How Web Hosting Affects SEO Ranking? Check These 5 Factors

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019 Sonam Wagh seo, SEO ranking, web hosting

SEO plays a vital role, in the race of getting top on the search engines. The increase in the SEO ranking will lead your website to rank on search engine result pages.
The competition is so massive that you cannot even afford to stand on the second page of the search engines. This is the same as losing a race before starting it or getting a business disqualified before participating in the race. Now, you might have understood the importance of SEO ranking for your business, and this depends on the web hosting!
Yes, you read it right. Web hosting is also a reason behind the behavior of your website on the search engine results page.

This article throws light on the web hosting effects on your SEO ranking. And what points you should consider while selecting a web hosting provider, that will be beneficial for your website and its ranking.

1) Website loading speed –

According to a survey conducted by Akamai – it is found that if your website takes longer than three seconds to load, then you will lose nearly half of your visitors.
It is simple – that the faster the speed of your website, the happier will be your visitors. This will automatically increase the volume of traffic to your website.
So, it is mandatory that you select a web hosting provider that gives you maximum uptime (~ 99.9%)
The downtime affects the overall performance of the website and also, affects the SERP ranking in a negative way.
Suppose, your website remains down for most of the time, what will happen next?
It won’t be visible to the searchers and thus, the relatable content of your website won’t get accessed. Meanwhile, the search engine robot would not be able to find the website and this will automatically degrade the website’s SEO. This will also lead to an increase of bounce rate on your website, creating an impact on its authority and domain ranking.

2) Loss of Data –

Are you sure that your database will always remain secured?
How far can you go to save it? Still, there are certain natural calamities that you cannot control.
These factors lead to the loss of your data, which directly leads to the loss of SEO ranking.
So, to protect your site from the data loss, you need to have some kind of backup system from your hosting provider. This is because, web hosting providers have a high quality of a backup system, that helps to protect you from the data loss scenarios.

3) Does SSL certificate increases SEO ranking?

SSL certificate builds the online trust of your website. SSL certificate indicates that your site is virus free and no malware can affect it. Also, when your visitors see the green lock of ‘https’, they feel safe for browsing through your website. It also increases the purchasing probability from you and your brand stays in a limelight for a longer duration.
The SSL trust certificate is a favorite for Google as it enables to understand the authenticity of your website. And, Google itself helps your website to rank high.
In order to improve the trustworthiness, you can install or ask for the SSL certificate from your web host provider. The SSL certificate makes sure that all the information is encrypted during the transaction process and so the connection between your server and web browser remains safe. Since August 2014, Google has marked an SSL certificate as a ranking factor.

4) Type of hosting –

If you are shared hosting user, then it’s a bad news for you. Shared hosting limits your website from getting ranked in the search engine.
Shared hosting is a cost-effective hosting, but have you ever wondered why this hosting is cheap?
The simple reason is, in shared hosting, there are many websites hosted on a single server and these sites share the same resources provided to them. You are allowed to share multiple websites because you have agreed to compromise on the quality. Shared hosting increases the chances of spamming as many of the spammers use their website on the shared hosting platform.

Remember, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are not a fan of shared hosting, and it violates their SEO rules. The reason behind this is, shared hosting increases the possibility of having unprotected neighbors. Moreover, shared hosting hampers the speed and elasticity of your website. That means, shared hosting is not a favorable option for your SEO.

5) Server Location –

The local search has been a trending topic due to the server location. Therefore, it is always beneficial to choose a server location nearer to your target audience. Having a server location closer to your audience will redirect the results at the faster speed as it travels through fewer spikes. The faster results served proves that your website is highly responsive and this is considered as a useful factor for your SEO.
Thus, every website owner must know how server location affects SEO.

Search engines show results as per the geographical location. It is because every website has its IP address that is directly related to the geographical location of your website. You might have experienced that, when you search for the shoe store, Google shows you the nearby results. The reason behind this is, it makes the shipping and delivery easy for the business owner. Thus, suppose if your website targets the Indian market and is hosted on the Indian server then it will fetch relevant traffic and offer good SEO rankings as compared to the sites hosted on the servers located outside India.

From the above points you might have understood that web hosting does affects your SEO ranking.
Now, you may question then how to choose an SEO friendly web host?
Here are few points that may help you while selecting a web host :

(1) If your website gets few hundreds and thousands of traffic per month then, shared hosting gives you a negative impact. In this case, you can choose dedicated or VPS hosting. Always try to look your business performance 12 months down the line, and forecast things as per the current results. If you think that your website is getting liked by more visitors and the volume is likely to be increased in the near future then cloud hosting is a perfect solution for you.
(2) Check the reliability and uptime of the web host provider.
(3) Read out the reviews online to ensure that you will get the desired performance.
(4) Find out if you get the free SSL certificate or have the ability to purchase and install it.
(5) Do you have the authority to choose the datacenter location?
If yes, then choose the one which is nearer to your target audience.

Final Verdict :

A website hosted on a bad host gives poor SEO ranking and may face sudden website crash, require more downloading time, suffer with the downtime issues and get infected by the external malware.

So, to enjoy the better SEO experience, choose the web host that provides you at-least 99.9% uptime, free SSL certificate, SSD storage space and nearer data-center location.