If your keen about SEO and you have got extensive knowledge about it, then you have nothing to worry about. Of course, there are the old aspects such as robots.txt files, sitemaps, content creation, and backlinks. And there is also some new stuff that might get you excited such as the mobile-first index, featured snippets, and voice search.
Amidst all of these things, there’s one crucial factor that gets often ignored and neglected, even though it can significantly influence your page speed and website’s uptime. Keep in mind that both elements are quintessential for keeping up a positive organic performance. We are talking about web hosting.
For the most part, the web host you select will determine the whole consistency of the website experience you provide to your organic visitors.
If you wish to avoid page timeouts and server errors and prevent customers from leaving quickly, then you’ll need a robust web host that you can depend on. All in all, you need a web host that will support your SEO efforts and not impede them. For a little help, here are a few things that you need to look for in a hosting company.
Reliable and Responsive Customer Service
One of the key features that you need to consider when choosing a web host is its customer support. Try understanding and learning what other people say about their support team. This feature is especially important because if your website goes down, for sure, you would want to fix and solve it quickly.
Having that said, it will involve or entail talking to a support person. An excellent web host will offer all-around support at a low cost or for free. So, check the business hours of your potential web hosting provider’s customer support, and see how you can get in touch or talk with them.
Is there an email address, live chat, or a phone number? Moreover, be sure to look at their social media profiles as well. Web hosting providers who genuinely care about helping their users tend to make their support team available on various social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook.
Excellent Reviews
Another thing to look out for are the reviews about a hosting company’s products and services. For example, you are trying to figure out which host is a good fit for you. You can scout the web to look for reviews. You can then use these reviews to compare hosts.
Before you seal the deal, take some time to read reviews online. Here’s the thing, the hosting industry tends to get more unfavorable reviews than other sectors. For instance, a barista spills up your drink. You are unlikely to get badgered enough to write a ferocious review on the Internet.
However, if your website goes down, even for some minutes, or even if you’re at fault, you will still be furious with your hosting provider. You can easily blog, post, or tweet about it vociferously and loudly. Sadly, that is the nature of businesses.
With that said, you can collect lots of helpful information from reviews. Search for hosts that show on top web host lists. And check the reviews to assess if the hosting plan you are planning to get will meet all your needs.
Offers Many Options
Let’s face it. We, people, like to have a lot of options. Having that said, you should also relish and savor them with your hosting plan. Other than the web hosting itself, a lot of hosting providers offer non-mandatory add-ons that can upgrade your website.
To better understand, here are a few SEO-friendly value-adds that you will want to enjoy:
- Diverse Hosting Plans. As your website develops, your hosting demands will also increase. For instance, your traffic will likely increase as your site grows. Thus, you may want to switch to a dedicated server. This change will be a lot easier and inexpensive if you do not have to change hosting companies at the same time.
- SSL. For years now, HTTPS has become a crucial ranking factor. As such, ensure that your hosting provider supports SSL.
- Automatic Backups. If something goes wrong with your website, you will need a website backup that you can immediately restore from. Verify if your host provides automatic backups for an added fee or for free.
Server Location
Although uptime means that your website content is available to your users 24/7, your server location dictates or refers to how fast your site content is accessible to them. So, if you are on a VPS, Shared Hosting, or dedicated hosting plan, your website gets stored in a data center on a physical server.
For the most part, you would want the data center to be as near as possible to your website visitors. Take note that if it’s too far away, it will take a long time for your users to access your content.
However, server location can seem suspicious to search engines, which could impact your SEO. For instance, if you work in one area but utilize a web host that’s far away, search engines might regard that there’s something fishy going around.
High Uptime Rate
Probably the most crucial factor that you should look for in a hosting company is a high uptime guarantee. If a web host offers such, then you can say that it’s an SEO-friendly web hosting provider.
Uptime is the rate for which your website is accessible and online. The higher the percentage, the lesser the likelihood of your site experiencing downtime. Ideally, get a host that offers at least 99.9% uptime rate. It translates to 8.8 hours/year or 1.44 minutes of downtime/day, which isn’t bad.
But, be careful of those that claim a hundred percent uptime. There is nothing as such. Remember that there will always be some downtime. All you need to do is to keep it short. In that way, it will not affect your overall SEO performance.
Takeaway
An SEO-friendly web host is one that is reliable and good hosting that works in the background without having you to worry about it. So, if you’re looking for a hosting company that’s SEO-friendly, see to it that it offers high uptime rate, responsive customer support, have good reviews, provides multiple options, and a fast server location.
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