Learn Why Bad Hosting Can Ruin Your Google Rankings
Everybody knows that Google have over 200 factors that go into their algorithm of website ranking. Nobody (except Google) knows what exactly those factors are, however, SEO specialists have picked out some really important ones, the effect of which can be measured. When you are done with your website’s design, content, quality internal and external links, heading and title tags, keywords, and everything that depends on the web developer (programmer code and databases optimization), you are ready for the last step – uploading your website on the server and publishing it for the whole wide world to see.
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SEO experts recommend choosing your hosting carefully as all the hard work done while building your website may be ruined instantly by uploading the site on an inappropriate hosting. Wrong choice may negatively affect your ranking by causing one or more of the SEO issues discussed in this article. Hamster will help you save your work and time by choosing the right hosting for a higher SEO ranking in the Google search engine.
1. Check Web Hosting Server Uptime
First of all, when choosing a web hosting, pay attention to SLA – hosting service level guarantee. SLA means hosting service availability, and it should be no less than 99.95%. Web robots periodically indicate if your website is available, and if the hosting server is down, your website is inaccessible. Google search engine looks for high quality available sites. Nobody wants to get a link to a non-existing page.
2. Can Web Hosting Increase Page Loading Speed?
Google has been using site speed as a ranking factor for the past several years. Some tests show that an average page visitor waits for the website to load no more than 3-4 seconds, after they just quit the page. People are impatient, when they want something, they want it now. There are a lot of factors that affect page loading speed and you can measure it with several tools, like Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool or Pingdom: https://billing.hostens.com/knowledgebase/article/205/website-monitoring-tool-pingdom/.
These useful tools give some recommendations to your website – how to increase page loading speed by optimizing the programming code or the databases. In this article we focus on web hosting services and what your server can do to increase page speed.
When you choose shared hosting services, find out whether the provider offers PHP7 and HTTP/2. Of course, you need to be sure that the programming code is adapted to the right PHP version.
Also, keep in mind that in shared hosting there are a lot of limitations that can affect your page loading speed. For example, the value of “maximum concurrent connections” – in general, it refers to the number of visitors calling a request (pressing the button “Add to cart”, pressing on a link etc.) at the same time. If this limit is reached, all other requests have to wait for execution, and for these visitors the page will load more slowly.
On a VPS (virtual private server) you may be able to deal with these limits yourself, alternatively, your server administrator can do it for you. So, a VPS gives you more freedom and resources to increase your page loading speed.
3. Geo-Location: Where Is Your Server?
The closer the server is to your client, the faster their website will be loaded. Of course, the biggest difference of loading speed will be if your webshop is on a European server and your visitors are from Asia. Page loading speed can increase by a few seconds, but if the server’s location is, for example, in Lithuania and page visitors are from Spain, page loading speed will not change much, as it is still the same continent. Loading time difference can be merely a split second.
4. HTTPS/SSL Support: Secure Connections to Your Website
On July 1st Google announced to website owners that non HTTPS sites would incur consumer messaging identifying the site as non-secure. Undoubtedly, Google loves its users and therefore is coming up with every possible way to make us feel secure on the internet. This warning may affect the time visitors spend on your website – they may leave it within a few seconds. This is not what you want. Even more, Google robots may indicate that something is wrong with your site and your website may appear in last positions of search results.
HTTP is the standard protocol for communication between visitor’s browser and server’s web service. Unfortunately, HTTP is not secure. When you make an HTTP connection with a website, such a connection is not secure. On the other hand, HTTPS is secure. When you make a connection with a website, the data being sent is encrypted and no third parties can participate during this connection.
Finally, what is the SSL certificate and how to install it? Hamster has published a detailed, well-received guide on what the SSL is and how to implement HTTPS on your website and why you would want to do it, check it out: https://www.hostens.com/blog/ssl-certificate-best-way-protect-website/
5. Other Websites on Your Server
If you choose a shared hosting, which is the cheapest option and thus has limited resources, it is very important that there are no spammers, phishing sites, or files that spread malicious software from the server where your site is hosted. A list of sites on a specific IP can be viewed using specialized tools for reverse IP lookup. Also, you can check if your shared server’s IP address is not on the blacklists of spammers with tools like MXToolbox: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx.
Conclusion
Hamster has overviewed the most important server – related factors that can increase website loading speed. Do not fall for the cheapest web hosting plans. Free web hosting is not an option either due to limited features, advertising, and high probability of downtime, when you will not receive any assistance.
In conclusion, do not try to find the best hosting in the world. Plan your expenses and look for the best web hosting options by comparing plans and offers that meet your website’s needs.
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