How Hosting Impacts Your SEO Rank

You probably know at least a little bit about search engine optimization. It is difficult not to in this day and age – everywhere you turn, there are pieces about how best to optimize your website for a better rank on Google’s SERP. Everywhere you look, there’s talk of keywords and analytics.

Here’s the thing about that. SEO is about more than choosing the right keyword or knowing what content to serve to your visitors. There are actually a ton of different factors that can impact how Google places you – including what host you choose.

Yeah, you read that right. If you choose a bad web host, it can have a direct, negative impact on your site’s success. Consequently, choosing a good host means better placement, better ranking, and a happier audience.

There are several reasons for this.

Your Host Influences Your Website Security

The web’s a pretty dangerous place these days – and there are many ways your site might fall victim to digital crime, including spam, malware, and brute force attacks. A good host will do what’s necessary to protect you from such threats (or if you’re managing things yourself, they’ll help provide you with the tools to do so). A bad host either won’t much care, or will put you at risk with seedy or shoddy security practices.

In particular, make sure the following is taken care of:

• All software is kept up to date.
• Regular malware scans are carried out.
• Your host utilizes some form of anti-spam tool (or provides you with the ability to mitigate spam yourself).
• Passwords are hashed and stored securely.

Security may not necessarily be a direct ranking factor (even if Google is giving a boost to sites that use HTTPS), but a site that’s breached will suffer traffic loss and a ranking penalty.

Location Matters

Security aside, think about where you’re trying to rank. Is your host situated in the same location, or do they provide a content delivery network that allows users in your target location quick access to website resources? The impact is relatively minor, but if you’re trying to rank for an audience that’s primarily US-based, you’re best off choosing a host in that region.

Fast Websites Are Always Better

Last but certainly not least, fast and responsive websites are strongly favored by multiple search engines – especially Google.

A website that loads quickly may climb up the SERP, and one that’s slow and sluggish will ultimately find itself penalized by search engines. While there are definitely some measures you can take on your end to reduce the resource load of pages on your site, the lion’s share of site speed rests with your host, and how powerful their servers are.

In general, the faster your site loads, the better it will do when ranking for search.

Your Host Matters – So Choose Wisely

SEO is about more than keywords and content optimization. It’s about who you host with, too. And as far as that choice is concerned, Liquid Web is one of the best options available to you. With a wide selection of managed services, dedicated support teams, and powerful hosting plans, we’re not only the most helpful humans in hosting – we provide you with a faster, more secure site than you’ll find anywhere else.

Contact us today to learn more.