Web hosting is one of the prime factors for websites to load faster. A hosting or server is a supercomputer that stores and runs a website. An SEO web hosting is the servers framed per the guidelines of search engine algorithms and ranking factors.
Website loading speed and Core Web Vitals have become key ranking factors. You might get this result frequently while doing page speed insight test – Reduce Initial server response or Poor TBT (Total blocking time).
If so, the culprit behind this issue is the web hosting. Many hosting service providers don’t care about the user experience that gets hurt if a server loads very slowly. Sometimes, web developers are also part of this.
The reason behind this is unaware of what search engines look for. Search engines care about users and their experience on any web page.
If you need to cut down the server errors or timeout notifications to your users that could impact a high bounce rate. Then, purchase a hosting that has SEO-friendly characteristics.
This article will discuss the science behind SEO-friendly web hosting and its importance for organic visibility. Also, we will let you know how to choose a web hosting that is SEO friendly.
What Is Web Hosting?
Servers are generally known as web hosting, and it’s the place where all the information, data, multimedia, and codes of the websites are stored.Â
Hosts store data on hardware (supercomputers) called web servers, which allows for easy maintenance and access by online users. These servers are located in various data centers across the globe.
Every website requires a hosting provider to reach the users who surf the web for information.
Web hosting can help access any business website, email accounts, FTP files, databases, and website builders.
Most web services will provide many kinds of hosting, each with a varied cost. It is all based on the requirements of your website. We’ve put together a list below to advise you to choose which hosting is suitable for you.
- Shared hosting
- Virtual private server
- Dedicated web hosting
- Cloud hosting
- Managed WordPress hosting
Yet, we recommend you choose a cloud hosting platform for better website performance.
Does Web Hosting Affects SEO?
Yes, web hosting has a huge impact on SEO results. Post page experience update, Google has its eyes focused on Core web vitals, HTTPS, safe browsing, mobile usability, and intrusive interstitials. In that, 3 out 5 have an impact on hosting.
Hosting is a part of technical SEO, and its mandate is to give mere attention to the same building links, quality content, and optimizing HTML tags. Website loading speed acts as more than a tie-breaker for deciding ranking positions.
The website (desktop and mobile) loading is highly influenced by hosting nature (shared/dedicated), hosting location, bandwidth, application, internal CPU, etc.
The hosting provider’s responsibility is to enhance better security, performance, 24/7 technical support, FTP Access, and cPanel.Â
A proper SEO web hosting should have the following characteristics:
- Proper SSL certificate
- Prolonged bandwidth
- Dedicated servers
- Maximum server uptime (minimum 99.99%)
- Safe browsing
- Backups
When a website is not hosted on a server that fails to provide the above benefits, it greatly impacts a website’s performance. As the usability of web pages is Google’s focused ranking factor, you should never fail to host your websites with cheap hosting service providers or plans.
How to Choose a SEO Web Hosting?
An SEO-friendly hosting helps your website 30% better performance compared to other shabby hosting sold at lower prices. Yes, you will only get a monkey for peanuts.
Here are a few benefits that you should keep in mind while choosing any hosting for your website.
High Uptime of Minimum 99.9%
Uptime is the amount of time a website is reachable and accessible to the users, and downtime is when a website is not reachable and replies with response code 5xx.
Thus guaranteeing 99.99% uptime becomes SEO-friendly hosting. What is 99.9% uptime in a year?
It is just math behind 99.9% of the minutes a website works without downtime. Let’s calculate 99.9%. Hosting that has only downtime of 525.6 minutes/year is known as 99.9% uptime hosting.
Of course, every hosting provider has to spend some time on maintenance, upgrades, and fixing errors. But, it should be less than 9 hours in a year.
This one of the basic criteria to check while choosing a SEO web hosting.
Data Centre Location:
Data centers are the physical locations where all supercomputers are stored. These supercomputers contain various servers that consist your website data.
Generally, the location data center is referred to as the hosting location.
An SEO-friendly practice is choosing the server location in or nearby the target location. This helps load your website in the server’s location faster than other sites around the Globe.
Search engines may also consider your server location suspicious, negatively affecting your SEO. There may be something fishy if you run your business in one country but use a host halfway around the world.
You can also connect CDN (Content Delivery Network) to boost the website loading in the target location, as it delivers content rapidly. Yet, Google Search Engine advocates John Mueller has mentioned that there is no SEO benefit of using a CDN.
Page Loading Speed:
Another characteristic of SEO web hosting is to have an optimal loading speed of fewer than 2.5 seconds on both mobile and desktop.
Hosting has equal weightage in fast/slow loading speed as the size of the website holds.
Website loading speed has a huge role in reducing bounce rates and increasing user experience. Visitors are more likely to switch to the next option if a website takes longer than two seconds to load.
As a result, a website’s loading time is a very important factor in determining the site’s organic visibility.
A website with a slow loading speed will put on bounce rate to the peak, and it’s against the Google ranking factors. It also makes the conversion rate touch the feet.
To increase traffic volume, good web hosts use the latest caching technologies to decrease website load times.
SEO-friendly web hosting can increase organic traffic considerably.
You can check the following tools to test the website’s loading speed.
Security:
Security is one of the key factors of a great user experience and a signal of SEO-friendly website. It’s the role of SEO web hosting to provide security and safety for the users who visit your website.
Do you know? HTTPS is a Google ranking factor. How come a web page protocol (that transfer data from one device to another) HTTP can covert to HTTPS? Just by installing an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.
It secures the private information of any user from the attack of hackers. Also, every user loves to visit any secured website and updates the Chrome setting to show only secured websites.
At the same time, hosting providers should keep updating on fixing the bugs and other loopholes in the hosting that could become prey to hackers or malicious bots.
Adequate Backups:
Another attribute an SEO web hosting should accompany is daily backups and restoration free of cost.
Humans tend to mistakes and machines do too. Either human error or any issue caused by plugins can crash the website.
On these occasions, what will you do? You won’t cry or get stressed if you have a hosting provider that takes backup of the website every day.
Just restoring the previous backup of the website can make your website live.
24/7 Technical Support:
A web hosting provider with 24/7 customer support and assisting technical issues is bliss in SEO practices.
Choose a hosting service provider who supports you anytime with valuable information and solutions.
Key Takeaways:
- SEO web hosting is a set of servers built according to the guidelines of search engine algorithms.
- An ideal hosting should reduce the initial server response time and total blocking time.
- If you need to reduce the number of server errors or timeouts that users receive, that could affect your bounce rate. Choose a hosting company that has SEO-friendly characteristics.
- Hosting is a part of technical SEO, and its mandate is to give mere attention to the same building links, quality content, and optimizing HTML tags.
- Choose the hosting with 99.9% uptime, security, a data center in your target location, backups, and 24/7 support.
