In our modern world, every company should have a website to reach as many potential customers as possible. Not only is it important to have a well-designed website, but it’s also important to ensure it’s optimized to rank highly on search engines. Improving and maintaining your website’s SEO gives it the best chance of standing out from competitors.
There are many factors that play a role in your website’s search engine rankings, such as keywords and backlinks, but have you ever wondered if web hosting affects SEO? The short answer is yes—the web hosting company you choose for your website does affect its SEO rankings. Choosing a reliable web hosting company doesn’t guarantee that your website will rank highly, but it does help you avoid certain issues that can lower your site’s SEO rankings.
Here at Group6 Interactive, we offer a variety of digital marketing services as well as reliable cloud hosting, so we can help you master SEO from every angle.
Server Uptime/Downtime
When a website is experiencing downtime, this means it’s inaccessible because there are problems with the server it’s hosted on. Search engine spiders frequently try to visit your website, and if they find that your website experiences a lot of downtime, your search engine rankings will be negatively impacted. Search engines don’t want to promote unreliable websites high up on their search results because it creates a bad user experience. If someone searches for a product, then tries visiting a website that doesn’t even work, it reflects badly on the search engine.
Ideally, you want your website to have 100% uptime, but some downtime is unavoidable, no matter which web hosting company your site uses. To give your site the best chance at ranking highly on search engines, try picking a web hosting company that consistently provides 99.9% uptime. If your website is experiencing 99% uptime or less, that might not sound bad, but it means your site is down for several hours every month. That isn’t great for SEO rankings or user experience, so reach out to your web hosting company if your website has excessive downtime. If they’re unable to resolve the issue, it’s time to switch to a different web hosting service.
Loading Speeds
The loading speed of your website affects its SEO rankings as well, so you want it to load as quickly as possible. If your website has long loading times, it might rank lower on search engines than it would otherwise. Before assuming that your web hosting company is to blame, make sure your website’s coding is optimized for fast loading speeds. If you’re certain that your website’s coding isn’t slowing down loading times, then you should contact your web hosting company and ask them to fix the problem. If they’re unable to improve your website’s loading speeds, you can either switch to another web hosting service or simply ask them to move your website to another server. Here’s a closer look at how the location of your server can affect how your website performs in search.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is a cost-effective way to run a website, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way. When your website is on a shared server, it’s sharing resources with many other websites. The more websites that are on a shared server, the slower they’ll load. On top of that, shared hosting compromises your website’s security, putting it at increased risk of data theft. You can improve the quality of your website by moving it to a server that’s less busy or moving it to a private server. Cloud based servers may also offer a more reliable, affordable solution.
Server Location
Search engines typically favor websites that are based near their target audience. For instance, if someone is searching for digital marketing services in Rutland, VT, search engines will be more likely to promote Group6 Interactive because that’s where we’re based. If someone is searching for digital marketing services in England, then search engines will be more likely to promote businesses based in that area.
How do search engines determine where your website is based? An important factor is your website’s IP address, which is based on the location of the server it’s hosted on. Try hosting your website on a server near the location of your target audience.
Group6 Interactive Can Improve Your Website’s SEO Rankings
The web hosting company you choose for your website plays a big role your website’s SEO rankings. Why not pick a dependable company to give your website the best chance of ranking higher? At Group6 Interactive, we offer a wide range of digital marketing services, including web hosting solutions. We’ll provide reliable hosting for your website that reduces downtime, improves loading speeds, boosts your website’s security, and helps it rank higher on search engines.
We’re based in Rutland, VT, but we provide web design, hosting, and digital marketing services to businesses in many different locations and industries. Contact us to take the next step towards improving your website’s SEO rankings!
