After planning and developing a website the next part is to host it on the internet. Web Hosting is indeed an issue to be spent time on but the question arises if you need to look at it with your SEO eye or not? The issue of ‘Web Hosting’ is not just related to the price and features of web hosting provider offered but website owners who are far sighted consider some other factors too and one of those factors is search engine optimization. Does choosing a host provider makes any difference in rankings at search engines. If you submit your site again and again to Google but still isn’t able to get it indexed then you must give a thought to your host provider who may be responsible. There is a strong belief that a website to rank higher must have a unique IP address but on the other hand it doesn’t seem necessary because these days most of the websites are hosted on shared IP’s. On a single computer many servers run side by side and serve different domains from single IP’s.

If you look at any of those SEO forums, you will see several topics old and new trying to talk about web hosting concerns as well as name servers issues!! The question people have in mind is “A ‘cheap’ web hosting company hosts my site but, by the price of it, also may be hosting numerous spammers, scam sites, or other banned sites like Gambling and or Porn. (But for less then 10 bucks per month they'll give you 5000 MB and unlimited domains!). Does that affect my rank and does it risk my website?

The answer in plain words is Yes and No. It may affect you to some extent and No it may not affect you in other concerns. Read in detail below.

Well there are certain situations like if the domain sharing your server and IP is penalized by Google on account of spamming then your website is also expected to be banned or penalized, this is a condition if there is virtual shared IP hosting. Another situation can be that your website is residing on the server containing illegal adult content, and that site too is on the hit list of Google resulting in your website to be banned too. But it is never taken for granted that if such co incidence happens then your website is surely affected because it is common sense that for a mistake by one person another one cannot be punished. Still to be on the safer side certain points should be made clear while hiring a web host.