Choosing a web hosting service can be an afterthought for many websites. It’s common to think all providers are the same, so it’s not uncommon for people to simply choose based on costs. However, there are a lot of factors that are important to consider to ensure your site performs to its full potential and reach its intended audience effectively. Here are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating web hosts to ensure your provider isn’t sabotaging your website’s search engine rankings.
Speed
The speed at which your website loads is a well-known element of your search engine rankings. For example, Google has consistently made updates to their algorithm that place emphasis on how quickly a webpage loads, and for good reason. The faster a website loads, the happier viewers are with their experience – and since these are Google’s customers, it makes sense to reward websites that help enhance their experience.
As such, it’s important that your site load as fast as possible, both to ensure that you’re getting as much SEO benefit as possible as well as to provide your site’s visitors with the kind of positive experiences that can help convert them into customers. In order to achieve this, you must make sure your website is built and coded for speed to avoid slow loading times that can frustrate viewers, such as an image that takes forever to appear.
You should also make sure you choose a hosting provider that has adequate resources to facilitate a fast website, including efficient hardware and 6solid infrastructure in their datacenter. It doesn’t matter how well you build your site if your hosting provider is subpar.
Lack of Awareness
Hosting providers are not perfect, and it’s very possible that they may not understand the basics of what affects search engine rankings. This means that they could unintentionally hurt the SEO measures you take to optimize your site without you realizing it.
Examples can vary, but it’s as easy as shutting down a site for getting too many visitors or requesting that plugins like Live Chat be removed due to the strain on the host’s inadequate infrastructure. And if the hosting provider does not know what robots.txt is, they could even cut the Google bot off from your site for visiting too often.
This is why it’s important to do your homework on your hosting provider to ensure none of their policies will impact your website’s customer experience or search rankings. You should also check what others are saying about a prospective provider to find out if they have a reputation for employing damaging tactics without their client’s knowledge.
Spotty Uptime
The reliability of a host’s uptime is an aspect of a provider you should research that warrants its own category. If your website is down or slow during non-peak hours, such as late at nigh or if your site is inaccessible or prohibitively sluggish – which is just as bad for SEO purposes – that means that search engines are locked out of your site just like the rest of us.
When search engine can’t crawl around your website, there is no way for them to determine what steps, if any, you’ve taken to optimize the site for SEO. If the search engine doesn’t know a keyword or phrase is included or that you’ve updated the content on your site, it will not be indexed properly and your search rankings will suffer. You even run the risk of being removed from a search engine’s database altogether if your site shows up as down for these search engines too often.
To avoid having to petition to be reintroduced into search results, do research to ensure your provider is keeping your site live at all times. You can even use a service to monitor your site to alert you if it goes down, providing important info that it would be hard to confirm on your own.
Security
No matter how secure you make your website, if your host does not also take the proper security measures then your site will remain exposed to hackers. Not only do you put your sensitive business information and client data at risk when hacked or compromised by malware, but you may also be penalized by search engines if this isn’t corrected quickly.
Additionally, if your hosting service also houses illegal or malicious sites, then you risk being punished for having a related IP address and having your search engine rankings suffer. This is why it’s a good idea to check hosting review services to screen for any red flags and help you avoid any SEO headaches.