Every business on the internet these days is virtually connected, while SEO has become quite important from a marketing perspective. Every website strives to appear on the top page of the Google search. If that’s what you are looking attain, then you need to know that several factors affect the SEO ranking of a website, including web security, content, and your web host, among others. Yes, you need to keep an eye on where you host your site if you want to improve your search engine rankings. Let’s look at some of the ways a web host service can impact your website SEO ranking.
1. The Speed of your Website
Speed is a crucial determinant in the ultimate SEO ranking performance of your website. In other words, faster websites rank better than slower websites. Research has shown that loading time significantly impacts on the bounce rate of your site. Of course, most web users are impatient and cannot wait for that page that takes too long to load. Prolonged slow page response eventually leads to more page bounce rates and reduced conversion rates, as summarized in the graphic.
Many web page visitors tend to rate websites based on the loading time. Research has also shown that many web visitors will more likely exit the site if it takes more than three seconds to load! This highlights the magnitude the loading time has on website reputation and your SEO rankings.
Now, your site’s loading time is mainly dependent on the quality of technologies invested by your web host’s servers. A good web host will increase your website’s page response by incorporating state of the art server technologies.
So, find a host that can deliver blazingly fast servers to decrease your web pages loading times and thus encourage better user experience and Google rankings.
2. Downtime
Downtime is one other sensitive issue for any website. Yes, it’s essential to reduce your web downtime to almost zero. Top-notch web hosts will give you an average of around 99.9% uptime. A poor host means at some point in time, your website will be offline and can’t be reached by visitors. This is a sign that your site is unreliable, and it will affect your SEO.
Think of this way. During downtime, the website cannot show up on the search engine. The search engine bot will thus be unable to access your site. If this happens for some time, the spider engine will start dropping your ratings. Eventually, the website’s SERP and SEO will go down. Of course, it’s impossible to hit a 100% uptime but ensure you host in a server that guarantees that you will be up almost all the time.
According to CloudEndure, 52% of the top 100, 000 websites claimed99.9% uptime. This translates to downtime of 8h 45m 57.0s in one year. This is just to say that you ought to strive to reach these targets if you are to be trusted by search engines.
3. Backups
No one, after all, would like to be hit by a data loss disaster. The worst-case scenario is if you are caught in such a situation without a backup solution. Data breaches targeting websites are growing bigger every day. For example, it’s estimated that formjacking is responsible for an average of 4,800 compromised sites in a month. If this happens to you, it will mean a loss in not only search rankings but also a potential collapse of your business.
As a precaution, you need to anticipate such unfortunate scenarios and get backup systems in place. Besides hosting service, most web hosts provide extra backup services characterized by frequent updates and appropriate redundancies. You should move your site to such a host, keeping in mind that you won’t have to subscribe to third-party subscription service or work harder to keep your site backed up. When the disaster hits, you can resume services by simply restoring your data from the hosting company backup.
Ensure you pick a good web host company that offers this, particularly if you don’t have the technical capacity to handle backups.
4. Server Location
Choosing the location of your host is vital as it gives your target audience a quick browsing experience. A server location closer to the target audience will make it easy for the search engine to redirect them to your site with ease. It is worth knowing that every single website has an associated IP address, which is related to the actual location of the website.
This implies that a local host is more suitable if your business targets the local audience. The relevant audience target gifts them with quick data and download speeds. The other advantage of this is high SEO rankings given your site will get more trust from Google.
5. Hosting Type and Security
Several web hosting companies offer shared hosting services so that multiple different companies can use the same IP address, share bandwidth, and storage location. Well, it no doubt translates to a cost-effective plan. However, shared hosting technically exposes your site to several risks, which include the slump in your site SEO ranking. Spamming is also a significant concern because this cheap service can host spammers too who can bring down your SEO ranking. Also, shared hosting may result in Google crawler taking much time and eventually becomes slow updating your website SERPs. Another case is when one of the sites on the shared IP address is getting huge traffic. The server can end up dedicating more resources to that site to your disadvantage.
Moreover, hosting security is also crucial for SEO. Thus, you need to improve on the security of your website by purchasing a suitable SSL certificate. You can search for reputed SSL certificate like a Comodo PositiveSSL that should fit with your website requirement. This increases trust from the audience, and it can help improve your SEO ranking. Google has security as one of the ranking signals that determine how high your site will rank. So, you will rank higher with SSL installed than a competitor site with no certificate. A good host will also make it easier for you to install and set up your SSL certificate, thus boosting security.
Final Remarks
In a nutshell, we hope you now know that the type of web hosting service you use plays a significant role in the SEO ranking for your website. It is, therefore, essential to choose an excellent web hosting service to improve SEO ranking and consequently improve your business. Take your time and pick a reliable host!
