Web hosting for SEO: Why it’s important

Are you looking for a quick and simple method to enhance the functionality and speed of your website?

Make a quality hosting investment.

Using a cheap web server is no longer an acceptable reason for any business.

One important factor that can assist increase your rankings, traffic, and conversions is website performance.

All the information you require to understand why web hosting is crucial for SEO will be covered in this article.

What is website hosting

A web host, also known as a website hosting service provider, is a company that provides the technology needed to access a website online.

Consider your website's web host as its central administration. Web pages are kept on specialized computers known as servers, and it is via the server that your webpages are accessed and sent to web browsers.

Therefore, all users need to do to access your website is enter its domain or address into their browser.

Businesses usually spend a lot of time and money on digital marketing, SEO, design, and development when creating a website.

However, one area that is often neglected is web hosting.

Why not make sure the website is quick, adaptable, and functional as well, if you are prepared to invest in making sure it looks attractive and attracts visitors?

In addition to other beneficial effects, using a high-quality web host can help you boost your conversion rates.

How web hosting benefits businesses

A web host is required if you want a website for your company. Web hosting is essential for your online presence even if it is typically overlooked by businesses.

Numerous advantages can be obtained by your business from a reputable web host, including:

Improved site performance.
Effective data management.
Enhanced security.
High uptime.

In summary, making a prudent investment in a reputable web host should aid in the expansion of your company.

Expected features from hosting providers

Web hosts provide organizations with more services than just web hosting. Web host companies provide a range of services to make sure business owners have a hassle-free experience and that their time and efforts are focused solely on their enterprise.

A quality web hosting company should have the following features:

Email accounts: Hosting companies will mandate that customers register their own domain name. Among the options offered are email accounts and domain names.
FTP access: File uploading from a local computer to the web server is possible with FTP. This function allows files to be transferred directly from your computer to the server so that your website can be accessed via the internet. Access to FTP is essential for web developers.
WordPress support: WordPress is a handy tool for creating and managing content for websites; it runs around half of all websites on the internet.
Enhanced security: Nowadays, a lot of hosting companies, like WPEngine, include free SSL certificates with their hosting packages.

Why web hosting is important for SEO

Google wants to give its users the greatest results possible when it comes to SEO.

This implies that the groundwork for your SEO initiatives will be laid by a powerful and dependable web host.

Google considers a number of things to make sure users are satisfied with their search engine. Websites with better user experiences and faster loading times may rank higher.

Today, almost all brands and organizations place a great deal of emphasis on SEO. Everyone wants to see their website appear on Google's first page for relevant search terms.

Websites that don't appear on Google's first page most likely won't be found. As they say, "Google's second page is the best place to hide a website."

Web hosting is crucial for SEO for three primary reasons: speed, security and location.

Speed

When considering SEO from a practical perspective, speed is a critical component.

A cheap, slow web server will make your website load slowly. It would have a cascading effect of little organic traffic, minimal leads, and terrible rankings.

How can this be resolved?

High speeds from a reputable web host will shorten the time it takes for your pages to load.

In 2022, the fastest feasible load time for a website should always be the goal. Two seconds or less is Google's standard for the optimal time for mobile speed.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, mobile websites typically took 4.5 seconds to load. Twenty percent of the mobile landing pages under analysis had graphic content that loaded more slowly than 6.6 seconds.

It's still far too slow, given that speed equals revenue.

Tools for Measuring Page Speed

Do you need to gauge how fast pages load? Make use of these useful resources:

Google Page Speed Insights
GTMetrix
Pingdom

Target Metrics for Websites

The Core Web Vitals report, also known as "field data," provides an overview of how well your webpages perform based on actual usage data.

The URL performance is displayed by status, metric type, and URL group using the Core Web Vitals.

Three metrics form the foundation of Core Web Vitals:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): This indicates how long it takes, starting from the moment the user requests the URL, to render the largest element of visible content in the perspective. Large block text, a picture, or a video usually make up the largest portion of the material. Because it notifies the user that the URL is loading, this measure is crucial.
FID (First Input Delay): This displays the amount of time that passes between the user's interaction with the website—such as clicking a link—and the browser's reaction to that interaction. Since this is the point at which the page becomes interactive, this metric is crucial.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): For each unexpected layout shift, this calculates the total of all the individual layout shifts. This happens during the duration that the page is active. The measurement can be any positive number up to zero, which denotes no moving at all. The remaining figures show how much the layout changes. This measure is crucial since a layout shift during a user's interaction with the website detracts from their positive experience.

Security

If your website doesn't have a robust security system, it may face negative problems like spam pages, hackers, and phony backlinks.

All of these items have the potential to lower your Google rankings and maybe trigger a manual action.

Additionally, there's a chance that your website will become infected with malware, which could lead to search engines blocking it or displaying a security alert in the search results.

It could hurt your SEO efforts if you don't choose a web host with a robust security setup.

A Secure Sockets Layer is one feature that web host providers might give (SSL). The common technology used to maintain the security of the internet connection is a security certificate.

The availability of trustworthy customer care and technical help is another benefit of robust security. As a business, you want to make sure that the web host you choose offers excellent customer care and technical assistance.

You can repair issues quickly and effectively if something is causing the website to crash or operate too slowly. If your website ever goes down, having a robust technical and customer support team will allay any fears and panic.

Location

An essential component of your website's SEO is its location. When looking for the best results, search engines will take location-based signals into account.

Here are some things to think about:

Where is the user?
Where is the business?
Where is the site located?

These are all valid justifications for the hosting location of your website. It affects both the speed and the distance that the data must travel.

For instance, you would want your website to be hosted in a U.S. data center if your company is based in the United States. You would want the website to be hosted in a UK data center if your business is located in the United Kingdom.

If your company is international, you should look for a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that has worldwide hubs so that users can access quick hosting from anywhere in the world.

If you choose an inexpensive web host, you might not be housed in a nearby data center. This could have a detrimental effect on your website's functionality for users as well as your organic search engine rankings.

Which web hosting service should you use?

Every hosting platform has advantages, but some of them are just plain bad.

Thus, how precisely should one select a trustworthy service?

You may search for the following elements:

Length of the web hosts’ experience
Reputation among other clients/companies
Seeking a web host that offers security measures such as SSL

Why WP Engine is (almost always) my recommendation

We have experience working on a range of hosting systems with clients, and we continue to do so.

But when it comes down to the best, WP Engine is what I almost always recommend.

Based on my encounters with WP Engine:

Their customer support is always available, very helpful, and prompt.
They are the fastest and most secure around.
In the unusual event that the website were to go down, they perform daily backups.

WP Engine's price is quite affordable. At a little $23/month, the beginning option is ideal for the majority of websites.

This hosting platform's exceptional speed and performance truly help you in your endeavors to optimize the website for mobile speed and essential web elements.

To further strengthen website security and comply with Google's established criteria, WP Engine additionally offers free SSL certificates to its members.

I can now concentrate more on my SEO efforts and less on server and performance problems that could arise from a subpar hosting provider thanks to my partnership with WP Engine, you too can.

Educating your clients/stakeholders on the value of good hosting

In conclusion, your stakeholders or clients have already made significant financial investments in building a successful website (content, SEO, etc.).

All of those other investments could be ruined by choosing the wrong web host.

Selecting the ideal web host can enhance your ranking, speed, and Core Web Vitals almost immediately.

You run the risk of losing SEO points if your website is hosted poorly.

There's a chance that your website will encounter downtime, which is the worst possible user experience.

The likelihood that a person will leave your page and choose another choice increases if the web server is slow.

Reputation is equal to load time. Additionally, users will leave a website that takes longer than a few seconds to load, which will reduce revenue and conversions.

Consider this: you wouldn't want a slow web host or server (like a Kia Soul engine) in a new Bentley (like a new website). (This is most definitely not a jab—I drive a Kia Soul!). Thanks 🙏 for reading this article.

Web hosting for SEO: Why it’s important