When it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, the role of your hosting plan is often underestimated. While most SEO strategies focus on content, keywords, and backlinks, the foundation of your website—its hosting plan—plays a crucial role in determining its performance and ranking.
83% of online users expect websites they visit to load in three seconds or less, and 64% of online shoppers who have a poor user experience on a website will go find a different store to shop at.
We will explore seven key ways your hosting plan can impact SEO, showing why it’s important to make a careful choice:
How Does Hosting Affect Your SEO?
1. WebSite speed: The Biggest Factor To Consider
A potential customer clicks your link on Google. How long will they wait for the page to load before leaving?
If you think they’ll wait several seconds or more, you might be misjudging their patience.
Fast loading times make customers more likely to make a purchase. A site that loads in one second has a conversion rate three times higher than a site that loads in five seconds.
A study found that improving site speed by 0.1 seconds made shoppers spend almost 10% more.
Website speed is crucial for SEO. Google says that faster sites rank higher in search results. Your web hosting provider affects your website speed. Slow or unreliable servers can hurt your loading times and SEO.
This can lower your search engine ranking and reduce organic traffic.
To improve loading times, invest in fast servers, SSD storage, and a content delivery network (CDN).
2. Uptime And Reliability
Another important factor in web hosting and SEO is uptime. Frequent downtime due to hosting issues can harm your SEO efforts.
Google’s search engine crawlers need consistent access to your website to index content and determine relevance. Frequent downtime can lead to lower rankings and reduced organic traffic.
When choosing a web hosting provider, research their uptime guarantees and track record. Look for providers like AccuWeb Hosting that offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee and have a reputation for reliable server performance.
3. Geographical Server Location
When choosing a host, look at where the company’s servers are located.
Servers closer to your audience offer better site speeds, which is important for SEO. Location can also affect the data storage regulations you must comply with. Noncompliance could lead to forced downtime, impacting SEO.
To learn more about server location and its impact on website performance and SEO, refer to this blog.
4. Security Features
Google doesn’t want to send its users to risky websites.
At AccuWeb Hosting, all plans include a Free SSL certificate, ensuring HTTPS encryption is always enabled. Google values HTTPS so strongly that it’s part of its ranking signals.
An SSL certificate is crucial since Google uses HTTPS as a ranking factor. Ensuring your hosting plan includes these security features helps protect your site and maintain its SEO rankings.
5. Scalability And Resource Allocation
As your website grows, you will need more resources to handle increased traffic and content.
A hosting plan from AccuWeb Hosting that offers scalability allows you to easily upgrade your resources without experiencing downtime or performance issues.
Having the flexibility to scale your resources ensures that your site remains fast and efficient, positively affecting your SEO as your traffic increases.
6. Backup and Recovery Options
Accidents and cyber-attacks can cause data loss, hurting your website’s SEO. Regular backups are crucial to restore your site quickly if something goes wrong.
A good hosting provider like AccuWeb Hosting should include automatic backups and easy recovery options. This way, even if the worst happens, you can recover your site fast, keeping your SEO safe.
7. Technical Support
Some website hosts may leave you to handle issues independently if your website encounters trouble. However, other hosts, particularly managed hosting providers, promptly resolve your problems.
As previously discussed, unexpected downtime or performance issues can significantly impact your SEO. Therefore, the quality of technical support rather than generic customer service is crucial in hosting.
AccuWeb Hosting is recognized for its exceptional support, accessible 24/7/365 through live chat, phone support, a rich knowledge base, and ticket support for all our customers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, choosing the right hosting plan is important not just for how well your website works but also for how it affects your SEO efforts in 2024 and beyond. Make sure to keep an eye on and improve your hosting setup regularly to match the latest SEO standards and keep everything running smoothly.
