One of the primary reasons you want to host your site is to get score high on SEO rankings.

This is understandable.

Every successful business today is having a SEO strategy that is aimed at increasing traffic, and improving conversion funnel optimization.  So there is no reason why you must lag behind.

In spite of what some gurus may say SEO is still alive.

No wonder we are seeing far too many companies making strong commitments to invest in stable Search Engine Optimized web infrastructure, given that search engines are continually improving their algorithms all the time.

Here are a few solid reasons why investing in SEO is good for your business.

SEO is still relevant

Agreed that keyword based search is seeing lean times, but we are now witnessing reappearance of long tailed keywords. This means SEO will transform but will never conk out.

Site speed matters

Yes, user experience matters a great deal to Google. This is the reason webmasters make a lot of effort on How to pick the best website host for SEO and page speed.

For experts, it is a foregone conclusion that sites that load speedily rank far higher than sites that lag.

Google is no longer working on formulas to find the most relevant site on the web. Rather what the search giant is doing these days is focusing on delivering users, the exact results they are looking for.

Onsite content still matters

By now every enterprise knows that for sustained SEO rankings it is essential to have continuous content output.

Rise of mobile has put up new challenges

The amount of traffic delivered to mobiles is likely to surpass that delivered on desktops, if it has not done already. The phenomenal increase in mobile usage has opened up new opportunities to develop innovative SEO techniques that specifically focus on local search.

The need for a strong business profile is increasing

Google and other major search engines are transforming the way they evaluate websites. Social media visibility, never thought of earlier, is now given a high level of importance in rankings.

Without any doubt, your business needs a robust SEO strategy in place if you want to succeed in the arena of online marketing.

But the question is does the quality of web hosting affect SEO?

Yes it does.

Speed and uptime are two factors that can significantly affect SEO.

Uptime

This is an extremely important component for success. Google crawls its way through your website frequently to record updates, if any. That means if your website is down for any reason, the crawlers will not be able to access your website, thereby negatively affecting your SEO rankings.

For best results, the website hosting provider must deliver an up-time that is at least 99.5%.

Speed

The majority of users is impatient and has low attention span. According to an expert, “Users typically wait for just 3 seconds for a site to load”. This means if your site does not load they will visit your competitor’s site.

It is the cumulative effect of slow speed that matters in the long run.

An Information Technology manager rightly put it, “a one second delay in each load can potentially cost a business millions of Rupees each year”.

Studies have also revealed that for every one second site visitors are kept waiting for a page to load, 20% drop out. This can translate into substantially loss of potential customers.

You have tools that can check your website’s speed.  For example, PageSpeed Insights is a free application by Google that not only analyses a website but also provides comprehensive information on issues that are preventing pages from loading as fast as it could.

What does all this point to?

Businesses want a solid performance from web hosts with average speed loads as good as or better than industry standards.

To summarize, if speed and uptimes are important for you – and it should be for achieving acceptable SEO rankings, consider the following factors before choosing a hosting provider.

• Geographical distance – Distance has significant effect on page load speed. Find a web host that is close to you and your target audience.
• Infrastructure – Network infrastructure of your provider plays a key role in delivering speed. It must have a network having low latency, and direct connectivity to all major global data center.
• Server hardware – A hosting provider that has a powerful server configured with a strong CPU can boost a website’s performance. But most hosting providers do not disclose server specs that are applicable to their hosting plans.  Therefore a good policy is to ask questions before you go ahead.

Go4hosting is a India based leading hosting service provider offering an impeccable range of services to its diversified clientele across the globe.

About Abhay Singh (65 Posts)