How Does Website Hosting Affect Your SEO Results?

Ever since a decade, every year has seen a wide rise in digitalization. Websites are becoming an important aspect of all businesses. Regardless of the industry or the size of the company, almost everyone wants their websites to be ranked on the first page of search engines with suitable SEO planning.

The websites that are listed on the second page of search engines or any other search engine are not so likely to receive any traffic. Hence, to make sure that a website gets listed on search results, companies must spend considerable resources in terms of money and time. This helps in improving the SERP rankings considerably.

In addition, there are many factors that affect the SEO planning of a website and addressing all of them takes a lot of time. More importantly, the SEO efforts lead to good results with consistent planning and implementation of digital marketing strategies.

One of the important factors that can immediately help the SEO results to be favourable is a smooth operating website. Users today want websites to be quick and reliable so the search engines are not going to show websites that are not. The thing that affects the speed, reliability factor and security of a website is called web hosting.

Let us look at what web hosting is and what is its relevance in SEO?

What is Web Hosting?

Website hosting is basically the storage space or the internet hosting where a website data is stored in the web servers and accessed by users using the internet. In essence, web hosting enables your website to be accessible for all users on the internet.

On the basis of your requirements, you can choose different web hosting. This hosting cost can vary on the basis of disk space, data transfer limitations, and many other factors as well.

Working of Web Hosting

Have you ever wondered about what happens in the backend of a computer system when you search any website? Basically, when you visit a website, the server request is sent through the internet from your computer. The request is further sent to the server where the website is being hosted.

The server responds to the user in return with the requested data and further displays it on the computer system as well. Using the internet, you are interacting with the webserver for fetching information. For all actions taken by you on the website, the data gets fetched from the hosting server and is displayed for you.

In case the server is slow or if it is taking some time to respond then the website may be loading slowly at your end. It is best to choose the server type on the basis of the traffic that you receive to your business website. The server response rate is a factor that is responsible for deciding the website loading speed on the user’s computer.

Three Types of SEO Hostings

There are three primary types of SEO hosting that are mentioned below:

1. Shared Hosting 

In case you are beginning with one or smaller websites, a shared hosting plan can be suitable. It is basic and is geared towards small businesses. Just as the name suggests, shared hosting requires you to share resources with other customers which means the website performance will not be the quickest if you choose this.

In case those with other customers use many resources, it can affect how fast your site loads. Many plans claim to offer unlimited resources but they are not unlimited. Once you use too many resources, they will disrupt your speed to a crawl.

In case you are competing to get ranked for high competition keywords then speed and stability make a difference and shared hosting is not enough. In addition, shared hosting slows down things further if you have high levels of traffic. So shared hosting is the right option only when you are learning and testing but not for large scale SEO projects.

2. Virtual Private Server (VPS)

This is the next step in terms of performance and cost. Using a VPS, you are basically still sharing servers with other customers. The main difference is that you have some resources dedicated to your sites so that the website is not affected even when other customers are using many resources.

The overall quality of a VPS can differ between hosts. You can compare the bandwidths and disk space available on each plan for getting an estimate of how much traffic the plan can support. The good thing about a VPS is that it is easy to scale up. Some hosts also offer auto-scaling up the resources to your sites if it is needed.

3. Dedicated Servers for SEO

A dedicated server is completely independent in nature. You have root access to it and you can put as many sites as you want on it. Make sure that the quality varies based on the kind of plan and host that you choose.

Unless you have many visitors in just a month, a dedicated server is mostly likely overkilling. However, if the budget is not an issue for you then this kind of server is the best choice for your SEO plan.

The dedicated servers for the SEO plan will make sure that you get the best results from your search engine optimization efforts. So you can consider buying this one if budget is not a problem.

Common Results of Website Hosting on SEO

1. Website Loading

The website loading time comes with the capability to affect the user experience directly. In case your website is not loading within two to three seconds, the users are likely to bounce off the website which is hampering your SEO planning.

It is possible to improve the website speed by reducing the media files or by compressing the images on your website. However, nothing can impact the speed of a website as web hosting possibly can.

Many times, it becomes difficult to reach the two seconds goal with the standard shared hosting. This means that you must consider Cloud Hosting or Virtual Private Serves for improving the loading speed of your website. A quickly loading website does not just delight the users but also has a significant impact on the SEO.

2. Server Downtime

Another important factor controlled by website hosting that ends up affecting your website’s SEO is server downtime. In case the website continues to suffer from frequent downtime then it is necessary to change your web hosting. Bad downtime is a sign that web hosting is not reliable.

The downtime does not just affect the website performance but it also affects the SEO. For instance, a potential customer enters a search enquiry that is suited for the products or services you offer, but the crawlers won’t find your websites because it is down. This leads to losing the customer and degrading the website’s SEO.

Frequency in downtime can also flag your website as unreliable and it leads to your website’s ranking being downgraded as well. Hence, it is important that you choose web hosting that is reliable and can also ensure uptime.

3. Location

This is one factor that was not so crucial a decade ago but today the location of web hosting servers can have a direct impact on SEO. With so many websites offering similar services, the search engines prioritise the website based on the location of a specific search question.

For instance, if a search query is made for a product in India, a website that is located in India is likely to be shown first. There is no doubt that this system has a prominent downside because users from other countries cannot find your website for the same keywords.

However, this also opens up many new avenues for your business as you can focus on a location and ensure that you’re getting ranked quickly. Moreover, the location of a server can also have an impact on the loading speed of the website.

When the distance between the users and server is more, the website takes a high time to load. For this reason, some hosting providers offer CDN or Content Delivery Networks that ensure that the website speed is not hampered regardless of the location.

4. Security

Other than the speed and reliability of the website, security is another factor that impacts the website’s SEO. Google and other prominent search engines are increasingly giving preferences to sites that are more secure. For instance, the websites with SSL certificates are an example of the extent to which a website is important for SEO planning.

The security features provided by website hosting service providers are necessary for ensuring the overall security of a website. One must choose hosting service providers with a good track record and the ability to offer the latest security features. In case the website is supposed to get hacked, it can have long term effects on search engine rankings.

5. Technical Support 

Regardless of whether you have in house IT support or not, constantly available tech support offered by the website hosting provider is always required. In case the domain gets hijacked or the website goes down, you will need quickly available support.

A credible and hard-working team can offer all the support that you need to ensure that your website is running properly. A well operating website with no problems can have a lasting positive impact on SEO.

Conclusion

There is a significant amount of competition that prevails across all industries at the present time. In this scenario, a high rank on search engines should be a prime priority. There are many methods that can be used for boosting your SEO and most of them take time before showing any real impact.

That said, all businesses must do all that it takes to create a positive effect on SEO planning and implementation. This ensures better ranking and web authority. A better website hosting provider can be the first step for getting SEO friendly web hosting.

If you want any more suggestions on how to improve your SEO and which web hosting suits you the best, feel free to get in touch with our experts at Encaptechno.