Recently, experts in this field have started emphasizing the fact that not paying enough attention to this critical factor may have extremely negative consequences on the accessibility and ranking of your website. Also, the extent to which it can enhance your traffic and conversion rates should not be neglected.
Hence, it is vital to tackle this topic in detail and explain why web hosting deserves your attention and commitment.
Website hosting is important
Once you decide to create a website, you have to make a wise choice of the company that will host it. This choice will primarily help you boost your rankings and reach the widest target audience possible. If you want Google to help you stand out in the severe competition of similar websites, web hosting is something you need to focus on.
SEO-friendly website hosting key features
When SEO-friendly website hosting is in question, here are the features to look for before you make the final choice.
Satisfying speed
High speed is something all internet users value greatly. Ideally, it should take no more than two seconds for a website to load. Understandably, this loading speed is not something everybody can achieve easily, but you should strive hard to at least come as close to it as possible by optimizing for Google’s latest speed update.
A slow website is never among the top search engine results because neither Google nor users give advantage to it over similar websites.
99.9% uptime
High demands and serious efforts to meet them guarantee success. Uptime should not be compromised upon. Select the right website hosting provider, because downtime can kill your business.
High downtime signals problems with the server your website is hosted on. When search engines visit your website during downtime, they detect the problem and move on to the next site. If this happens frequently, your website is perceived as unreliable, which will have negative effects on your rankings. Thus, this speaks volumes about the importance of website hosting for SEO.
Technical SEO for laymen
Technical SEO is a growing sector in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) today. It involves finding SEO solutions based on the why and how search engines and websites work.
Impeccable website security
The only strategies that make websites secure are Proper and Regular maintenance. These have a positive effect on SEO. Failure to do these encourages hacking activity involving the use of a web site’s traffic to post nefarious content. Pornography and gambling are amongst these. To encourage website security, search engines such as Google have imposed security standards (HTTPS) and penalties.
Consider only hosting services that offer proactive maintenance practices and will inform early concerning necessary updates and outdated components.
Automating backups
A key feature of SEO-friendly website hosting is automatic backups when websites have been hacked or do not work properly. It is common sense to select a host that can provide you with functioning problems and backups at all times.
Easy, inexpensive changes to website hosting
Continuous growth and development are what owners want. With growing success businesses change and so do their needs. Modifying a website hosting package because of growth is a requirement. Host providers that guarantee the right to change service packages when necessary without excessive expenses or difficulties to the normal functioning of a website, are the right choice.
Location of the hosting server matters
Search engines tend to base their rankings on more than just content marketing. One such factor is the location of the server a website is hosted on. This information is provided by an IP address. This means is that search engines give the advantage to a particular website over other similar websites when the user is located in the same place as the server of the company that provides the hosting service.
If a person in Europe is searching the internet, a site will rank higher in search engine results if the server is located in Europe. Another factor is the proximity of a server to the user. This can reduce latency boosting the perceived speed of a website.
It is possible to rank high in a country with the server located in another. This requires considerably more effort and hard work.
Selecting reliable website hosting service providers
Final decisions require detailed analyses of several key parameters:
- How long the web host is in business – Years of experience usually provide better services.
- Reputation among clients – Check online reviews. Customers’ experiences indicate the reliability, professionalism, and competency of web hosts.
- The Secure File Transfer Protocol – A web host offering Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) means files are fully protected from being modified or intercepted by third parties.
- A Secure Sockets Layer certificate (SSL) – This is critical for website security and the protection of sensitive information. This certificate encrypts the path between a server and a browser.
- A web host must provide all the factors that can improve SEO to boost the ranking of a website.