4 Ways Your Web Hosting Provider Can Affect Your SEO Results

Hosting and SEO

Obtaining good search engine optimization (SEO) results is the key to running a successful online business. If you haven’t already optimized your online marketing strategy to be search engine-friendly, then it’s time to do it. Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Moz Pro are just some of the tools that you should check out for improving your SEO. You have to invest in digital marketing and SEO from the very start of your online business in order to get more exposure, reach more customers, and get organic traffic. Your online marketing strategy is essential for obtaining fruitful online results.

Many people are mistaken in thinking that SEO involves just some keywords that you put into your content, and online marketing is simply having a website for your business. However, in reality, SEO and online marketing include so much more than that. Your SEO results are going to be affected by the type of website you create, as well as the type of web hosting company you choose. 

web hosting providers SEO

Believe it or not, picking out a web host is very important for the overall results that your website will obtain in the future. Without an excellent web hosting provider, you’re also at risk of facing data breaches, poor website performance, and an unsatisfying user experience. Even though a web host isn’t a ranking factor according to Google, it has an impact on many other aspects that are actually ranking factors.

What Type of Web Hosting Provider Should You Choose?

There are four most commonly used types of web hosting providers, which are:

  • Dedicated (managed) web hosting is a web host that offers you the space on the server exclusively for your website. This means that there won’t be any other sites on the server besides yours. You’ll get to enjoy all the resources that the web host offers you without sharing them with anyone.
  • Shared web hosting is a cheap alternative for website owners on a tight budget. This type of hosting means that the server is used by different websites. So, you might be sharing the space with websites that might be spam or malware-infected.
  • VPS hosting is a Virtual Private Server. This type of hosting is somewhere between dedicated and shared web hosting. Several sites share the same server, which has several virtual machines representing the server.
  • SEO/PBN hosting is a web hosting that is specifically created for hosting your Private Blog Network (PBN). A PBN is a link-building strategy used to create authority for your main site. This grey-hat SEO technique has to be hosted by a reliable PBN hosting provider, such as Easy Blog Networks reviewed by Private Blog Network, so it’s successful and brings you a boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

In What Ways Does the Web Hosting Provider Affect Your SEO?

There are many ways in which a web hosting provider can affect your SEO. The 4 most important ones that directly affect your SEO results are:

1. Speed

Website speed is a ranking factor since 2010, and as of 2018, the website speed for mobile phones is a ranking factor as well. First of all, we’d advise you to check out the current speed of your site with this free tool by Google: PageSpeed Insights. If your website doesn’t load in less than 3 seconds, then you should fix something, or change your web hosting provider.

It’s true that the website speed is closely connected to the web host, and this is because of the resources and the quality of the servers that your web hosting provider can offer you. Unless you offer your visitors a good user experience, you won’t obtain good SEO results in the long run. In the end, it isn’t just about the search engines, but your users as well.

2. Downtime

Whenever your website experiences downtime, your business is losing revenue. According to Gartner, if your business is in the IT industry, a 1-minute downtime will cost you $5,600. So, you definitely wouldn’t want this to happen to your business, right? Your web host is entirely responsible for the downtime you experience, which can cost you money and affect your SEO results.

This is the reason why it’s important to choose a web hosting provider according to your needs from the very start. Every web hosting provider offers a certain percentage of uptime. So, the lowest percentage is 99% and the highest is 99.999%. If the web host offers you 99% uptime, then you’ll get around 4 days of downtime a year. If you choose a web host that guarantees you 99.999% uptime, then you’ll get only 5 minutes of downtime a year. So, there’s definitely a difference.

3. Security, SSL Certificate, and Backups

Your web host is responsible for the security of your website. Quality web hosting providers offer you a free SSL certificate if you choose them. If not, it’s very advisable that you add them to your site. According to Google, having an SSL certificate or HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is a must if you’d like your website to be trusted. Google identified SSL certificates as a ranking signal in 2014. To implement HTTPS, you should use robust security certificates, server-side 301 redirects, server-side 301 redirects, and support HSTS.

While it’s very important for your web hosting provider to provide you with safety and security from the very start, the hosting provider you choose should offer you the chance for backups. If by any chance you experience a data breach, the backup will keep your data. Nowadays, losing data means losing rankings, and that’s the worst marketing strategy for your business. Frequent backups and storing your data for a week is a feature that only good hosting providers offer. Make sure you choose a provider that is going to have all these perks.

4. Content Delivery Network

Choosing a web hosting provider that will offer you a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is going to be good for your business, especially if you’re thinking global rather than local. Implementing a CDN to your website means that the content will be delivered to your users in a faster and more effective way. A CDN works because it’s a network of edge servers that are located all around the world, distributing the content from your origin server. This way, traffic spikes can be easily handled and the user experience enhanced.

Conclusion

When you take everything into consideration, the hosting provider you choose affects your SEO results. It is directly connected to the speed, security, and uptime your site experiences. So, consequently, it influences your website performance, which is why you should choose wisely.