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TOP 9 THINGS I’LL BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT SHARED WEB HOSTING:
1) Shared Hosting Isn’t a Ranking Factor
This is the most important point. Some SEO factors have a direct impact on your pages’ rankings in relevant Google search results. These are factors which Google’s algorithm specifically “considers” when determining where to rank a page. When programming the algorithm, Google’s developers intentionally design it to account for these factors when ranking pages. They’re also frequently willing to let people know which factors are important.
That said, there are many SEO factors that have an indirect effect on rankings. The fact that Google doesn’t program its algorithm to consider a site’s host doesn’t necessarily mean that your hosting option has no effect whatsoever.
2) Site Speed Is an Issue
The page load time on your website is an example of how your choice of web host may indirectly impact your ranking. After all, while the host you choose isn’t exactly that important to SEO, site speed is. Pages that load faster simply have lower bounce rates than slowly loading pages. Over time, a high bounce rate can affect where your pages rank when users perform relevant searches.
People simply don’t have the patience for slow sites. In fact, Google research has confirmed that most mobile users will leave a page that take longer than three seconds to load:
This type of consistent user behavior tells Google’s algorithm that the content on these pages isn’t valuable to users. Because Google’s goal is to ensure that users find relevant and valuable content when performing searches, the algorithm will thus favor pages that load more quickly because they are simply more likely to retain guests.
That’s worth remembering when deciding where to host your website. With a shared hosting provider, your resources are distributed in such a way that site speed can suffer at times. This makes sense; you’re not the only one using the host’s resources. Other sites also depend on it. This can strain the host from time to time and when that happens, there’s a good chance that your pages will load more slowly.
This is not to say that you should reject a shared hosting option for this reason alone. It simply means that you should consider site speed an important factor when evaluating all options. You need to be confident that your pages will generally load at a reasonable speed (three seconds or less). Research your options and try to find one that’s known for hosting reliably fast sites. And remember that you can always switch to a new web host if your current one isn’t delivering results.
3) Uptime and Downtime Are Important
It should come as no surprise that site uptime and downtime both contribute to your Google ranking. Sites that are down for extended periods of time will struggle to attract consistent visitors. You obviously can’t reach the top of the SERPs if this is the case. As with slowly loading sites, users aren’t likely to re-visit sites that have been down frequently in the past. Downtime will also naturally limit users’ ability to find your site in the first place.
Don’t assume that you can find a host that will keep your site up and live every minute of every day. Some downtime should always be expected because web hosts must shut down sites temporarily in order to perform basic maintenance. You should research how frequently this occurs with the various options you’re considering before making a final decision. Some hosts perform maintenance more often than others.
While maintenance is, of course, important, excessive maintenance might limit your uptime. You need to strike the right balance between reasonable uptime and reasonable maintenance.
4) Host Server Location Matters
It is often important to account for the location of your host server when considering your options. The host server location affects site speed and, as you already know, site speed affects SEO.
Your main goal is to identify where most members of your target audience live. This doesn’t need to be a very specific location; it can even be a country. However, if your audience is fairly concentrated in one particular area, the more specifically that you can define their overall location, the better. This might be the case if you run a local business. In this instance, your site would cater to an audience in one particular city or neighborhood. Very few of your guests would come from other regions.
5) Security Is Essential
In the past and even today, you read about the sites which are being hacked. So, it is necessary that you must opt for a hosting company that considers security as its top priority. You must ask a few questions like whether these data centers are secured or servers working on new software versions or do they provide SSL certificates.
In spite of the fact that site must load faster, security is must as without it the website is of no use. Instant loading website always lure more and more visitors. Thus, a web hosting provider must guarantee the security, regarding personal, private and financial data
If your site requests that users share their information, you’ll struggle to maintain an audience if your security is less than stellar or it’s been compromised. That’s why it’s important to look for a web hosting option that’s known to be relatively secure. You don’t want your SEO to suffer because you chose a hosting option that leaves your site vulnerable to attacks.
6) Tech Specs / Limitations
Take a good, honest look at your site and figure out what you want it to do. If you’re hoping to host a blog, an e-commerce site, rich content, and videos, then you shouldn’t go with the cheapest hosting package you can find. A cheap hosting plan probably won’t have the RAM, processing power, and disk space to serve all these needs, and you’ll spend more time dealing with downtime or load issues than you would like.
Look to see what you are getting with the cheap host and what features are included in the cost. Do they charge for additional domains, support, backups, etc.. Call them. Ask questions. Tell them what you envision your site’s needs to be. Just don’t take it for granted that they take your site as seriously as you do.
7) Tech Support
In most people’s opinions, this is the big one. When my site, for some unknown reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live person on the phone? And, more than that, can they find out what’s wrong and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my site back online?
Before going with a host look into their reputation for customer support. See what kinds of different ways you can contact them when you need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on. Are they staffed 24/7? Do they outsource support?
You’ll find that, like in price and technical specifications, all hosts are not equal. Some hang their hat on their support crew, and some view customer support as an afterthought. Steer clear of the latter.
8) Scalability
A few web hosting providers give several hosting plans and products which come in handy. If the site is facing a huge amount of traffic that needs upgrading to a new hosting plan like maybe from shared hosting to the dedicated server or VPS. In case, the web hosting provider is not offering such plans, they will manage the moving hassle to other service providers and it also provides you the required update. This could be best in case you opt for a hosting company that permits the scale-up in the near future at the time when the website grows.
9) Add-Ons/ Features
If you’ve created a website with all the elements it needs to succeed, chances are it’s going to grow. With any luck, you’ll seehttps://soo.gd/8OWK an increase in traffic and conversion rates. This will likely mean you’ll have to upgrade your web hosting plan.
Related: When Should You Upgrade Your Hosting Plan?
Most new sites start on a shared, low-cost plan. As your online presence expands, however, you’ll need more resources, bandwidth, and disk space to maintain your site for all its users. A host that offers easy upgrades to a Virtual Private Server (VPS), Managed WordPress, or Dedicated Hosting plan can make this process smoother.
