Any company looking to improve its presence on the World Wide Web will stick to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidelines. With Google owning approximately 92 per cent of the search market, high ranking on SERPs will improve a brand’s searchability, visibility, and credibility. Businesses must first make sure that their websites are fully functional with a reputable web host to harness the benefits of SEO. Choosing a wrong hosting service without careful consideration can do more harm than good.
Here are the reasons why choosing the right web host is important for the SEO of your website:
Server Uptime and Downtime
Search engines place a great deal of emphasis on a website’s reliability, which is largely based on uptime and downtime on the server. To maintain the quality of the search results, this measure is essential.
Downtime refers to the amount of time the website is unavailable due to server issues. If a site is always down as search engine robots attempt to crawl it, the site will be flagged as unreliable and its rating will therefore be lowered.
As such, choosing an excellent Web host is crucial. It ensures that your website will have enough resources to run 99.9 per cent of the time. If a site regularly experiences downtime, then changing hosting providers is a clear sign.
Loading Speed
Since 2010, Google has highlighted the importance of page loading speed when determining search rankings. Furthermore, it clearly states that two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce sites.
The reason? The faster the site, the better the user experience.
From a business standpoint, a good page loading speed stands to gain far more in terms of sales and visibility. According to Amazon, a one-second slowdown in their page loading can cost them $1.6 Billion in sales per year! If a website is built with the intention of converting traffic to sales, then this is a key factor that all site owners should invest in.
While the page loading speed is not entirely reliant on the web host alone, having a reliable provider can support a website’s loading time with the latest technologies and infrastructure to handle a high volume of traffic. If a web page takes more than two seconds to load, it is a clear sign that a web host evaluation is required.
Server Location
The location of the server is closely related to the speed of your web. It’s best to host your website in a data centre located near your visitors to minimize latency. The shorter the distance, the faster it takes to travel for the results.
For this purpose, Google recommends showing results based on the user’s position. So, if your visitors are primarily based in the United States, choose a web host that has a data centre in the United States. That way, you’re going to get a better chance to rank high.
Additionally, you can also pick a hosting company with a network of geographically distributed servers if you’re a global business. So, wherever your clients are, your website will always sit on top of Google SERPs.
How to Select the Right Web Hosting?
- Aside from the key factors mentioned above, it is also important to ensure that the provider has excellent customer support, security features, and upgrade options.
- For instance, choose a web hosting with 24/7 customer support, so you can contact them anytime an issue arises.
- In terms of security, pick a web host that offers various security measures like regular backups and updates, malware detection and removal, and DDoS protection.
- Lastly, keep an eye on the company’s upgrade options, so you can seamlessly scale your resources whenever you need to.
