19th June 2017
But there are a number of ways in which opting for SEO friendly web hosting can boost your chance’s of reaching new customers via Google. Let’s look at a few of the ways in which web hosting and SEO are more closely linked than you might expect.
The location of your web host impacts SEO
The primary way in which web hosting and SEO are linked is that the location of your server is a factor in search engine rankings. Google’s Matt Cutts has previously acknowledged as much. To give your website the best chance of ranking in your main geographic market, you need a server with an IP address in that country. So, if you want to reach customers in Germany your best bet to rank well on google.de is to host your website in Germany. If your main customer base is in the UK but you use a US-based web host, you’re missing a trick.
By the same token, if you are targeting various markets around the world, it is well worth considering having a server based in each of those countries in order to maximise your website’s SEO performance in each market.
Page load speed affects SEO
Another way in which web hosting and SEO are linked is in relation to page load speed. Google has confirmed that it uses the speed at which a website loads as a factor in its rankings and has done since 2010. The faster your website loads, the better your Google rankings will be.
That means you will want t choose the type of web hosting that is best suited to the technology, traffic levels and user behaviour of your website, and that is capable of scaling up to cope with the demand during busy periods. Ideally, this will be provided by a web host who carefully monitors your website to react to changing circumstances.
404 errors and dead links damage SEO
If your website has a large number of 404 errors or broken links, you are missing out on link juice from any hyperlinks pointing to those pages. A good web host will oversee the migration website between different servers and platforms to ensure all links continue to work correctly. Equally, a web host who is monitoring your website closely will be able to determine particularly damaging broken links that are attracting large numbers of frustrated would-be customers.
Backups and disaster recovery can improve SEO
If your website is regularly updated with new products, blog posts or database entries, your fresh content is probably a key factor in helping your search engine rankings. In the event of a ransomware attack, another cybersecurity breach or user error, you might lose some or all of this valuable content.
Choosing a web host with a comprehensive back-up service and disaster recovery strategy will minimise the financial cost and detrimental impact on your SEO performance by restoring the lost content as soon as possible.
Conclusion
As we said at the outset, web hosting and SEO are much more closely linked than you might expect. By choosing your web host and web hosting package with SEO in mind - along with the various other considerations - you can secure some quick wins in terms of the reach and search engine rankings achieved by your website.