SEO Website Hosting: A Complete Guide

By:
Declan
October 17, 2022

The topic of website hosting, both in search engine optimization and general web development, can seem daunting to businesses just starting to get their bearings in the online world. Website hosting and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand in hand. If you use the wrong hosting, your website might not perform as well as it could on Google's SERPs (search engine result pages). If you use the wrong SEO tactics, your website might go nowhere fast with little traffic or conversion to show for your hard work. 

Choosing the right web hosting company can be the difference between your website being seen by all the people who want to see it or being stuck at the bottom of Google's search results. This guide will explain how to select the right SEO website hosting platform to get the most out of your SEO campaigns and attract more organic traffic to your website.

Why is Hosting Important?

Website hosting is critical to a website's success. It is the backbone of your website and makes everything work. Hosting can be used for many applications, from systems to virtual stores, blogs to websites, and can offer a wide range of benefits including site speed and security. Hosting ensures that the virtual address is accessible to the general public in a seamless manner. As a result, the customers can browse the site sections they choose when accessing them. 

The hosting service you choose will depend on what your goals are for your site, what type of site you have, and how much money you want to spend each month. There are many different options out there with various price points and features. 

Does Web Hosting Affect SEO?

Websites that function smoothly and quickly are more likely to rank higher on Google searches, and this is possible only when a website is hosted on a dependable hosting server. This is an often-asked question about web hosts' effect on SEO, and the answer would be yes. Web hosts can affect SEO in several ways—speed, downtime, security, and location; each being crucial for improving rankings online.

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How to Choose an SEO Web Hosting Provider?

Choosing the right website host will allow you to provide your visitors with a quality browsing experience. Here are some key features of an SEO-friendly hosting company.

Speed & reliability

The loading time of your website is a ranking factor. In other words, your domain can be penalized if your load time is below the norm. Since web hosting significantly affects page loading speed, you need to choose a host with a proven history of providing good speeds for you to achieve high search engine rankings.

Server location

Although uptime usually applies to when your website content is available for visitors, your server location may dictate how quickly it appears so.  If you are on a shared or virtual private server hosting plan, you are using a physical computer in an internet service provider's facility somewhere (as opposed to cloud-based hosting, where all your data live online).  Ideally, you want that company as close to most of your potential audience members as possible. The farther away they are from each other, the slower pages will load. 

Server locations may also appear suspicious to search engines - which could affect SEO performance if operated from one nation while hosted from another halfway around the globe. You can harness a content delivery network (CDN) to optimise this aspect offered by web hosting providers. A CDN refers to a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of internet content by serving it from a location near the visitor.

Uptime

A provider's guarantee of hosting uptime is arguably the most important thing for whether a provider is SEO-friendly. Uptime is the amount of time your site is up, with a higher percentage making your site less likely to go offline for an extended period and drop your site in rankings. Choosing better, more reliable hosts for your websites will increase your chance for more consistent uptime.

Find a host with an uptime percentage guarantee of at least 99.9 (or higher, if you can get it). That's the equivalent of around 1.44 minutes of downtime per day and 8.8 hours of downtime per year. It's pretty good. Just beware of any host who advertises 100 per cent uptime; downtime will always be an issue. 

Support quality

If you read the reviews, pay special attention to how people describe their support. You will likely need to communicate with a support person if your site goes down. Verify the hours of the host's support team, and find out how you can reach them. Good hosts will offer 24/7 support for no extra charge. How can I contact you? Are there any phone numbers, live chats, or email addresses? Dedicated support Twitter accounts are often available on the social profiles of web hosts who care about their customers.

Security

You have to ensure that your hosting provider has sufficient security measures to protect your site from unforeseen problems. This way, if an issue arises, it doesn't compromise the entire existence of your website on the internet. Don't hesitate to ask them if they monitor their servers for unexpected activity and whether or not they've got backup plans in case things go wrong.

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Top 3 Overall Providers

Picking the wrong web host can be expensive. You want to ensure you're taking advantage of all the perks they offer so you don't experience unnecessary downtime or costly service outages. Let's discuss the top 3 three hosting providers below!

HostGator

HostGator provides all the essential features you need at a competitive cost and offers a 45-day money-back guarantee. If you require basic business info with products, services and content on your site - Hostgator makes this as easy as possible. They provide an extensive list of how-to guides for technical assistance. Should you not find what you're looking for, phone, live chat, and email resources are also available. Unlike some other hosts, Hostgator does include support in all its packages; if simplicity is what you're seeking - this is the host for you!

Hostgator offers Windows hosting along with Linux, and they also present various ways to upgrade, including Cloud hosting; VPS Hosting; Managed WordPress; Dedicated servers etc, and their shared hosting starts from $2.64/month with a 3-year contract option too for discounts!

Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the world's most popular web hosting companies, especially among those just launching their WordPress websites. Bluehost is highly recommended by WordPress, and for a good reason too. With great rates and a beginner-friendly platform, running a WordPress website with this company will be effortless. You can certainly build other types of websites on this provider if you so wish, but it has been designed to work best with WP products - which means you're getting what you need from them without having to look elsewhere.

WP Engine

WP Engine is one of the best, if not the best, web hosts for running WordPress. Full stop. They provide a high-quality service that has been optimized just for WordPress websites. If you're looking for all the storage and speed you can get for your WP blog or online store, this is the host for you - it does come with a cost, though!

A fully managed WordPress host will run about $24 per month; then again, it comes with 1 site and up to 25,000 visits each month without any other additional costs attached.