For your website to rank higher and attract more traffic, you need proper SEO, while it is equally important for your hosting company to contribute to your SEO measures. That means you want to ensure smooth user experience on your website, without getting constant error messages or request time-outs.
Website server does not directly interfere with your SEO, rather it may boost site’s performance or slow it down, though this element tends to stay in the shadow when it comes to optimization. Here are some tips to choose the right host.
1. Data Center Location
The first thing to look at is the speed of response from a server, which depends to a high degree on how close it is to the user visiting the website. It is crucial that you choose the host that is near the dominant part of your users, so that the website could load faster. Obviously, the site that is sluggish to appear on the screen will ruin all your SEO.
It is also worth choosing a nearer data center as a server located far away might raise questions of mischievous activity, leading to downgrading your site in search engine rankings.
2. Uptime
Number two on our list of requirements is maximum uptime. This term shows the amount of time your website’s available online, so any website owner should look for the company offering the highest possible uptime, 99.0% and higher is the best, as no firm can guarantee 100% uninterrupted work. In case your server is often inaccessible, users are highly likely to switch to alternative sites, with search engines also potentially lowering your site’s positions.
3. Support Level
Another thing to pay attention to is the level of support provided by the company. For troubleshooting you will probably need to get in touch with a support manager, so find out about the support’s working schedule to know whether it will be convenient for you to communicate with them, though most reliable hosts have their teams ready to reply around the clock.
You can browse through reviews to get other people’s opinions on the quality of hosting company’s services and support in particular. And though many reviews relating to hosts are negative, written by users annoyed with too often downtime in their view or other troubles, you still can find some important details about their services, and consider which company to opt for, what pricing and package will be the best pick for you.
You can also use hrank.com that provides ratings for several hundred shared hosting firms. Apart from that support departments of some hosting firms have social media accounts for building a tighter connection with users, which you might want to check out.
4. Backups
Regular backups are essential for any site small or big, so make sure host offers automatic backups in case your website goes down. If something goes awry, you will need to restore the site as soon as possible.
5. Extra Features
Some of the additional upsides hosts can boast to become a go-to choice for its clients are these:
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SSL
As you might know, website’s ranking improves if it is accessible through https. Since this is instrumental in SEO, it should be on the list of features the host offers. And even if you still haven’t implemented it for your site, you might wish to do that in future.
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Range of hosting packages.
The evolution of your website will make it gradually grow, and if your visitors generate much traffic, your current package might not be enough, therefore you need an easier way of transfer to a dedicated server. A better host will have VPS or dedicated server options. Changing to a new host could be way more complicated.
6. CMS
If a handy CMS goes along with a hosting package, it’s a big boon, as it facilitates content administration a lot, which will add up to your SEO. These could be well-known systems or privately developed ones having easy to use interface, which are offered by the majority of hosting firms today.
So, these were core principles for choosing a hosting. In a nutshell, a hosting company that is best suited for SEO is the one that makes website maintenance a breeze.