Did you know that 93% of all web browsing starts with a search engine? These figures, published by SMA Marketing, highlight the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) for businesses big and small. Google receives an average of 78,000 searches every second, according to Internet Live Stats. This is reason enough to establish an online presence for your business.
While most people focus on content and keywords for SEO, many overlook the importance of the website’s performance. This is critical to SEO as well, as it influences the experience you offer visitors. The site’s performance is determined by the web hosting you choose. So, let’s have a look at how your website hosting decisions impact your site’s SEO.
Different Types of Hosting and How They Impact SEO
The different types of hosting plans you can choose from are:
Shared hosting: This is the most common and cheapest hosting plan. The server on which your website is hosted will also be hosting other small websites and all the resources available on the server, such as CPU, RAM and bandwidth, are shared among all.
VPS hosting: Short for Virtual Private Server, VPS hosting is a virtualized section of a common server, which has dedicated resources for your website.
Dedicated hosting: Dedicated hosting involves dedicating an entire physical server to your website’s needs. All the resources will be available for your website.
Managed hosting: Managed hosting is where the host manages all technicalities of your website. If you have a WordPress website, this is called managed WordPress hosting.
There are a number of factors to consider when selecting the perfect hosting solution for SEO. Some of these are:
Website speed: Google has made it quite clear that faster websites rank better. Hence, this parameter is among the most important to consider.
Website security: If there’s an attack on the website or if it’s spamming the users with unwanted content, the reputation of the website can be tarnished, affecting the SEO.
Uptime: The availability of the site is critical. If the website is down for a significant amount of time, it adversely affects SEO. Choose a hosting service provider that guarantees good uptime.
Support: This one is indirect, albeit an important factor that determines your website’s SEO. If the host provides good support, a lot of technical issues can be diagnosed and resolved, ensuring speed, security and uptime.
How VPS Hosting Benefits SEO
You should consider VPS hosting if you’re looking to improve your website’s SEO. The nature of VPS hosting is such that it helps optimize the most critical parameters. Here’s a look at how it does this:
- VPS hosting provides higher uptime than other hosting solutions. The average downtime of a website using VPS is 1.44 minutes per day. This can be further reduced by a reputed VPS hosting provider in India.
- It guarantees dedicated resources for your website. This means better bandwidth and improved response time, leading to higher site speed.
- It makes sure your website is isolated from other sites, unlike shared hosting. This makes your website safer.
- It’s more customizable. Thus, the server can be better optimized by installing necessary functionalities and services.
VPS hosting is an excellent option for your website if you wish to improve SEO. It is a cost-effective solution too. VPS hosting is gaining traction in India and has several useful features, like SSD servers and unlimited bandwidth, which can further benefit your SEO.