Web Hosting Impacts your SEO, and Which Hosting is Best?
Web Hosting allows people and businesses to publish and display files through their website on the internet. The person providing the web hosting service is the web host. Servers store your files on different computers. When someone types a website in the browser, his computer connects with the server to access the files he wants.
Hosting a web server on your own is expensive, as you need non-stop electric supply, high-speed internet connection, and uninterrupted tech support.
So, that is when you go for a web host. Your web host provides you with tech support and takes care of hosting your website in exchange for a small fee.
Types of Hosting
There are different types of web hosting. Co-location Hosting provides you with the opportunity to host your servers in data centres for a small fee. The service provider will provide you with equipment, support, security, and bandwidth.
Cloud Hosting enables you to host your data in several interconnected servers operating in different places.
Shared Hosting is when you share a server with several other users who host their websites. Dedicated Hosting is when you have a separate server to host your website.
Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting – Impact on SEO
The obvious benefit of a shared server is its affordability. With the cost spread across different people, its price is low. It saves time as your host will manage your website and provide technical support. A shared server’s cost-effectiveness comes with a price.
Since you share a server, what your neighbours do will affect your site. Perhaps spammers and gamblers run their sites on the server you use. If Google penalizes some websites on your server, it will affect your search rankings as well.
Also, if other websites that use your server get a lot of traffic, the entire server slows down. It affects your page load speed and impacts your SEO efforts negatively. Therefore, it is necessary to choose a reputed server even if it is expensive. You can consult your SEO agency with website designing and page optimization services to suggest a good host.
Choosing a dedicated server guarantees that your SEO efforts give you returns. A dedicated server protects you from viruses, hackers, and spammers. Since you are the only one using the server, you can get a lot of traffic without the server slowing down. The price you pay for a dedicated server is worth it is easy to monitor results and make necessary changes to overcome site issues.
Factors to Consider when Choosing a Host
Server Location
Your server location affects your site’s loading speed. The closer your server is to your target audience, the faster the loading speed of the site. You might also have to consider the laws and regulations of a particular country.
What is legal in some countries might be banned in others. So it is better to host a server from the country where your target audience lives for better SEO results.
You also can use CDN (Content Delivery Network) that caches your website information to different servers. CDN considers the user’s location and connects it with the nearest CDN server. CDN helps you to increase your site speed, as it reduces the server load.
Tech Support
You have to choose a host who provides you with 24/7 tech support. When your site goes down, you need to speak to your service provider. Customer service is critically important as you will have to talk directly to support persons several times. You should know about the operating hours of your tech support team.
Also, you need to look at the various medium through which you can contact them. Support teams should have live chats, phone numbers, and email addresses.
A good host also provides tech support on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You also need to make sure that your host does not outsource support services.
You can speak to an SEO agency that offers website designing, social media marketing, and other services to help you choose the right host for you.
Automatic Backup and Other Options
Websites constantly face cyber attacks. In the worst-case scenario, you could lose all your content, photos, and your web design. You would be forced to redo all your work and might require rebranding yourself. You could lose data about the transactions that you made.
You also will lose your loyal customers, as they won’t like the new look of your site if you start from scratch. So you have to make sure that your host provides automatic backups. You also should see whether your host has multiple hosting plans.
Beginning with a shared server is fine. But when you start getting a lot of traffic, you would require a dedicated server. You don’t have to choose a different provider at that time if your host provides multiple hosting options.
Similarly, you might need several domains and sub-domains for your site in the future. Before hiring a web host, you should check whether your host allows multiple websites on a single server.