Many people tend to think that the only considerations when choosing a hosting company are price and ease of use of that company’s system. Another area that should be considered is SEO, which is greatly affected by the hosting server where the site is stored: speed, security, backups and other components that affect the site’s performance and how the search engine views it.
Uzi Shabat, CEO of Digital Solutions, will detail in the following article the connection between online SEO and the hosting server to which the site is associated.
Speed of websites stored on the server
One of the most significant factors affecting a website’s speed is undoubtedly the hosting server. Website browsing speed affects promotion in two aspects: first, it is a parameter in itself and Google obviously prioritizes sites with lower loading times, the second thing is the behavior of the surfers.
Surfers tend to abandon sites that delay them and extend their time spent on the site without any logical meaning. In addition to abandonment, there is also the negative memory of the site that reduces the chances of converting a one-time visitor into a repeat surfer.
Each website and its corresponding server settings are designed to improve speed, so there is also a need to seek help from support (details later in the article) to improve performance.
Website security
The first thing that comes to mind for webmasters when it comes to website security is an SSL certificate. This is an SEO parameter that has gained more significance in recent years, to the point that it is very rare to see unsecured websites in high positions in search results.
Here too, similar to website speed, security is not only a parameter in itself, but it also has an indirect effect through user behavior.
Have you ever tried to log in to a website and received a message about an attempt to log in to an insecure site? I assume you abandoned it at that moment, without even trying to log in using an insecure login.
Automatic daily backups before performing “dangerous” operations
As part of ongoing client management, webmasters must perform a variety of actions that could damage a site if not performed properly. For example, it is customary to perform a manual backup before upgrading a WordPress version, updating a template, or updating a plugin due to the real risk of the site being taken down.
Automatic daily backups reduce the possibility of data loss that could set back a site’s ranking by weeks or even months. The world of SEO is based on the crawl rate of Google’s crawler, and when data is missing, the crawl takes the site back in the rankings.
The promoter must conduct itself on an ongoing basis with complete confidence that he has access to the storage server to perform technical operations, back up and, if necessary, restore the site.
Support for performing technical SEO operations
Not all website promoters have in their arsenal of skills the technical SEO actions required for ideal website promotion.
Webmasters are required to implement scripts, make changes to PHP files, and generally customize the site’s settings in the hosting.
Personal support from the hosting server team, especially at the beginning but of course also on an ongoing basis, may be critical to preventing frustration, wasting time, and harming the availability and performance of the site. It is important to remember that in most cases the support team is not limited to website promotion and will therefore need more precise guidance regarding the actions in which we will need assistance.
Temporary falls
Temporary outages are super critical even for websites that don’t do SEO, especially for medium and large websites with a large amount of traffic.
Unavailability creates a bad name for the site and damages it both in the short term and in the long term. Another problem with continuous unavailability is crawling the site. When the search engine crawls a site that is not online, even temporarily, the site may be damaged and its rankings may decline.
A quality hosting server is measured, among other things, by its monthly number of crashes. The stability of the site is very important for promoting the site on Google in the long term.
In conclusion : Storage conditions are much more complex than price. There is a real need to consider the full package of conditions in order to understand whether the storage server is optimized for promotion on Google and will allow you to maximize performance.
