Can your website hosting plan affect SEO? Absolutely.
When it comes to SEO, one of the last things people consider is the web host – but your choice of provider can matter a lot.
Why? Because your hosting service and the plan you choose can greatly influence the performance – and ultimately the traffic levels – of your website.
In this article, you’ll learn how your web hosting can affect your search engine rankings and how to choose a plan that will actually improve your SEO.
How Your Hosting Service Can Affect Your SEO
It’s a well-known fact that Google takes page speed into consideration as part of its search engine rankings. It should go without saying, then, that a website that loads quickly and smoothly is going to rank higher than those that do not. And your website CAN’T achieve optimal performance without a great website hosting provider.
Here’s why:
- Site speed: Having a slow-loading host, or a host that can’t meet your website’s need for bandwidth and data, can lead to a poor user experience. Think about the last time you really wanted to check out a website and it wouldn’t load: not fun, right?
If your website doesn’t load quickly, visitors aren’t going to sit around and wait – they’ll just leave. In fact, most visitors won’t wait more than 2.8 seconds.
It’s a double whammy because Google is going to dock you for both slow load times and a high bounce rate. Then, the slump in SEO will lead to even less traffic.
- Server downtime: What’s worse than having a slow-loading website? Having a website that doesn’t load at all!
If your server suffers from frequent downtime, it’s a sign that you have a non-reliable web host. It’s also a sign that you’re not going to show up in online search results.
Think of it this way: if Google gets a query of relatable content for your website, then directs a web user to that address, only to find that it’s down – it’s not going to look good for you. Again, it will both damage your website’s SEO and increase the bounce rate.
To avoid any issues, look for a website hosting provider that guarantees an uptime of at least 99.9%.
- SSL certificates: These days, trust is of the utmost importance. And it’s no wonder, with huge multi-national companies getting hacked almost daily.
Your website visitors want to know that their information will be kept safe and protected when they do business with you. Likewise, Google wants to know that you’re going to keep your visitors’ information safe and protected.
So, how do you let both visitors and search engines know that your website is secure? Install an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate will encrypt the connection between your server and your visitors’ web browsers. It makes it so hackers and other malicious users can’t intercept confidential information while it’s being exchanged between visitor and website.
Not only will it up the trust factor between you and your audience, but it will increase your SEO to boot.
How To Choose the Right Web Host
Fact: not all website hosting providers are created equal. It would be a mistake to just sign up with any company without doing research first. Many providers – especially those that market themselves as ‘bargain’ options – don’t provide basic features like malware protection or automatic updates.
When it comes to website performance, the best option is to sign up for a dedicated hosting plan or VPS. Both offer a guaranteed allotment of resources, eliminating many of the performance issues that are common with a shared hosting plan. In addition, both services help keep your website safer and more secure than they would be in a shared environment.
Hosting Makes a Difference
Website hosting can make or break your SEO. A bad host will lead to poor site performance and slow load times, while a good one will offer a great user experience.
If you think your web hosting may be negatively impacting your website’s SEO, give InMotion a try. We offer best-in-class web hosting with unparalleled speed and reliability, proactive security, and built-in SEO guidance. Come see what a difference a great web host can make!
