by The Computing Australia Group | How web hosting impacts your SEO and customer acquisition
There is more to SEO than keywords and content! The overall performance of your website plays a big part in SEO positioning. We frequently see large business cutting corners with their web hosting. Cheap hosting is slow hosting. How many times have you visited a website and moved on because the website is slow and did not load the content fast enough. In a web sense, precious seconds lost can add up to a high cost to the business.
Fast loading times increase the chances that a website visitor will make a purchase or take an action like phoning your business. A site that loads in one second has a conversion rate three times higher than a site that loads in five seconds. And a study of mobile site data found that a 0.1 second improvement in site speed caused retail shoppers to spend almost 10% more.
When you invest in an SEO strategy, it is also worth evaluating the webhosting you use. Google announced way back in 2010 that the speed of a site mattered. Speed however, is just one of the performance indicators that are associated with web hosting. Other factors that can tie into web hosting performance:
Server downtime – no point in having a host that runs maintenance in your busy time and costs your business
Uptime guarantee – can your host guarantee you 99.9% uptime?
Location – where is your site hosted? Your site should be hosted as close to your clients as possible to improve speed.
Caching – your host should offer caching services to enhance the delivery speed of your content.
Security – a good host uses sophisticated security measures to protect your site and doesn’t leave security to you.
Support – a great host is there when you need them and has eyes on your website 24/7.
Scalable – you need your webhost to be able to scale if your business gets a lot of unforeseen traffic.
Web hosting can affect SEO in several ways:
1. Speed: A fast loading website can improve the user experience and make it more likely for visitors to stay on the site longer. This can indirectly help with SEO as Google uses the amount of time users spend on a site as a ranking factor. If a site has slow loading times, it may rank lower in search results.
2. Uptime: If a website is down, it can’t be accessed by users or search engines. This can result in a loss of traffic and potentially harm a site’s ranking.
3. Security: A website that is frequently hacked or prone to malware attacks can be a red flag to search engines and may result in a lower ranking.
Overall, while web hosting isn’t a direct ranking factor, it can impact a website’s performance, which can indirectly affect its SEO. It’s important to choose a reliable and secure web hosting provider to ensure that your website is fast, available, and secure.
Computing Australia offer our clients a premium, fully managed hosting solution. We take care of patching, monitoring and security. We utilise Cloud flare enterprise integration to speed up content delivery. We have access to 35 premium data centres worldwide to ensure your site is hosted as close to your clients as you can get.
Don’t entrust your website and marketing strategy to a cut price hosing solution provider.
Call Chris on 0438 855 884 or email sales@computingaustralia.group
