What is SEO and Hosting? What is the best Hosting Service for Your Website
If you're like most people, your thoughts turn immediately to keywords, text and of course, backlinks. In terms of technical aspects there's a chance you're familiar with factors like site layout and mobile friendly.
Hosting can have a big influence on the speed of your search results however, many companies don't consider hosting as a part of their SEO strategy. It's a mistake choosing the right hosting service will improve the search engine ranking of your site, decrease your bounce rate, and drive sales.
This article demonstrates how hosting can affect SEO and how you can pick the appropriate web hosting service for your website.
What is the reason why SEO so Important?
The short answer is yes. SEO is among the most crucial methods you have to use to advertise your business.
Why?
Firstly, because they are the place where consumers are. In search of information regarding the product they wish to purchase, 55% of buyers use search engines. Also that there are users on Google to find similar products as ones you have. SEO helps you get into the search results.
It's not enough just to rank on page 2 of results, or at the halfway point of the first page. Many searchers do not scroll all the way down. 28.5 percent of all users click the first Google result. The second spot gets 15.6% of traffic, and the third gets 11%. The 10th position only receives 2.5% of searchers to click on it, and very few gets to the next page.
How Does Hosting Affect Your SEO?
Here are some ways the host you use can impact the search engine's performance.
Site Speed and Load Times
A potential customer finds you via Google and clicks on the hyperlink. How long do you think they'll take for the site to load before abandoning the page before choosing another outcome?
If you told them they'd be patient for a couple of seconds or longer, you might be overestimating their endurance.
Having a fast site can increase your position on the search engine results page. What do we know? Because Google stated it in. Google first recognized speed of sites as a ranking factor in 2010, (and continues to mention the issue to the present day).
And this is just the beginning of the ways hosting can affect SEO.
Sure, your choice of web hosting isn't only one element that could affect your website's speed and loading time however, it's by far the most significant one. If you've managed to get rid of various other aspects like caching and minifying JS, investing in higher-quality and more efficient hosting will give quicker loading times and earn you more visitors and more conversions.
Server Downtime
Nobody wants their site to be down.
Most likely, you've realized that server downtime will cost your business. It's possible that you'll lose sales during the time the site is not operational. There's also your reputation to take into consideration If a visitor visits your website when it's offline, they may consider you insecure and may not return.
Location
If you're deciding on a hosting provider, look at where the servers of your company are.
Servers nearer to the vast majority of your customers will provide higher speeds for your website and are essential to SEO. Location can also affect the rules regarding storage of data that you need to adhere to. It is important in search engine optimization since the non-compliance can result in forced downtime.
Another factor that's based on your location is your domain's name (which doesn't have to be provided by your hosting provider, but is usually). Google has verified that all domain extensions are equal for SEO- you can feel at ease choosing .pizza instead of .com if that works for your company.
Country extensions can be a different story. If you're employing the .fr domain, for example, Google will geotarget your site for France. This is likely to rank higher when it comes to search engine results in the country than others.
The type of hosting
As you look into hosting providers, you'll see the wide variety of costs and a lot of different terms like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and managed hosting. If you're new to hosting websites, things can be complicated.
There are several kinds of hosting available, and which one you select will affect your SEO. Let's look at some types of hosting for websites you could see and how they affect SEO.
Free
These options might be acceptable as a personal site however they're not ideal for SEO or your personal branding. It is not possible to have your own domain name, and your site won't be able to cope with high traffic.
You can find an affordable shared plan that costs just a couple of dollars per month -- a fee that pays off when it comes to SEO.
Shared
The shared hosting system helps to keep costs down by splitting resources. Like the name suggests, the user who is with a shared hosting account must share resources with others on the same server.
While shared hosting is an ideal way for new site owners to begin however, it does have its disadvantages for SEO. If you share your server with other sites these sites could affect the way your site performs. In the case, for instance, if one of the websites on your server gets significant traffic growth this could slow down your site down and affect search engine optimization.
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
dedicated
Hosting on a dedicated server is exactly what it says -- the whole server is dedicated for you. This means you will have more uptime as well as faster speeds. You also have complete control over your server's settings, so you can make sure your site will perform efficiently.
Cloud Hosting
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If one of the servers is experiencing issues, other servers on the network will take over. Cloud hosting can be a great option for guaranteeing an extremely high level of uptime. This helps with SEO. If you're equipped with the skills to configure it correctly, it's also one of the top methods to build a quick-loading web page.
But, it's difficult to get something similar to WordPress up and running if you've never done previously.
Managed Hosting
If the technical aspect of managing a website isn't your forte -- or if you aren't able to tackle itdo you think it's time to call professionals?
It's slightly more expensive than shared hosting but still affordable for the majority of medium and small-sized companies. The speed of your website, its downtime, and other performance factors will be better when you have the support of your web hosting company.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that only visit only one webpage and do not take any action from your website. Also that they bounce without doing anything.
While not an official ranking factor, it could frequently be a sign of a low dwell time which is a crucial Google ranking factor in 2022. Basically, if a large portion of users quit your website and then return to Google is a sign that people don't find your content relevant to what they are looking for. And since Google wants to provide appropriate content, they'll begin making you appear less relevant when that occurs.
Enhancing your bounce rate as well as dwell time is an essential element of SEO that is technical. A lower bounce rate means that more visitors are at your website and engaging with it. This could lead to more sales.
What does this have to have to do with hosting? The high bounce rate could be caused by a slow site or server failure -- factors affected by the choice you make for a web hosting service.
Security
Google isn't looking to expose its users to dangerous websites.
The level of support
For some hosts, you're mostly at your own risk If your website is experiencing problems. Other hosting companies (especially managed hosting services) are quick to resolve your issue.
What Should You Consider When Choosing the Right Host for SEO
You now know the impact of hosting on SEO and why your choice of server is a very underappreciated SEO factor. What do you do to choose a host that will increase your traffic, rankings as well as conversions?
As you look for hosting, keep these factors in your mind.
Type of Host
Do you wish for a low-cost hosting solution using a shared host, or do you want the higher performance of a VPS service? Be sure to know the sort of hosting service you're signing up for.
Pricing Structure
Cost of hosting plan doesn't affect your search engine optimization, obviously yet it's something to consider.
Does it make sense to pay a bit more for a solution that will aid you in climbing the Google results page, or will you go for the cheapest option and invest into a different aspect of SEO?
A lot of major shared hosting solutions offer a very low price upfront that is as low as $2.75 per month. If you're enticed by the low price, be sure that you understand the exact value you'll get for your money.
So, for instance, will selecting a standard plan reduce the amount of bandwidth available or restrict your traffic? Do you get any other benefits that could affect your SEO, like security options? Are all of the company's customer support options available to those with the lowest-tier plan?
Be aware of the cost after your first year on the service, as it usually increases after the initial contract.
Accessible Help
It's the early hours of the morning You realize that your site's down. It's losing sales to overseas customers every minute, and you're worried about your SEO. Does your hosting service have an online customer service right now?
Do you have a team of hosting professionals constantly monitoring your website?
CDN
A CDN operates by caching static resources like photos, CSS and JS files as well as web fonts and much more at data centers around the world. The creation of this cache accelerates the delivery of content and helps make your website load faster. It accomplishes this by cutting down the distance that physical components need to travel for data to move. It can also help lower the time until firstbyte (TTFB) which is the measure of the time a web browser must wait to receive the first bit of data through the servers.
The result is a speedier website; as you know by now, site speed is essential for optimizing search engines.
A CDN increases uptime as well because the content is replicated available across multiple servers at various areas. When one server fails, traffic is rerouted to another. As a further SEO bonus, some CDNs also offer security functions.
What is the best way to switch hosting companies to get better SEO
Many of you are beginning your journey as webmasters. You have the opportunity to select a speedy and reliable website host from day one.
However, the majority of people who are reading this probably already have sites. What do you do if you find that your host isn't cutting it? Moving to another host hurt your search engine performance?
It is Google's John Mueller has addressed the issue. When you first migrate to a new hosting provider, Google will slow down the speed at which it crawls your website. It could impact SEO. However, it's temporary. Mueller says:
"Over time, after our systems have determined that speeding up doesn't create any issues and we're able to speed it up, we'll do so again. This is independent of the nature of the hosting changes you make. It's not a matter of changing providers further down the line or making a move to a different country."
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Summary
Most companies choose a website host on the basis of factors such as cost and bandwidth, without thinking about the search engine optimization.
It's a major error (as you probably see now that you understand how hosting impacts SEO). Hosting isn't often mentioned as a factor in SEO, but it can dramatically impact your ranking or traffic as well as the conversion rate. Google doesn't really care about which hosting service you choose to use, however it will be concerned with factors such as speed of your site and reliability, uptime of servers as well as security, all of which can be directly affected by the choice you make for your hosting provider.
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