Does Web Hosting Affect SEO? Pick The Best Host

Let’s find out how web hosting affects SEO and which hosting provider is best for your business.

Quick answer: web hosting has a massive impact on your SEO. You might be wondering how web hosting can affect my SEO efforts. If you’re a beginner planning to build a website or blog, you are probably looking for the best web hosting provider that makes it easier for you to rank your content higher in search results.

Whether you already have a website or looking to build one, make sure not to fall for the misinformation on the internet. A web hosting provider can’t promise a ranking boost. However, using the right solution will give you the support you need to build a sound online presence. Let’s talk more about this!

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How Does Web Hosting Affect SEO?

When we talk about web hosting, the first thing that we must consider is the performance of a website. Does web hosting have an impact on your website’s performance? Yes, it does. This is why you can’t just randomly pick a solution. It’s like a key component of your online foundation. To further explain this, let’s take a quick look at factors that you should consider when choosing a web host:

I’ve been using Cloudways since January 2016 for this blog. I happily recommend Cloudways to my readers because I am a proud customer.

1. Page Speed

Many experts are of the opinion that web hosting is probably one of the most overlooked factors when it comes to page speed. We all understand that page speed is a ranking factor. If you pick a solution that doesn’t meet your bandwidth needs, your website speed could be affected. You don’t want your visitors to wait forever to load your pages. Do you?

So, make sure to select the right product and plan that fits your requirements. For example, choosing a shared plan isn’t a good idea if you want to build a big blogging site or a news site that demands a large hosting bandwidth. Shared plans come with limited bandwidth that doesn’t support high traffic volume. A cloud-based scalable hosting option could be a good choice in that case.

You might have a question: “how fast should your site load?” From both SEO and user experience standpoint, your web pages shouldn’t take more than 2 seconds to load – Google recommended page load time is under 2 seconds. This is where it becomes clear that web hosting affects SEO.

Your users are highly likely to bounce from your site if your page load time goes from one second to six seconds. If you already have a site, be sure to analyze its speed and make the necessary changes. If your web host isn’t providing you with enough support to achieve your SEO and site performance goals, consider changing your plan. Use PageSpeed Insights to test your website’s speed.

2. Server Downtime

Server downtime simply means a drop in rankings, traffic, and ultimately, sales. A short server outage may not affect your SEO, but search engines don’t like to send traffic to sites that are down. If your website goes through server downtime frequently, then your web host isn’t reliable. Downtime badly impacts your site’s overall performance. In other words, the quality of web hosting affects your SEO.

On top of that, your SEO efforts go down the drain when Googlebot finds that your site isn’t up and running. When search engines don’t find your site, it will degrade your site’s SEO. Besides, the rise in bounce rate directly affects your authority.

So, be sure to get a solution that ensures maximum uptime for your site. While the internet and cloud can go down, you should focus on picking a dependable hosting company that minimize your downtime

3. Hosting Limitations

Some web hosting solutions come with limitations that make things difficult for website owners. For example, a limited number of redirects and no access to your own files are a couple of limitations. However, limitations don’t always influence your SEO but they could, based on the goals of your website. Just keep things simple: choose a host that can handle your day-to-day website operations with ease and without any weird limitations.

4. Location

Host location doesn’t matter a lot with CDN’s like Cloudflare and Akamai. However, it matters when we look at it from a legal standpoint. For example, if you want to do a business that is illegal in some countries but not in others, avoid hosting in those countries. For instance, selling marijuana or sports gambling is illegal in some countries.

You might be thinking about how the hosting location would impact my SEO. Server location plays a key role in providing your website visitors with a fast browsing experience. If your server location is close to your target audience, your audience will experience faster redirection. Hence, as a website owner, you should understand that hosting location does affect your SEO.

Some businesses like eCommerce stores target a local audience as they sell their products or services to the local market. If you’re targeting a local audience, go with a local host. It will lead to good SEO rankings and relevant traffic.

Let me explain how it works. Google prefers to connect an Australian user with an Australian website. Your server’s IP address influences how your website is placed on search results. Also, you get a small boost in web page load time if your server location is close to your audience. On the other hand, a distant server location slows down the process of fetching data.

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Is Choosing Shared Hosting A Good Idea?

So many people watch out for cost-effective solutions when it comes to building or hosting a site. Shared hosting may sound like a cheap solution. But I will not recommend you to go for that option. Cheap hosting plans are not good if you really want to dominate search results in the future.

A shared host is when you host multiple sites on a shared server, which ultimately affects the quality of hosting. Besides, Google doesn’t like websites hosted on a shared server: shared hosting is against SEO ethics. Not to mention, spammers prefer to get shared hosting because it fits their needs.

Most importantly, shared hosting doesn’t ensure the speed, reliability, and scalability you need to generate great SEO results. Lack of security is also one of the disadvantages of hosting your site on a shared host.

Don’t Forget To Use Geo-targeting In Search Console

How you reach the right people on the internet will determine your online success. Google Search Console helps you target the right audience globally regardless of your server location. Local domains such as .uk or .au automatically grab the attention of relevant audiences.

However, you need to identify your target country in the search console if you’re using a global domain such as .com.

Final Words

There are several aspects of hosting that impact your SEO. Your website performance is probably the leading factor that must be considered when picking a host. A site hosted on a poor host is not going to help you meet your SEO goals. So, get ready to power your website with an incredible hosting solution. Get rid of poor SEO rankings, downtime, or sudden website crashes once and for all.

Don’t forget to check out Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting platform that ensures better SEO rankings, decreased load time, and 99.9% uptime.