Many things can slow down a website but one of the most prominent issues is website hosting. It is something often forgotten, resulting in a website being slow.
The overall website performance is important for quite a few reasons. One of those reasons includes user experience. Furthermore, Google values user experience highly. It also considers website speed as a ranking factor. Therefore, if you have poor website speed, you won’t be able to compete with the other websites on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Let’s look at the importance of website hosting and how it can benefit your website’s SEO.
What Is Website Hosting?
A hosting provider service offers technology that allows your website to be viewed online.
This is the base of a website where all web pages are stored on a special computer, also known as a server. On this server, your web pages are connected and delivered to internet browsers such as Bing and Google. It allows users to find your website much easier through the domain.
As mentioned before, a company will often forget about web hosting because they are so involved with the development, digital marketing, SEO, and overall web design.
If you have a big budget for the design of your website, you should be willing to spend money on your hosting as well.
Another great point to make about web hosting is if you spend money on a high-quality hosting service, it can help improve your conversion rate as well as many other benefits.
How Does Web Hosting Benefit Your Business
If you want a successful business with a website, you must have a web host. Again, web hosting is usually at the back of people’s minds. Nevertheless, it is still important to have web hosting for your online presence.
To have a trustworthy web host, it needs to guarantee improved site performance, high uptime, enhanced security and effective data management. There are a few reasons why a web host is essential for your website,
Key Features For A Website Host
There are many benefits to a web host. Furthermore, they offer multiple services that ensure a hassle-free experience for business owners, allowing them to focus more of their time on their business rather than the website itself.
Some of the features that you can expect from a web hosting service include:
Email – A provider will ask a business to create their domain name. Both domain name and email accounts will be something provided.
FTP Access – This allows you to upload files from a computer to a web server. It then allows your website to be accessible through a web browser such as Google or Bing. Once a website is accessible through the internet, files are transferred to the server from your computer. This is an essential feature for a web developer.
WordPress Support – WordPress, is responsible for around 43% of all websites. WordPress continues to grow every day, with 500 websites being created every single day compared to only 60-80 being created per day for Shopify and Squarespace.
Enhanced Security – WPEngine and other hosting providers provide an SSL certificate with their services. This confirms to Google and the user that the website is safe to use.
Why Web Hosting Is Essential For SEO
When it comes to SEO, web hosting is very important. For a website to be successful, a website needs a strong and stable web host for the SEO side of things.
As mentioned earlier, there are many factors Google will look at to determine whether or not a website is a good user experience. Additionally, a website would rank much better with a good website speed compared to a slow speed.
SEO is an essential marketing technique for a business in the modern world. A business needs to rank on the first page of Google for search terms related to its business. No matter whether you are a business that offers IVA advice or you are a company that sells mens fashion, every business needs SEO to be seen by its customers/clients.
If a website does not rank on the first page of Google, it is highly unlikely it will receive any users to its website. So, why is web hosting important for SEO?
Speed
In the last few years, Google has pushed algorithm updates that punish websites for not having a good website speed. Speed is essential for a website for both the user and Google.
It is encouraged a business should invest in a good web host. If they don’t it can then result in a slow website. This impacts your organic rankings, and organic traffic, resulting in fewer leads.
A good web host will give you high website speeds and help decrease the load time of your web pages. Again, this is good because it will reduce your bounce rate, meaning users spend more time on your website.
Security
Something else that web hosting provides is security. If it doesn’t have a secure web hosting service, it can be vulnerable to fake backlinks, hackers and spam pages.
Another issue is that your website could be at risk of getting infected with malware. If your website is infected with malware, the website could be blacklisted on different search engines.
One feature that the web hoster provides is an SSL certificate. It is a security certificate for keeping the internet connection secure.
Location
This is another thing beneficial for web hosting. Ideally, if you have a business located in the United Kingdom, you want your website to be located in a UK data centre.
This is very different from a business that operates globally. They will require a CDN that offers data centres around the world, so the hosting is fast, no matter where the location is.
If you use a cheap web host, it could result in your server being located in the incorrect location. Overall, this will impact the website negatively and can have a negative impact on your organic rankings.
How Do You Encourage Clients and Stakeholders To Consider Good Web Hosting?
A good web hosting service is essential for a company’s website to perform well. If they are willing to invest in the look of a website, they need to invest in a good web hosting service, or else the website will not be visible on search engines. Speed is highly important with modern websites which is why a good web hosting service is essential for a company.
Summary
Web hosting is one of the most important things with a website. therefore, it is essential you go for the more expensive web hosting service rather than a cheaper one. Not only will it improve your website speed but you also know it is reliable and, will usually have good customer service.