The influence of web hosting on your SEO ranking
If you have a website, you want nothing more than to ensure that it gets as high as possible in Google. You improve your position in Google with search engine optimization, also called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are all kinds of techniques within SEO to improve your findability, but there is one that many people overlook: web hosting. Have you ever thought that the server your website is running on may also have an impact on the findability of your website? In this article you can read what influence webhosting can have on the position of your website within search engines such as Google and Bing .
Why is a good web hosting party so important?
Your website should always be accessible. If there are malfunctions and the downtime of your website is too long, your website is no longer indexable for search engines. This can have a negative impact on the ranking if it happens too often or for a long time in a row. You also know for sure that the customer comes to the competition. That is of course not what you want!
Another important ranking factor of Google is the speed of your website. Google focuses on user experience and speed plays an important role in this. Slow loading (especially on mobile) will ensure that the user goes back to Google to find another website that offers a better user experience. Google measures this data and rewards / punishes websites for this. The performance of your website is therefore very important and a fast hosting platform is essential.
In addition, you can do a lot more on the performance of your website. A newer version of PHP can already give your website a speed boost. It can therefore be useful to check which PHP version hosting providers offer. A useful tool to investigate the performance of your website is Lighthouse . This allows you to run a performance audit that gives you insight into which parts your website can be optimized.
Hosting party must be able to provide SSL certificate
With an era in which cybercrime is no stranger, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that your website is secure. Google also finds this and rewarded websites that have a SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer). It is therefore important that the hosting provider that you have in mind can provide an SSL certificate.
With an SSL certificate, all exchanged information is protected on a website. Think of personal data, online purchases and financial transactions. These are data that you do not want them to end up with the wrong people. If your website has an SSL certificate, you not only show your visitors and customers that their data is handled securely, you also ensure that your website gets a higher ranking in search engines: a win-win situation.