Search Engine Optimization is the most sustainable growth strategy for businesses to be successful online.
This is why business owners spend a lot of time and money optimizing their websites for search engines and strive to appear above their competitors to dominate the market.
For Google to position your website over others, you need to create relevant content, optimize your site to make it easy for search engines to scan through it, build your backlink health, and more.
Choosing a good web hosting helps with a lot of Google ranking factors and is often overlooked compared to other strategies.
In this blog, we’ll talk about the different types of web hosting, which one is the best for your business, and how your choice of web host can impact your SEO performance.
Let’s dive right into it!
Types of Web Hosting
There are a lot of web hosting options available in the market. Therefore, if you’re not familiar with the different packages, you may feel intimidated and overwhelmed while choosing one for your business.
There are four major web hosting options:
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Shared Web Hosting
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Dedicated Web Hosting
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VPS Web Hosting
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Cloud Web Hosting
Don’t worry; we’ll talk about each of them in detail so you can figure out which one is the right fit for your business.
1.Shared Web Hosting
Shared SEO server hosting is one of the most popular web hosting options for businesses just starting out primarily because it’s very affordable.
But why is shared SEO server hosting cheaper than the others?
With shared web hosting, multiple users share one server and its resources amongst themselves, which is maintained by the web hosting provider. When you choose to host your website with shared hosting, you’re not aware of the people and businesses that share your server’s resources.
If one of the websites uses a massive chunk of the resources to operate, it has a direct impact on the other websites on the server.
Since all the businesses share the resources of a single server, it makes everyone prone to being affected by others on the server. This is why shared web hosting is priced so low.
Shared SEO server hosting is a cost-effective option for businesses that don’t require a lot of bandwidth and advanced configurations off the bat.
However, with the low cost comes limited resources like RAM, server space, bandwidth, and storage.
Let’s suppose you have an eCommerce store that doesn’t really gain much traffic on an everyday basis. However, you have a massive spike in traffic during seasonal sales like Black Friday and New Year’s Eve.
You shouldn’t go for shared SEO server hosting because it can’t handle these kinds of situations effectively.
Shared SEO server hosting has more than a few limitations that you should know about.
Disadvantages of using Shared SEO server hosting:
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Load time. Since you don’t have a dedicated server, your website’s load time will be significantly low.
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Security. The unknown websites you share your server with put your website at risk.
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Traffic. Your server may not be able to handle it if your website starts getting more traffic.
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Customization. Shared SEO server hosting doesn’t offer a lot of customization options.
Who should use Shared SEO Server Hosting?
If your website wouldn’t experience any significant spike in traffic, shared SEO server hosting is a decent place to get started, especially if you don’t have any prior experience with launching your own website and blogging.
If you’re developing a brand new website, running a small business, or simply starting a blog as a hobby, shared hosting is a good choice for you.
And as for what the future holds, you can always upgrade to an advanced package or even shift to a new hosting plan altogether as your website traffic increases.
2.Dedicated Web Hosting
With Dedicated Server Hosting, a single server is allocated to each user.
Unlike shared web hosting, you don’t have to share your server’s resources with other users. You will have exclusive and unhindered access to all the resources like CPU, RAM, and SSD/HDD storage.
You can ensure that the security and performance of your website are always at the top. As opposed to shared web hosting, malicious attacks through the hacking of other websites have no effect on your website.
The bottom line is that all the drawbacks associated with shared hosting are taken care of with dedicated SEO server hosting.
On the flip side, dedicated SEO server hosting is one of the most expensive hosting options because of these extensive benefits.
Furthermore, dedicated server hosting allows users to easily customize and configure their website according to their specific needs.
You can create a unique IP address dedicated solely to your website and work with massive surges in traffic without any potential for downtimes.
When you work with a dedicated server hosting, you also need some technical knowledge to install software and ensure smooth maintenance of your website.
Who should use Dedicated SEO Server Hosting?
If you’re a small business or a start-up and don’t have to deal with a lot of traffic, dedicated SEO server hosting may not be the most sustainable option for you.
Dedicated Server Hosting is a good choice for websites with a substantial volume of traffic and the financial means to handle the servers.
For example, high-traffic eCommerce websites with hundreds of product pages can benefit from dedicated SEO server hosting.
It’s also a good choice for those looking for complete control and unfettered access over everything on their website.
Dedicated SEO server hosting is also perfect for companies where security is of high priority.
But if you don’t have any technical knowledge, steer clear of this web hosting solution.
3.VPS Hosting
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting is another widely popular web hosting used to power websites.
A virtual private server functions independently and acts as its own isolated server. However, it is shared with other virtual servers that use the same physical server.
So, how is VPS different from shared hosting?
The way VPS web hosting functions is actually a mix of dedicated and shared SEO server hosting.
Unlike shared SEO server hosting, VPS hosting provides users with dedicated resources like SSD storage, CPU, and RAM.
Each server has a section dedicated to each user. So, even though the user is sharing the physical server with other entities, VPS hosting ensures that you assuredly get the resources you pay for.
It tackles two major drawbacks associated with shared SEO server hosting.
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Businesses sharing your server can’t steal the resources meant for you.
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You can scale your website much more efficiently.
VPS hosting improves your site’s performance, security, and stability.
For businesses that can’t afford a dedicated web server hosting but want to enjoy the perks that come along with it, VPS hosting is the next best option.
However, you’ll need some level of technical knowledge to work with VPS hosting.
Who should use VPS SEO Server Hosting?
VPS web hosting is a good option for websites that go over the traffic limitations of their shared web hosting but don’t really need the resources that come with dedicated web hosting.
If you’re a small business owner and want to explore cost-effective alternatives to ensure that their website is reliable and secure from the very beginning, VPS hosting is for you.
When you opt for VPS hosting, you gain root access to your website’s server. Therefore, you need to know about IT administration and troubleshooting to manage your hosting.
4.Cloud Web Hosting
Cloud hosting is a relatively new type of hosting compared to the other ones on this list.
As the name suggests, cloud hosting allows businesses to build their website using cloud resources.
Unlike the other traditional types of web hosting services, cloud solutions are not deployed on one server. With cloud hosting, websites are hosted by a network of interconnected physical and virtual cloud servers, allowing greater scalability and flexibility.
This bridging allows servers to manage the load on other servers if you experience a sudden increase in traffic and ensures that your website runs smoothly.
There are two types of Cloud SEO Server Hosting: Public cloud hosting and Private cloud hosting.
The framework of the public cloud server hosting is very similar to VPS hosting. One significant advantage public cloud web hosting has over VPS hosting is that because of the bridged server resources; it’s easy to scale your website with public cloud hosting.
On the other hand, with private cloud server hosting, there are a set of servers dedicated to a single website. Therefore, it should come across as no surprise that private cloud hosting is quite pricey.
The cost is probably the only apparent drawback when it comes to cloud server hosting.
Who should use Cloud SEO Server Hosting?
Cloud web hosting isn’t the best choice for all website owners.
For example, if you currently use shared web hosting to power your website and don’t exceed the limits of your plan or have any concerns regarding the performance of your site, it’s usually a good decision to stick to it.
Even without cloud SEO server hosting, you can improve your site performance with tools like cache plugins, image optimization plugins, and a CDN.
However, if you’re planning a sales promotion and anticipate a 5x increase in website traffic during this time, you will require a hosting solution that can manage your site without overloading.
Cloud SEO Server Hosting is usually a good choice for medium to large-scale businesses that already have a considerable amount of website traffic.
How Your Web Host Affects Your SEO Performance
Google’s recent core update has added several new factors that will measure your SEO efforts.
With this update, your web hosting will play a more prominent role in your SEO performance than ever!
This is because Google has specifically emphasized several hosting-related aspects like your website speed, security, user convenience, and more as major ranking factors.
Let’s explore exactly how your web hosting solution will impact your SEO performance.
1.Slow page loading speed
When was the last time you waited for a website that took ages to load? I’m guessing you don’t remember — seriously, who likes to wait around?
It’s widely known that if a web page takes more than two seconds to load, people will go back and look for the next website.
In fact, a one-second delay in page speed can reduce your conversion rate by nearly 7%!
According to Google, the time it takes for your site to load is one of the most crucial factors that determine your SERPs ranking.
Websites that take over a few seconds to load are penalized. On the other hand, if your website loads instantly, you will notice a significant boost in your search result rankings.
More often than not, it’s your web server that is to blame for your lower-than-average loading speed. Therefore, it’s critical to choose a reputed hosting solution that uses the latest caching technologies to help your page load speed.
If you have more than a few thousand visitors who visit your website each month, you should consider upgrading to a VPS or a cloud hosting package rather than sticking to a slow shared hosting solution to power your website. While it may be cost-effective, it may do more harm than good as you continue scaling.
However, it’s vital to note that it’s not always your web server that is to blame for your slow load speed.
Take a look at the content on your site and analyze if there are any large images, plugins that perform poorly, and even some sloppy Javascript and HTML code that may be weighing down your website and hurting your SEO performance.
2.Website Downtime
What’s the one thing that is worse than a slow-loading website? One that doesn’t load at all!
When your website is experiencing downtime, it’s usually because of issues with your hosting provider. This could be a hardware failure, maybe the server is working on overload, perhaps your site has been breached, or it could be something else.
Here’s the thing.
You may think that your website has only been down for a couple of minutes, but that doesn’t mean that your site’s SEO won’t be affected.
There is a high chance that search engines will flag your website as unreliable.
Now, if your website is down for more than a few minutes, you may as well say goodbye to ranking on Google since you may be removed from the search results entirely.
Therefore, it’s critical to double-check whether a hosting provider offers an uptime guarantee with their plans.
Now, many hosting providers offer a 99% uptime guarantee — this may seem like a great deal, but 99% still means your site could be down for more than a few days every year.
Look for hosting providers that offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee — this means your website will only be down for a few minutes every year.
3.Shared hosting space with dodgy websites
Reputed hosting providers in the market don’t allow spammy websites or scammers to use their service. However, that cannot be said for other low-cost web hosting service providers.
While it may not be a common problem, when you share your server with such dodgy websites, it can affect your search rankings.
How can other websites impact your website’s SEO?
Well, when a search engine penalizes a website, it can flag every single website that is sharing the IP address. This could mean your website could be penalized if you’re on a shared web hosting plan.
If you’re using shared hosting and are concerned about your SEO performance, you can use the Reverse IP Domain Check tool to analyze the other websites using the same IP address.
4.Web server location
Another factor that has a considerable influence on your website’s performance is the location of your server. But this depends entirely on the kind of hosting service you’ve opted for.
What does that mean?
Well, if you’re using a cloud hosting solution, this isn’t really something that will affect you since there is no physical server involved.
However, if you’re using a shared or dedicated SEO server hosting, then as the distance between your users and the physical server increases, the longer your website will take to load.
But if you’re using a reputed hosting provider, a high-performing server environment and a CDN integration can compensate for this.
Why does the location of the server really matter?
Here’s the thing.
When you have a distant server location, it can look suspicious, or you may simply be ignored by search engine algorithms that are filtering for SEO.
For example, if an individual is looking for a business or website based in the US, search engines will prioritize websites that have a US-based IP address.
This is where CDN comes into the picture.
A content delivery network (CDN) is basically a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and data centers that speeds up the rate of delivery of content by bringing it closer to where the users are located.
Final Thoughts
Ensuring your website performs well with SEO is crucial for any business to be successful online. Unfortunately, managing your site’s SEO is a considerable task that doesn’t really have an endpoint.
While there are several major factors that are vital for SEO, like your website content, it’s essential to keep an eye on your hosting-related aspects that will have an impact on your SEO performance.
A slow website that frequently experiences downtime will likely appear low on search engine rankings.
Now that you understand the importance of choosing the right web host and the different solutions you can choose from, it’s time to find the right fit for your business!
However, your SEO shouldn’t just stop there.
The way you set up your website by adhering to the best SEO practices will set the foundation for how your website performs in the future.
If you would like some help building a solid SEO strategy for your business, you can book a free, no-strings-attached discovery call with one of our experts.
