If you’re a seasoned website owner, you probably don’t need us to tell you how important your chosen hosting plan is. The plan attached to your site will impact numerous things about it – from security to loading speeds. However, you may not be aware of how it can affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Having a strong SEO strategy in place is essential to the ongoing success of your site. Without it, you may struggle to gain visibility for your site, as search engines won’t be able to find its pages and display them to relevant searchers. Fortunately, by selecting a high-quality host, you can avoid that issue.
In this post, we’ll explain why SEO is so important. We’ll then discuss some of the ways your hosting plan can help your site rank more highly. Let’s get to it!
Why a Solid SEO Strategy Is Essential to Your Website’s Success
In a nutshell, SEO is the process of optimizing your site for search engines like Google. Those search engines categorize websites and their content, and then rank them within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Numerous factors go into a website’s overall rankings, although quality and relevance are of vital importance. A strong SEO strategy means bearing those factors in mind when creating content. There are numerous tactics you can use to improve your SEO, such as incorporating relevant keywords and increasing your number of backlinks.
Other contributors to your SERP rankings include your site's security and loading speed. Google considers websites that are secure and load quickly to be of higher quality, so it tends to rank them more favorably. This is where your chosen hosting plan begins to play a key role. Most plans will offer a range of features that impact SEO – from additional security methods to improved overall performance.
3 Ways Your Hosting Plan Can Affect SEO
A hosting plan that's unreliable or of low quality can render your SEO efforts essentially useless. It may even directly impact your ranking within the SERPs. On the other hand, a high-quality plan can help your site rise in the rankings and attract more visitors.
With that in mind, here are three ways your hosting plan can affect your SEO, and your site's SERP rankings.
1. It Can Provide Key Security Features
Whenever you're conducting business online, it’s vital to keep the potential threats in mind. Hacking attempts are constantly on the rise, and new malware is released every day. Google knows this, and will favor sites that are well secured. This is because Google doesn’t want to recommend potentially-dangerous websites to its users.
There are many ways to secure your site for search engine approval. Arguably the most important is to pick up a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, so your site transmits data over secure HTTPS connections. Since 2017, Google has flagged any site that's not using HTTPS as ‘Not Secure’. This is a quick way to scare potential visitors off, and will decrease the likelihood of high rankings.
Your hosting provider should include key security features within its plans. For example, here at Hosting.com, we offer regular site backups and SSL certificates. This makes it much easier to secure your site quickly, and means there will be less you have to do on your own.
2. You Can Maintain Faster Loading Speeds
The time it takes your site to load has a strong impact on its user experience. What's more, it can also impact your SERP rankings. As we’ve already discussed, quality is a major ranking factor for most search engines. When a site takes too long to load, that can be a key indicator of low quality.
Understandably, Google doesn’t want to recommend pages that it feels may deliver a poor user experience. As a result, loading speed is taken into account when determining search rankings, and Google has recommended that website owners take steps to speed their pages up.
One of the best ways to do that is to select a suitable hosting plan. For example, basic shared hosting often has trouble keeping up with high levels of traffic, so it isn’t the best fit for well-established websites. On the other hand, Virtual Private Server (VPS) and dedicated hosting plans can keep your pages running fast at all times.
3. You'll Experience Less Downtime
The term 'downtime' refers to periods when a system or website is unavailable to users. This is incredibly frustrating to both you and your visitors, and can be a further strike against your site’s rankings.
Therefore, you should aim for as much uptime as possible. Your hosting provider will have a direct impact on this – in fact, there's little you can do to increase uptime on your own. You'll have to rely on the reliability of your provider.
Although it would be ideal, no host can guarantee 100% uptime. However, a quality host will come pretty close. With Hosting.com, your site is backed by our 99.9% Uptime Commitment. This means your audience members will be able to visit your site whenever they like, and you won't have to face ranking penalties for downtime.
Conclusion
One of the key factors in any website’s success is its visibility. Without high placement in search engines, your website won’t be seen by nearly as many users. As such, it's vital to do everything you can to improve your site's SEO, which includes selecting the right hosting provider and plan.
Let's recap three of the ways your chosen hosting plan can affect your SEO efforts:
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It can provide key security features.
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You can maintain faster loading speeds.
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You'll experience less downtime.
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