One of the most common questions about SEO is whether the web hosting you choose will affect the rankings of your website.
Though you might have heard this question before, it is an important one. If you run one or many small business websites, you should definitely enlighten yourself on this topic. When you build a website, you aim to rank it on the first page of Google search results for clicks and lead generation. There is simply no point in having a website that people cannot find. That is exactly why the question of whether hosting affects website ranking becomes very pertinent.
Without much ado, let us first take a look at the key hosting factors that can affect the SEO of your business website:
Page Speed
The importance of page speed or page load time in the context of website SEO is well-known to everyone. If you plan to rank your website at the top of search engine result pages, you should make sure the website loads as fast as lightning. Slow page speed will certainly affect your SEO.
Therefore, you should choose a web hosting, which offers the bandwidth you need. If the bandwidth is less than what you need, the speed of your website will be slower and take a toll on search rankings. When it comes to web hosting, you will come across multiple plans to select from. The point is to select an ideal plan as per the specific needs of your website. If your website gets a great deal of traffic, sharing hosting will not fit in with your needs. As a result of this, your website will load very slowly and the rankings will be affected.
This is for you to decide whether you should go for shared hosting, a dedicated server plan, or a virtual private server. To find out which one is the best web hosting for your website, reach out to our local marketing company in and near Scranton, PA, and talk to one of our expert webmasters.
Web Hosting Limitations
One type of web hosting varies from the other in terms of limitations. Before you opt for a specific hosting plan, you should definitely check out what kind of limitations you will be dealing with. Does the web hosting service provider give you access to their own .htaccess files? These are very powerful files that enable you to control and manage all the high-level configurations of your website. Not having this access will mean a great deal of trouble in running the website.
So, remember to take a closer look at the limitations that your chosen web hosting plan offers. If the limitations obstruct all those things that you want to do with your website, you could face SEO issues.
Server Location
In modern-day SEO, the location of your hosting server matters a great deal. Based on the server location, the loading speed of your website might get affected. It can even affect the search rankings of your website.
For your website to load fast, the person visiting the website should be as close to the data center as possible. If you operate a business that is specific to a particular state or country, you should host your website in the same location. Research in this regard suggests that an IP address that belongs to a different country than the country where you operate can affect the search engine rankings of the website. So, before you choose a web hosting solution, make it a point to find out where it is located and how far or close it is from your place of business.
Downtime
The web hosting service you select should be reliable. You cannot host your website on a server that has frequent downtime.
If your website or blog is down often, this will send a very wrong signal to search engines. This is because people will not be able to find or access your website for the time period it is down. When a search engine fails to find your website, it will degrade the search rankings of your website.
The bounce rate of your website will go through the roof. The overall performance of the website will be affected. Therefore, choose a web hosting service that offers 99.9% uptime to get the best results and rankings.
Have a Question?
If you do not have much experience with how web hosting works, you will have a hard time choosing the best web hosting.
To make the right decision, you should seek the help of experts. Evolve Local Marketing often helps a wide range of small businesses and entrepreneurs pick the most ideal and SEO-friendly web hosting service. Feel free to talk to one of our specialists and gain more clarity on different types of hosting.
For your free consultation, you can give our local marketing company in and near Scranton, PA, a phone call or write us an email.