What does your web host have to do with your SEO?

Does Your Web Host Affect Your Website's SEO

SEO

This might be a surprise to you! But yes, web hosting has a considerable impact on where in search engine results, crawlers decide to place your website. Here are two important effects that hosting has on your SEO visibility:

Loading speed

Among the various factors of an algorithm that Search Engines prioritize while deciding on the page rank of any particular website, loading speed cannot be ignored. Slowly loading sites are not very comfortable for search engines since that would question their own credibility. An average visitor leaves a website that takes more than 8 seconds to load. So no matter, how cool or good-looking your website is if it is heavy to load on your visitor’s screen, be sure that search engines will bury you somewhere on the 3rd page. That means a highly reduced visibility.

While this problem might be attributed to design issues (some templates are heavy loading), if you are sure that designing is not the cause, be quick enough to question your web host about this. Most hosting companies would host your website along with hundreds of other websites. As such, the speed with which your website is loading might be compromised. Make it a point to talk to your host.


Related Blog: How do you point out the right host for your website and why should you do so?


Downtime

The plain definition of this technical term is the time, your website would stay invisible to your visitors due to server issues. Even if you avail of the most expensive hosting plans, your website is bound to stay down at least for 7 hours in a month. Even search engines exempt for this downtime range. But anything above this is detrimental to the SEO health of your website. It is absolutely reasonable to ask for a 99.9% uptime for your website! Web hosts would provide for that.

Keep a track. If your website is staying down for more than 7 hours every month, immediately contact your web host. If the problem still continues, think of changing your web host. For quick and reliable web hosting services, have a look at the affordable hosting packages of Host IT Smart.