

Nope not true. How would the subdomain that has no links to your site help your site?