Changing hosts

I have a friend that has an aged domain that has been with the same hosting provider for five years. He is #2 on G00gle for his long tail keywords. If he switches hosting companies, will he lose his SERP placement or is it all tied to the domain?

shouldn't make any difference, unless the new host is slower or considered spammy.

The old host was one of those real estate sites that charges $150/month, I'm trying to get him over to hostgator so we can add a more sites for way less money.

Hostgator may be able to xfer his domains and all of the content for free. They did it for all of my sites content and domains. I think he needs a compatible version of cpanel that can package everything up for a move. The only thing he may have to do is change the nameservers for his domains.

A few tips, make the main domain on Hostgator the exact same as his current host. I had to pay 5 or 10 bucks (can't remember) when I made the mistake of putting a new domain as the main one. Second, don't do anything to the new server until they have xfered everything over.

You don't even need to contact a support rep when getting an xfer, you just request it and a ticket is submitted. I'm glad I moved to HG because Bluehost support doesn't hold a candle to HG's support.

Yes, if speed is an issue, I would even go for a VPS to ensure you get good traffic speed. They are cheap the basic ones.