In this digital era, having a website has become a key aspect of every business. Irrespective of the industry or the size of the business, everyone wants their website to rank on the first page of the search engines. It is understandable that websites that are listed on the second pages of search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., are likely to receive less traffic. So, in order to be listed higher on the search results, businesses spend a considerable amount of time and money in improving the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of their website.

There are a lot of factors that impact the SEO of a website, and addressing each of them will certainly take time. And for your SEO efforts to yield noticeable results, it’ll take you even longer. However, one of the significant factors that may immediately help your SEO ranking is a fast and smooth operating website. Users today want a website to be fast and reliable, so search engines are obviously not going to show websites that aren’t.

The factor that can positively impact the speed, reliability, security, and other key elements of your website is your web hosting service provider. Let us look at our web hosting provider can impact your website’s SEO ranking.

Here are the key factors that affect the SEO of a website:

Website Speed

No one really likes waiting for a web page to load. In fact, waiting is so loathed across the internet that major search engines such as Google factors a website’s loading speed into its SEO score. Thus, websites that load instantly are given a boost in the search results. Also, if your website takes longer than 2 seconds, your users are likely to bounce off your site hampering your SEO score. However, you can improve your website’s speed by reducing the number of media files or by compressing the images on your site, but nothing can impact its speed as your web hosting. 

So, choosing a website hosting service provider that can provide visitors with a speedy experience is vital for your web page ranking. Also, it can be difficult to reach that 2-seconds goal with the standard Shared Web Hosting. It is better to consider Virtual Private Servers or Cloud Hosting as it can help significantly with improving the loading speed of your website. A faster loading site not only delights the users but it’ll also have a significant impact on your SEO ranking.

Website Downtime

The only thing that can be worse than a slow website is that it won’t load at all. Website downtime is usually caused due to hardware failure, an overloaded server, a security breach, or something else. Unfortunately, even if your website is offline for just a few minutes at a time, it can drop your website’s SEO performance. Moreover, Google and other search engines can also flag your website as unreliable. If this downtime lasts for days instead of minutes, Google may de-list your website from the search results altogether. Thus, frequent downtimes flag your site as unreliable and lead to your site’s ranking being downgraded. So, it is better to choose a web hosting provider that is reliable and can ensure uptime.

Database Connection Failure

Suppose you and your visitors are getting a warning message that says Internal Server Error or Database Connection Failed while visiting your website; it could be because your server has been overloaded with traffic. However, this won’t hurt your SEO score as much as your site being fully offline, but it can push your website’s bounce rate way up.

As a short-term solution, you can create a cached copy of your website or popular pages, so you’re your visitors don’t really need to connect to the database stored with your web host.

For a long-term solution, you should consider upgrading your web hosting plan. Database errors often result from the fact that you simply don’t have enough bandwidth to handle all your website traffic. Ask your hosting provider about scaling up to a VPS or Cloud Web Hosting plan if you’re not already using these hosting types.

Security

Apart from your website’s speed and reliability, security is also a crucial factor that impacts your website’s SEO ranking. Google and other search engines typically give preference to websites that are more secure. Google gives an edge to sites with SSL certificates, which is basically an example that shows the extent to which your website security is crucial for your SEO. The security features offered by your hosting provider are critical for the overall security of your website. Thus, you should opt for the best web hosting for SEO, the service providers that have a good track record and provide you with the latest security features.

Tech Support

Irrespective of whether you have an in-house technical support team or not, a 24*7 tech support availability offered by your web hosting service provider is an absolute necessity. If your domain gets hacked or your website is down due to some issues in your account, you will need readily available support from your service provider. A fully dedicated and capable team will provide you the best assistance and will ensure that your website is up and running in no time. A well-functioning site with no glitches will undoubtedly have a positive impact on its SEO performance.

Conclusion

In this competitive business environment, it has become imperative to rank higher on search engines. There are a lot of methods that can boost your website’s SEO performance, but most of these methods take time before having any real impact. Yet, every business needs to do whatever they can to have a positive effect on their overall SEO performance to ensure better rankings and web authority. Having a reliable web hosting service provider can certainly be the first step in the right direction for improving your website’s SEO score.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below. Also, head to our Hosting category on the blog to know more and stay updated.