Does web hosting affect SEO? And if yes, here is what you need to know about it.
Your web hosting affects your SEO efforts in many ways.
If you have the right hosting provider, it gives you an opportunity to achieve your SEO goals faster. But if your web hosting provider is not reliable enough, all your SEO efforts will go in vain.
Let’s get straight to the point and understand what web hosting actually is, and how does it affect SEO.
What is Web Hosting?
Let’s put it simply, web hosting is basically renting or buying space for your website on the World Wide Web. This process allows users to find and view your website on the internet. It is recommended to go for a reliable and trustworthy web hosting to create online visibility for your website. Hundreds of web hosts are available in the market intending to provide varieties of hosting services. A good server hosting does have correct technologies to make your website’s information accessible to everyone. One thing you must keep in mind is that you should regularly renew or update your hosting services, considering your subscription’s duration.
How Important Is Web Hosting In SEO?
You may not know how closely these terms are connected. SEO enacts as a helping hand in generating traffic and increasing rank, which makes a big difference to your website. Generally, people do not associate search engine optimization with their web hosting provider. The reality is that your web hosting provider may be the only reason behind your poorly ranked website. These are the points that will make it clear to understand that how a good or bad hosting server can affect the SEO of your website
• Uptime And Downtime Affect SEO
You definitely want your website to be active all the time as much as possible because you don’t know when a customer would come. You will lose a high number of potential customers if your website is down. Also, when Google finds that your website is regularly inaccessible, it will consider and flag your site as unreliable. Why will Google ruin its reputation by making a slow running website rank higher? No search engine would ever rank a useless website higher than the one which has all the necessary information.
While choosing a web hosting service provider, it is essential to note how their average uptime is. If your website’s uptime is not much, you are definitely going to lose a lot of money. If you find that your server is down and there are issues with your accessibility, you can reach out to an SEO agency, and the team of professionals will optimize your website in a way that it would be easily accessible.
• Web Hosting Provider Directly Affects Website Speed
Being accessible and grabbing customer’s attention is not the only thing your website needs to have. A fast loading website is one of the most significant ranking factors, as a slow loading website can easily make visitors lose interest and patience. They will probably move to some other website. First of all, ranking on the first page of Google is a back-breaking task, but if you are lucky to get clicked, do not disappoint users with your website speed.
A good hosting provider will do everything to load your information quickly and helps the audience to navigate your website easily. Customers stay happy with fast service, and if your customers are satisfied, Google will rank you higher.
SEO community thinks that loading speed is a vital ranking factor, hence your website should be fast enough to get better rankings. In order to optimize your website correctly with image compression, caching, using the latest software, etc.
• Server’s Location and the Domain Name Of Your Website
If you want to generate more traffic on your website, then you have to target the local audience by using local hosting. Google accesses the website as per the location where it is. Therefore, if you have selected the server that is close to your audience, then in the search result, more likely, your website will appear, not the other website that is located in another country.
If you have a local website, then for targeting the local users of a certain country, you need to get the domain (ccTLD) of that country. Like for example, if your website is based in the USA and you want to target only the USA audience, then you can get us domain as it will provide you unique American identity.
• Other Websites You Share An IP With
If you get a shared hosting package, then you have to use the same IP address and the same server with hundreds of websites. Moreover, if one or more website is doing spam, then that IP will be linked with bad SEO. It means if your website is hosted on the same server with the spammy website, then even your legit website will get affected.
This is the reason why you should always look for a good web hosting providing agency to purchase the cloud hosting service with a dedicated IP. You can also check what type of website that is hosted on the same IP address along with your website.
• SSL Certificate
Google has confirmed that if your website has an SSL certificate, then it has its fair share in the ranking of your website. While choosing a web hosting service, choose the one where you are getting free of SSL certificate. Once you get your SSL certificate, you need to install it and configure the domain redirection.
HTTPS not only helps in improving the ranking of your website but also adds more points in our fair share for increasing the user’s trust. If a website has an SSL certificate, then the visitor will feel more secure while visiting your website. Remember, if your website deals with sensitive data submissions, then having an SSL is essential.
• Secure your Websites and Server
Security is an essential factor if it’s associated with the website or server, as you will not want your website to be get hacked. If your website is hacked, then the hacker can steal your data or even can modify your data, which eventually will affect the ranking of your website.
If the server is not fully secured, then the hacker will not only hack into your website but can also get into your server and can make them unresponsive. Therefore, choose the best website hosting provider, which can ensure full security of your website and server.
Conclusion
A web hosting provider plays a major role in increasing the chances of your website’s success. Do not change your web host blindly; do some research. It would be best if you consider the factors that have been discussed in this blog. Does the web host have a backup service? Are they offering SSL certificates? Consider all these things and filter your prospective hosts accordingly. Do not be too fast while choosing your web hosting provider as it can adversely affect your SEO.
