If you are about to launch your online project and are going to base your online marketing strategy on SEO, you are surely wondering what to do with hosting to achieve the best possible result. What is the best hosting for SEO?
Well, to tell it, I have invited Federico Matias Rodríguez, from Mejorhosting.es, to my blog to explain the factors that must be taken into account when choosing the best hosting for SEO.
Web Hosting for SEO
There are currently hundreds of thousands of companies or projects similar to yours. If your business is just one among many. How can you stand out? While it is a challenge to get noticed, don’t feel overwhelmed, because there are methods you can work on to help you stand out and succeed. If you’re here, you probably already know that SEO is your best friend when it comes to achieving online visibility. It is an arduous process, but free, reliable and will always be at your side to help you.
When we talk about trademark registration in USA we are not just talking about a strategy or a magic pass that will solve your problems overnight, there are several factors that can affect your ranking on Google. Of course, some of the most important are your target key phrases, backlinks, content, and the structure of your website. However, there is another factor that you should not neglect and that is your hosting provider.
Yes, while everything else may seem sufficient in your SEO strategy, if your hosting provider falls short, your efforts can take significant damage.
To explain it in a simple way, web hosting or website hosting service is what allows Internet users to view your web page. Basically it is a computer that stores your site files and shares them across the great network of networks. The companies that offer this type of service have (supposedly) the appropriate technologies to make your information available to everyone and protect it.
As you can see, it is not something to take lightly, since it is the heart of all the efforts you make to have an online presence How important is Hosting in SEO?
In a word – A LOT. We always associate SEO with content production, design, web development and optimization for mobile devices. However, we do not stop to think about the key element for users to reach our website, the r server. On which SEO factors such as loading speed or user experience depend. Let’s see what this is based on.
Optime/Down time and SEO
Maybe you’ve heard of Uptime or Downtime. If not, don’t worry, I’ll explain it to you below.
Uptime
Also known as uptime or availability time, it is a percentage over a period of time (usually considered monthly) in which your website is running without interruption.
Downtime
It is the opposite of Uptime and refers to the time that your website is offline, unreachable in a region or in the entire network.
I bet you prefer your website to be up and running all the time, at least as much as possible, so that customers can always find it available. Since when it coincides with your website being down, you lose a potential customer.
Frequent inaccessibility will lead Google to mark your website as untrustworthy. They are not going to give websites that are offline most of the time a high ranking. They want to show only the best possible results. And availability is a quality factor.
When choosing a hosting service provider, it is important to consider what their average Uptime is. Time is money, and the lower your website’s uptime, the more money you will lose. If you have problems with your accessibility, it is best to contact your provider to try to solve it as soon as possible.
If you plan to change hosting, the market is very broad, you have 1000 options. To choose one or the other, you can always look for reviews of hosting providers that have an Uptime/Downtime check like here, to be able to know for sure if what the provider says in its advertising is real.
Website speed as a key factor
As you already know, in addition to attracting your customers’ attention and being accessible, your website must also have a decent loading speed. How fast? Well, enough so that your visitor does not lose patience and interest.
The Internet can offer your visitors a wide variety of sources for their questions. If you’re lucky enough to get a click, don’t let slow loading speeds discourage your visitors.
A good hosting provider will load information quickly and allow your audience to navigate your website with ease. Customers don’t like to wait. In turn, your website will receive a good user response and improve its ranking in Google if it loads quickly.
Make sure you optimize your website correctly to offer the best possible loading speed. But… How do you do it? Here are some of the things you can do:
- Look for a hosting provider that offers caching;
- Use add-ons or plugins in the case of WordPress that implement caching on your website;
- Compress your images with tools like Tinning. You must find a balance between the quality of the image and its size, the less it weighs the better it will be but remember that a poor quality image is not positive for your site either.
- Give your images the measurements that will be used on the web, to avoid the browser having to do the resizing at runtime.
- Use the latest software.
Your server location and domain name
Have you heard of local SEO? Choosing a hosting provider with local servers for a local audience will drive more traffic to your website. Google will evaluate where your website is located and determine the relevance to that location.
Therefore, if you have chosen a provider that has data centers near your target audience, your website will be more likely to appear in the results compared to others located in another country.
If your website is local and targets users in a certain country, you must also obtain a domain from that country. So, if your website is located in Spain and your target audience is Spanish, then you must obtain a domain.es and a web hosting that has data centers in Spain or nearby.
SSL certificates (HTTPS)
Having an SSL (HTTPS) certificate is a ranking factor and this has been confirmed by Google. Most quality web hosting providers offer a free SSL certificate, so make sure you get reliable hosting.
In addition to HTTPS being a ranking factor, you will also gain greater user trust (by seeing the “green padlock” next to the URL). Your visitors will feel much safer visiting your site without the warning they receive in their browsers when websites do not have SSL. An SSL today is a necessity, especially if you work with sensitive data.
Although Google has not confirmed this, people often say that it can affect your SEO.
Basically, when you sign up for shared hosting, you use the same server and IP address with dozens of other websites, sometimes even hundreds. If some or most of those websites spam or receive penalties, that IP will be associated with “bad SEO.”
Therefore, if you are hosted on the same server and IP address with other spam websites, your legitimate website will also be affected. To avoid this, you should always go with a better hosting provider, get cloud hosting with a dedicated IP, or simply check what kind of websites are hosted on the IP address you are using with your shared hosting account.
The security of your websites and the server
If you do not properly protect your websites, or if your server is not secure enough, you can easily be hacked or attacked and this will greatly affect your rankings.
If a hacker breaks into your website, they can easily modify your content to the point where you won’t even notice. Or if the hosting provider has not sufficiently secured their server, they may perform a Dodos (denial of service) attack on the server, causing it to become unresponsive.
During my years of experience working with hosting services I have seen it all. My advice is to look for quality hosting services that can offer you all of the above. Which is better? Which one to trust? Keep these factors in mind…
Reputation
What is the reputation of the company? What do people and especially experts think about your services? Is it a cheap hosting provider with a very slow home page and outdated design?
good comments
What do your clients say? What do people have to say about your uptime percentage, services and support? Search the web for reviews, check their forums and social media pages. Do they interact with their customers and respond to customer comments or questions?
Data center
Do they have their own data center or are they just reselling services for another provider? Do they have the latest hardware adhering to best practices or do they have outdated hardware and procedures?
Experience
How many years have they been on the market? While this is not an exclusive indicator of quality, a company with several years in the industry must be doing something right, otherwise they would not survive as long.
Customer Support
How many communication channels does this company have? Do you offer 24/7 support? Is your knowledge base extensive? It’s true that if you use WordPress, you probably don’t need to constantly talk to support. The WordPress community is very large and you have plugins for everything you can think of. However, hiring a web hosting service without good support is risky, because really when an incident occurs you are completely sold. So I recommend investing in quality hosting.
Conclusion
I hope that my experience can help you find a hosting provider with which you can position your website in the best way. A web hosting provider has an important role to play in the success of your website. Although there are no hosting companies that can say they are better at SEO, by choosing a provider that is trustworthy and reputable, you can protect your website from unpleasant surprises (which also affect SEO) such as slow loading speed, loading time, downtime and security risks.
