Want to reel in millions of users when they look up something on Google? It’s likely a goal of yours to be on the first page of the search results—or even better, at the top of the list.
The lower you are from the top of search results, the harder it’ll be for you to get noticed—and there’s next to no chance of you getting seen if you slip past the first page. Sites that load swiftly and seamlessly are more likely to rank higher in Google search results, and this is only achievable if the website runs on a good hosting service.
So, does the type of web host impact search engine optimization (SEO)? The short answer is: yes–but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Different Types of Hosting
With SEO web hosting, you’ll come across different types of hosting methods, including:
- Dedicated hosting
- Virtual Private Server hosting (don’t try hosting multiple sites on the same hosting provider)
- Shared hosting
- Class C hosting (be sure to learn about the maximum hosts in a Class C)
- Cloud hosting
Whatever option you use, having a reputable host will improve your SEO results, and there are a few key things to keep in mind when evaluating hosting sites.
Fewer Server Downtimes
The first sign of an unreliable web host is frequent server downtimes. A website’s overall performance is negatively impacted by downtime, as are its search engine rankings.
Let’s take a practical approach and examine this issue–say you search for a website. Google couldn’t find it because it was offline, so the SEO of the website will ultimately suffer if the search engine cannot find it. Additionally, downtimes increase a website’s bounce rate (the percentage of people who enter a site, but leave before viewing any of the pages), which directly affects its SEO ranking.
Faster Loading Speeds
The loading speed of a page is the second element to consider while testing a web server. If a site is slow and takes a lot of time to load, it’s a problem with the web host.
There’s a popular belief that if a site needs over two seconds to load, users are more likely to move on to the next choice. As a result, the page load speed of a website is a particularly sensitive issue for SEO results. Furthermore, a website with a long load time will have a high bounce rate, directly impacting its search engine rankings. A decrease in a website’s SEO leads to lower conversion rates.
A good web host reduces a website’s load time by utilizing cutting-edge caching technology, resulting in a large number of visitors. Remember that a faster load time and more page views are directly correlated.
Better Server Location
Your server host’s physical location affects your search engine rankings, as well. The web prioritizes sites with IP addresses in the same country as the user, compared to sites with IP addresses in other countries. Choose a site host with servers in your target location to improve your website’s SEO potential.
Your website’s speed can also be affected by your IP address. If your target audience is in the country your host server is situated, those users are likely to encounter shorter page load times. This can have a positive impact on the success of your website.
Stronger Security
A weakly secured website can seriously harm your site’s SEO. Attackers can hijack your website, produce spam pages, and build large numbers of false backlinks to your website–this is something Google looks for and works to avoid ranking. By the time you successfully locate and remove the false pages, Google will have likely applied a penalty and it might be too late to reverse the damage to your site.
Weak security also raises the likelihood of your website becoming infected with malware, which can result in your website being blacklisted by web crawlers or displaying a security alert in the search engine results. Before selecting a web host, ensure that it offers security technology solutions as well as malware removal services to protect your site from hackers.
Conclusion
Avoid hosting on a shared host and consider upgrading to a better hosting solution to avoid bad SEO rankings, sudden website crashes, downtime, and longer load times. A good host will take care of all the backend reasons your website might fail, so that all you’ll need to do is focus on the actual quality of your content.