How to select a hosting provider for an optimized SEO campaign.
Search engines have long taken into account where websites are hosted as a factor in their ranking of webpages, not directly, of course, but rather quite indirectly. As you'll soon see, this makes your selection process of a Web hosting solution an important one.
Google and Bing, the two primary search engines at the time of writing, take factors including (but not limited to) "availability" and "speed" into consideration when assigning webpages specific rankings for the search results. What that means is that in addition to missing potential revenue (sales, memberships) when downtime occurs, businesses may also be putting their website's high rankings in jeopardy.
Search engines don't want to keep inaccessible sites in their index, because it negatively impacts the quality of their result pages (listings). While Google and Bing's crawlers will revisit a website periodically to check availability, an extended period of downtime (say more than 12 hours) could cause a site to be delisted entirely. In the video below (end of article), Matt Cutts explains how Google handles inaccessible websites and what search engine optimization teams and Web workers should do about it.
Speed is another factor to consider. But what's important about how quickly a website loads is that while it will likely not result in removal from the index of the popular search engines, but rather put optimized listings in peril, driving page positions down the search results and out of view of most prospective visitors.
To develop a technically sound SEO presence for a website, start by surveying and evaluating your Web host. You might be surprised at what you find. For example, is your host running the latest version of its OS software? If not, it may be vulnerable to an attack. Google and Bing for example take the presence of malware seriously. If your website is hosting malicious links or software, you'll likely receive an immediate notification through those services respective platforms.
So, how should you select a hosting provider for an optimized SEO campaign? Start with the fundamentals of course, choosing a solution that will offer your website a consistent and reliable experience when it comes to availability, whose response times are at least above average, and that takes security as seriously as your enterprise does.
That's not all that you should take into account if you are in the market for an SEO-friendly hosting provider. More for the advanced SEO enterprise, ensuring that hosting services provide IP ranges spread out over multiple Class A or C subnets is really the minimal needed to put a true SEO-friendly hosting in practice. The benefit of this (and it's somewhat gray hat - not really black or white) is that it gives search engines the impression that there is some location diversity in Web citations (a positive signal of authority for
By now you'll hopefully understand why hosting is such an important part of search engine optimization initiatives. Put your hosting provider to the test today and see how they compare.
As the Editor-in-Chief of Website Magazine and President of Website Services, Peter has established himself as a prominent figure in the digital marketing industry. With a wealth of experience and knowledge, Peter has been a driving force in shaping the landscape of digital marketing. His leadership in creating innovative and targeted marketing campaigns has helped numerous businesses achieve their revenue growth goals. Under his direction, Website Magazine has become a trusted source of information and insights for digital marketers worldwide. As President of Website Services, Peter oversees a team of talented professionals who specialize in SEO/SEM, email marketing, social media, and digital advertising. Through his hands-on approach, he ensures that his team delivers exceptional results to their clients. With a passion for digital marketing, Peter is committed to staying up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies, making him a sought-after thought leader in the field.
