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IIS, Making Money Online And SEO

Posted by Paul B | October 25, 2007 .

I haven’t been able to find a lot of information online about using IIS to host a SEO friendly website so I thought why not fill people in with my mistakes.

The very first website I created for myself was hosted on an IIS server, for 2 main reasons. Firstly I came from a commercial background of writing core web based business systems, Microsoft technology ruled the roost and ASP.net, SQL Server and IIS was something I did day in and day out. Secondly IIS was the web serving service that comes with Windows operating systems, this gave me an easy way of developing on a test environment. I should probably point out that I was far more concerned with writing something clever with my first website, the concepts of SEO, actually having visitors and making money were not something that even entered my head. Nowadays my initial thought when creating a website is “how much money can I make doing this”. When you start thinking like that then IIS has some obvious disadvantages.

SEO And IIS

When it comes to maxing out your SEO here are a few of the problems you’ll discover when using IIS:-

  • Case sensitivity - Linux based servers are case sensitive, IIS is not. Whilst at first this may seem like it’s easier to develop (doesn’t matter how you type your links) the effect on passed link value is bad. Google and the other search engines will all treat Index.html, index.html and inDex.html as different documents, with Linux the wrong one will return a 404 error but IIS will just let it go. What you end up with is link love split between 2,3,4,5 variations of your document.
  • URL Rewrites - So many of the content management systems out there (think WordPress, Joomla) rely heavily on URL re-writing to create search friendly URLs. It is well known that too many parameters turn away search engines, unfortunately IIS do not support the .htaccess behaviour that makes fixing this problem a cinch. Instead you’ll have to rely on complicated 404 replacement fudges, or more likely just live with your non SEO friendly URLs.
  • Hosting - I can only base this on my own experience but I’ve found that many hosts try to cram more websites onto a IIS server than a Linux based server. As demand requires they usually host less IIS machines and so IP duplication can become an issue if you try to link between your own websites. For example if you open 5 accounts with a host the chances are you would end up with 5 different IP’s because your accounts would be on different servers. If you did the same with IIS hosting, because of a lack of hosting servers you’d more likely than not find all your accounts on one machine and one IP.

IIS and Making Money Online

If you primary concern is making money from your websites then IIS is not the way to go. Given the chance to start over I’d go for Apache and Linux all the way, these are just a couple of the reasons:-

  • Cost of Hosting - Making the money is easier if you keep your costs down, Windows hosting costs more than Linux hosting.
  • Better Access To Free CMS - Almost every free CMS, Forum Program has been written with Apache, MySQL and Linux in mind.
  • Easier SEO - See Above.
  • Cheaper Programmers - If you do need to hire in help the rates for PHP developers tend to be cheaper than those for Microsoft fan boys.
  • Faster Page Loads - Ooooh controversial. Given the same page to render on the same hardware I’d put my money on a Linux /Apache system beating the pants of a Windows/IIS server any day.

It’s not that I don’t like IIS, in fact I love it but I’m a very strong believer in the right tool for the right job. Writing big business n-tier intranet, extranet or internet systems then I’d always favour .net, IIS and SQL Server. For making money from small to medium sized websites then Apache, PHP, MySql and Linux it is.

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