Question about moving website to another host

Will it hurt your rankings if you move your website to another server?

Thanks in advance.

No, as long as you move all files to prevent dead links.

Best thing to do, is download your entire site from the old server..

Upload it to the new server, so that it exists on both servers simultaneously.

Then go to your registrar and update the IP addresses of the DNS servers in the whois record.

This way, users will see zero downtime on your site. They'll either keep getting it off the old one for a couple of days, or they'll go straight to the new one.

After about a week or so, you can completely disable your old hosting account.

I agree with Axe

changing server was nightmare when server configurations are different.
If you are not following the steps shared Axe, visitors/members are running away when they hit 404 NO FOUND.

301 redirects are your friend. Just don't ever use 302 temp redirects. You'll get killed in the search engines if you do.

a 301 redirect is not going to help you if you're keeping the same domain and just moving content from one server to another.

yea like Axe said, PR works off your domain URLS not the IP. Your PR shoudl be fine if you change servers.

Typically the answer is no, unless there is excessive downtime.

Which would be the reason for copying it to the other server before you switch the DNS.

0 Downtime

Agreed, however depending on the registrar sometimes there is a slight "downtime" between the switching from one set of servers to another. It's rare in recent times(to me at least) however I have expirienced it.

We will do it the way they mentioned above. Thanks!

I don't see how it causes any downtime at all?

Old DNS server points to old IP address
New DNS server points to new IP address

Identical sites.

Users put http://www.yourdomain.com in their browser and get the old DNS servers (ISP caching, LAN or local PC caching, whatever) or the new ones, and get sent to the respective IP address.

If they hit the old DNS server, they get the old IP. If they hit the new DNS server, they get the new IP. Either way, they get the site. Eventually everybody will be seeing the new IP address - at which point you disable the old address.

I don't see how you get ANY downtime with that.

I've never seen registrars have downtime between changing records from one DNS server to another. I've seen people screw up and not setup their new DNS servers correctly, but I've never seen it be the registrar's fault. I've got around 35 domains right now, and almost all of them have switched DNS servers at least once since their inception.

Agreed. There should be zero downtime following Axe's method for exactly the reasons he specified. The only thing that would screw it up would be improper DNS entries. I've done identical to Axe's suggestion several times myself and have never experienced downtime in the transition.