Many people do not understand just how closely linked web hosting and SEO actually are. SEO plays a very important role with regards to traffic and SERPs and this can make a big difference to how your website performs. This is also true regarding web hosting. Selecting the right web hosting provider is vitally important as selecting the wrong one can greatly affect your rankings.
Speed
Most of the experts say that the main issue with regards to web hosting and SEO is the speed at which your website is loaded. In recent years, all the major search engines have started to penalise sites, in the rankings, that are slow to load. Google were the first to do this and the others have followed suit.
This is fair enough, really, as it is all about user experience, after all, and if a website is slow to load, then it just will not keep visitors coming. This is especially true for mobile users who are probably on Wi-Fi with variable connections in regards to performance.
So, choosing a fast and reliable web hosting provider is a priority. There are some really good providers out there and you can check reviews from other users to see who consistently perform well.
Server
Another important factor is your server. You could have your own personal server or be using a shared one. A cheap hosting company may tie your site to a server shared by dozens or even hundreds of other users. Now shared servers are common enough and can work very well but if you have a lot of traffic to your site and want top performance then it may be wise to consider another choice.
Server crashes do not happen that often and are caused by a variety of reasons. It could be that the server is overloaded, not properly maintained or just old. The odd crash is to be expected but if it is happening too often, again, consider your choice of company.
Downtimes
The downtime of your website is a very important issue when it comes to the web hosting provider. This is when the site is inaccessible due to problems with the server.
The potential problem with this is that during every 24 hours, search engine spiders will try to access your site several times. If it is down, it will be marked as inaccessible. If this happens too often, also, your site will get a very poor ranking in the SERPs.
A good hosting company will assure you of at least 99% uptime, some even 99.9% and these figures are usually pretty accurate. Their reputations would not remain intact if they weren’t ! So it’s advisable to go for the highest promised uptime while taking the other factors into consideration.
We can see how important it is for SEO to choose the right hosting company. The good news is that there is plenty of quality choice if you do some research on the providers available. Even if you don’t get it right first time, you can always move onto a better company. Just make sure that you don’t get locked into too long a contract that is difficult to get out of.