On today’s web, you have to be at the top of your SEO game all the time to keep visitor traffic flowing to your site. SEO (search engine optimization) means tailoring your website to appear as high as possible in search results from major players like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.
Ideally, when someone searches for a keyword that’s relevant to your business, you want your site to be on the first page of results. You’ll want to consider these factors as you choose a web host, as they can impact SEO in various ways.
1. Page Speed
If a website is slow and takes much time to load, it is absolutely counted as a lack at the web host’s end. Head of Google’s Webspam Team, Matt Cutts, also highlighted the effect of page load time on website performance here.
It is a universally acclaimed fact that if a website takes more than two seconds to load, visitors are more likely to switch to the next possible option. Hence website’s page load time is a very sensitive factor for its reputation.
Moreover, a website with a high load time will get a high bounce rate that affects directly its search engine rankings. The slump in a website’s SEO results in a lesser conversion rate.
A good web host decreases a website’s load time by using the latest caching technologies that result in a high volume of traffic. Remember, decreased load time means more web views.
Some of the best online tools to measure page load time are:
2. Hosting Limitations
Some web hosts have weird limitations. I had one client who hosts on a platform that doesn’t give them access to their own .htaccess files. They had a limit of 1,000 redirects they can do when, in theory, that should be unlimited.
Again, this doesn’t necessarily affect SEO on its own – but it could, depending on what you’re trying to do with your website.
Make sure your host can handle all of the normal, day-to-day things you want to do on your site.
3. Downtime
The term ‘downtime’ refers to periods when a system or website is unavailable to users. This is incredibly frustrating to both you and your visitors and can be a further strike against your site’s rankings.
Therefore, you should aim for as much uptime as possible. Your hosting provider will have a direct impact on this – in fact, there’s little you can do to increase uptime on your own. You’ll have to rely on the reliability of your provider.
Although it would be ideal, no-host can guarantee 100% uptime. However, a quality host will come pretty close. With GetHost Web Hosting, your site is backed by our 99.9% Uptime Commitment. This means your website visitors will be able to visit your site whenever they like, and you won’t have to face ranking penalties for downtime.
4. Location
With CDNs like BunnyCDN and Cloudflare, host location matters a lot less these days than it used to.
Where this still matters though is on the legal side and international side. If you want to do business specifically in China or Australia, for example, it’s best to host the site in China or Australia.
If you want to do anything that’s illegal in some countries but not in others (like bitcoin mining, or sports betting, or lottery), make sure you don’t host in those countries.
Again, these things aren’t really SEO but could definitely throw a wrench into your SEO plans
Final Words
One of the key factors in any website’s success is its visibility. Without high placement in search engines, your website won’t be seen by nearly as many users. As such, it’s vital to do everything you can to improve your site’s SEO, which includes selecting the right hosting provider and plan.
