Does Web Hosting Affect Website SEO Ranking?
As of date, there are over thousands of other businesses similar to yours and it can become a challenge to get noticed is a really crowded online industry. However, you should not be intimidated because there are effective ways to stand out and rise above your competition. SEO (search engine optimization) is the answer to achieving excellent and clear online visibility.
Every detail matters a lot when it comes to SEO and one of those details that get commonly neglected is the business owner’s choice of web hosting — this is usually the last thing that they think about when planning for digital marketing strategies.
There are several factors to consider that can affect your ranking on search engine platforms, these include the use of relevant keywords, content, backlinks, SEO service provider, social media marketing, and your web hosting — falling short on this, your efforts may result to nothing.
What is web hosting anyway?
Let’s keep this straight and simple, web hosting is what allows online users to reach and view your website. Your website cannot run and will not run on its own. These hosting services are equipped with the appropriate technologies to support your website information and have it available for everyone.
Though you also need to keep in mind that getting a web hosting service would require you to regularly update and renew your services and it would depend on the duration of your subscription.
Did you know that there are about 170 million total domains online existing across the globe? This is according to a report from Host Sorter.
So how does web hosting affect your SEO ranking?
There are five ways your web hosting affect your SEO ranking, this is the reason why choosing the type of service is crucial for your business.
1. Site Reliability: Uptime and Downtime
As much as possible, you would like your website to be up and running all the time because online users may visit anytime without warning — when it coincides that your site is down, it would increase the chances of losing potential customers. Your website’s reliability is always measured in its uptime and downtime, and the latter is the amount of time it’ll be inaccessible because of problems with your web hosting’s server.
Always keep in mind that search engines place reliable websites on a higher rank to maintain credibility and quality of their search results — when search spiders crawl into your site during its downtime, your site would get flagged as unreliable, this would result to a negative impact on your SEO ranking.
Having a reliable website hosting provider ensures that your website is always up and running for online users to find they’re looking for and what you have to offer.
2. Website loading speed
According to a report from Forbes, website loading speed is significant for Google’s result algorithm because they want online users to have the best experience. Therefore, fast and responsive websites have gained search engines’ favor. Your website is also benefiting in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and it also helps your visitors navigate swiftly across your webpages which leads to an increase in page views.
Your website’s loading speed depends on two factors such as programming and the server specifications provided by your hosting provider — this is the main reason why the images and code used on your website should be optimized for viewing across multiple platforms, and on the other hand, your website should be under a hosting plan that can provide the best hardware. Your website hosting provider is responsible for supplying an excellent data infrastructure for your site.
3. Website and server security
If your website or server is not secured, it can get attacked or hacked easily which would negatively affect your SEO ranking. Imagine a hacker breaking into your website and modifies your content and you didn’t even notice it, hackers can also do a DoS (denial-of-service) attack on your server that would make it unresponsive — this would result in your website being unresponsive.
Ensuring that your website hosting service provider has built-in security is of high importance.
4. Server location
Another factor that could highly influence the performance of your website is the physical location of your web hosting’s server — this would depend on what kind of hosting you are using. Search engines always evaluate a user’s location, so when the user is in the US, the websites hosted in the said country would be ranked higher. Search engines determine the IP address (Internet Protocol address) of your website that is based on the location of your server, therefore, if your business is targeted locally in the US, then it would be advisable to get a web hosting provider whose servers are in the same location.
However, also keep in mind that if your website caters to customers outside the country, your site would also rank lower in search results abroad — so it is best to choose a web hosting plan with a CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN is the network of geographically-disturbed servers delivering content based on the user’s location.
5. Considering switching from Shared Hosting to VPS Hosting
It can be true that shared hosting is a cost-effective option but remember that most of the times, cheap things are not worth it. Shared hosting lets a provider host multiple websites on a shared server that can compromise the quality of their service.
Google, on the other hand, doesn’t prefer websites that are being hosted on a shared server because it is against SEO ethics. To add to this, the biggest disadvantage of shared hosting is spamming because these servers accept spammers as well.
These factors would help and guide you in finding a high-performing website hosting service that can actually support your SEO ranking and help you reach the top spot. If your website hasn’t been ranking as high as you’re expecting, it’s time to check on your hosting environment and make the immediate action to resolve the problem.
A website that is hosted on an unreliable hosting can lead to disaster, and so choosing the best provider is one of the keys to a successful performing website.
