When it comes to whether your web hosting provider affects your SEO rankings, the answer is a resounding “yes” in most cases.
Choosing an ideal domain and hosting provider for your website is essential since the wrong one could harm your SEO strategy. While selecting the best Australian web hosting plan doesn’t guarantee an immediate improvement in your search rankings, it helps you avoid the negative consequences of poor hosting practices that can hurt your site.
Therefore, it’s crucial to opt for hosting services that align with your business needs and will help your SEO strategy for your website.
4 Ways in Which a Web Hosting Plan Affects SEO
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Server Downtimes
Imagine a customer going to your eCommerce store to buy something important but finding out that it’s temporarily down and unable to provide what they need when they need it.
This inability to serve users increases your website’s bounce rate (the proportion of users who exit your site after visiting it.)
This impact causes you to lose customers and sales opportunities, which is even worse. Furthermore, if your site experiences frequent and prolonged downtime, Google tends to decrease its ranking.
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Page Speed
As we all know, the speed of a page is a crucial factor in its ranking. Selecting a web hosting plan with adequate bandwidth can positively affect your website’s speed. The type of hosting plan you choose also matters significantly.
For instance, if you run a prominent news site, you may not want to use a shared hosting plan with limited bandwidth that can’t handle sudden spikes in traffic during breaking news events.
All of these factors can impact your website’s SEO positively or negatively, depending on its specific needs and the amount of traffic it receives.
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Location
The location of your web server is critical in ensuring a fast and pleasant online experience for your website’s visitors. Besides content and backlinks, search engines consider a website’s location to deliver the most relevant search results.
If your server is conveniently located for your target audience, Google can easily direct them to your website. This is because every website has a unique IP address corresponding to its geographic location.
Opting for the best Australian web hosting plan thus has the advantage of Google associating local users with your website within the same region.
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Security
Search engines like Google now prioritize websites that have more robust security measures. If your website gets hacked and its content is replaced with spam or malware, it can harm your search rankings.
Hence, you must select hosting services with a good track record and up-to-date security features to prevent such occurrences.
Furthermore, it’s advisable to choose a plan that offers additional secure hosting services, such as a free SSL certificate or regular malware scans, to ensure that your business website remains secure and protected from cyber threats.
The Takeaway
As seen above, websites that have lesser downtimes, faster page speed, local relevance, and enhanced security may receive an improvement in their search rankings.
Google aims to offer its users with the most excellent results regarding SEO. Therefore, it examines multiple aspects to guarantee a favourable user experience following search engine usage.
As a result, having a robust and dependable web hosting plan is crucial for your SEO initiatives.