There is no doubt in the fact that virtual business is taking over the world by storm. Moreover, there are some businesses that exist only online and haven’t even opened a single store worldwide. Overall, the impacts of web hosting on SEO are huge and are becoming more and more important.
Still, they are making a profit. With the massive competition, every business wants to see their website rank number one on Google and other search engines. Sure, the modern world has taken a turn towards SEO and if your website does not rank on the first page on Google, it is going to go unnoticed for sure.
But, where does web hosting come in? Let us look at it like this. Where does the performance of your website come from? Yes, it comes from the web hosting company that you have opted for.
If the web host server is down most of the time, it will end up negatively impacting the performance of your website. Thus, you will fall down ranks online. Hence, it is very important to select a good hosting plan to make a mark online.
Why Do You Need a Solid SEO Strategy?
In short, SEO is all about optimizing your site in such a way that makes it visible on different search engines. Now, there isn’t one thing that will make your website number one. Many things go into it. Increasing the number of backlinks and including keywords in your content is one way you can do it.
Before you commit to a web host provider, check the uptime/downtime they provide. The key here is not to get into a long-term contract. In a month-by-month contract, you can easily switch hosts as soon as you see some problem with the performance. Usually, what these companies do is that they offer economical plans for long-term contracts.
This means that the 3-year package will cost you much less than the 1-year package. But, this is a marketing gimmick and once you buy that package, you have to bear with them for the entire time duration. So, it is always wise to pay monthly until you are satisfied with the overall performance.
How Web Hosting Improves SEO in 2020
There are 6 main features on which you should evaluate a company before you go to them for hosting your website. If you see a glitch in any one of these, don’t go for it. It will affect your SEO ranking. These are as follows:
Web hosting providers like BlueHost have plenty of SEO tools to optimize your website for a better position in Google’s ranks. Google recently announced the impact of web performance on SEO, so choosing a good web host for SEO is ultimately becoming more and more important.
1. Downtime/Uptime
Downtime is referred to as the duration of time your website remains unavailable to users. This can be a serious blow to your SEO ranking. How? Well, the search engine spiders are automated in such a way that they come and visit your website multiple times a day. No one knows when they are going to come to your website and at what time of the day. Maybe your server was down for just 2 minutes in the entire day and they visited at exactly the time it was down, that is going to make your SEO ranking drop.
Seems a little unfair, doesn’t it? That is how it works. If this happens a few times, the search engine will flag your site as unreliable and the ranking of your website will drop. No search engine will want to display a website that does not open. Their credibility will drop.
A 99% uptime seems nice, right? Wrong. Even a web host that promises you 99% uptime means that in 30 days, the website has been down for a total of 7-hours. That is a lot. Hence, you should go for companies that GUARANTEE at least 99.99%. This is what most of the web hosts provide. Therefore, you should not settle for anything less than that.
2. Speed
The time a web page takes to load is also an important factor in deciding what sort of experience the user has. Even though the search engines never disclose what the factors are on which they rank a page, in 2010, the secret was disclosed. Google spilled the beans and told everyone that the page load time/speed was one of the major factors of their algorithm. But, this is only one of the 200 factors on which that are taken into consideration.
Keep in mind here that there can be multiple reasons why your site takes time to load. First, it can be the fault of the host. Maybe the server can’t take the load of your site. Secondly, a major reason can be the configuration of your website. Maybe your website has not been optimized properly, maybe the graphics are a bit too much for your web server. Once you have checked if everything is okay from your side, go ahead and contact the web service provider.
Surely, you must have heard of shared web hosting? That is the most common type of web hosting in which multiple websites share resources from the same servers. Hence, the more resources your partners use, the more time it takes for your website to load. Here, the only course of action you can take is to shift your website from a busy shared server to a less busy one. Even though moving to a dedicated host or private server may seem an expensive option, it will do you good in the long run.
3. Location
More importantly, the location of your website also determines where you fall in the search engine. How? Well, it works something like this. If a person is searching for something in the UK, Google will bring the websites which are located in the UK at the top. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But, how to see where your site is located? That can be determined by looking at your IP address. The IP address is given to your website by the server you opt for. So, getting your website hosted by a company that has its server in the UK will increase your chances of coming in the top of the search engine for a person who is searching in the UK.
Remember that the web host provider does not need to be UK-based. These companies have servers all around the world. So, before you opt for a server provider, see where the servers are located. Make sure they have servers in the region you are looking to target. If your target market is the USA and you go for a company that does not have a server in the USA, your site will not be able to rank higher. It is not impossible. But, you need to compete with the local websites on a number of factors. Now, what is the point in doing so if you can easily switch hosts and go to a local server? Another issue with the location is that when your host provider does not have local servers, the latency issue arises.
4. Shared Hosting – A Big No
If you want to bring your website to the top position, try not to go for shared hosting. Because, when you do so, all the resources are divided between many clients. So, the performance goes down. Moreover, giant search engines like Google don’t rank websites on shared hosting space, multiple studies have suggested this. The reason being, it is against the ethics of SEO, such as performance. Even the best shared web hosting doesn’t have the same benefits that Cloud hosting or dedicated has. These web hosts don’t see who they are giving space on the server, it can even be a spammer. This is why it leaves a negative impact on your website also. The biggest issue is security. When you are sharing with so many websites, you don’t know which one is secure and which is not.
5. Geo-Targeting
If you plan wisely, you can benefit from the tools provided by Google itself. “Geo-targeting” is such a tool that helps you climb ranks quickly. We have already talked about local domains in detail, now we will see if you don’t have that option. Meanwhile, if your domain is global, there is a way about it. You can go to the search console and select the country you want to target. If you don’t do that, Google will detect your IP address and rank you accordingly.
6. SSL Certificate
Security is a very important factor to consider. No one will want to go to a website where there is a threat to sensitive information. Everyone wants to surf the internet without any tension. For this, there are some security measures that the web host provider gives. This includes DDoS protection and an SSL Certificate. With the number of online threats of scams and frauds increasing, it is important to have some sort of trust in the website customers go for. After all, when making a transaction, all your personal and financial information goes online. No one would want that in the hands of scammers. If the web host provides you with an SSL certificate, you can install it on your website. This will ensure that your website is safe and secure to surf.
How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for SEO?
A good SEO web hosting service will look different to different people depending on what you want. We can’t shortlist one host or one hosting method as perfect, but a huge amount of studies have suggested that Cloudways is a very good host in terms of SEO rankings. If you are a small website and are not expecting a lot of traffic, going for a shared web hosting plan is the wisest decision.
On the other hand, if you are a large-scale website and expect tons of traffic, go for a web host that provides you with top-class web hosting facilities. You need to evaluate the hosting site on the following factors:
Carefully evaluating these points will let you select a web host that will give a boost to your website instead of burying it down amongst the thousands of websites available. If your site is not ranked high enough on the charts as you expect it to, check internally for some errors. If everything at your end is okay, the culprit is your web host provider. Then it is time to switch hosts and climb the SEO ladder.
