In my experience, people are in such a hurry that they don’t research where they are hosting their new site. I’m not sure if people just don’t care or don’t think it’s important or maybe they just haven’t been educated as to why good hosting can be almost as important as your site design. And many times, your site design and SEO is depending on great hosting. I’ll detail that further down. Your choice for hosting can make a big difference in how or if your site is even seen. Since search engine optimization is dependent on good hosting, your site may never make the grade simply because you chose wrong when it came to where you wanted to host your files. Although SEO includes linking, content and many other things it is also depending on quality hosting. Here’s what you should know about great web hosting in Castle Rock when considering SEO for your website.
Tech Support
So your site goes down in the wee hours of the morning on a Sunday. What do you do? Of course, we are here for you any day, any time, but for us to help, we will need to be able to contact your hosting. For that to happen, support needs to be available 24/7. Most good hosting companies now have chat features that make it easy to jump on a chat at any time but I still run into some that have Monday-Friday, 9-5 hours which I find ridiculous. The internet doesn’t have business hours so the sites that comprise the internet shouldn’t have down time either. Make sure your hosting company offers great support from experts at any time of the day.
Page Load Speed
Page load speed has become such a big topic because it is part of how you are ranked by Google and other search engines. The other side of that is that visitors to your site simply don’t want to wait for a page to load anymore. Anything more than a couple of seconds and people look for another site. There are many ways to optimize your site for speed but if you simply have slow hosting, nothing will help. Good speed equals good ranking.
Location of your IP Address
This may seem like a no brainer, but make sure your IP address corresponds to your actual location to help with SEO. With some discount hosting, you may end up with an IP address originating outside of the country which can devastate your SEO and hurt you when you try to show your site to a target audience within the U.S. (God bless the USA by the way). You should always make sure your IP address is as close as possible for speeds sake as well. Everything is instantaneous nowadays so the farther your site is from where it needs to be, the longer it takes to respond. The last thing you want is a lagging site.
Uptime and Down Time
Simply put, this is the amount of time your site is up and running versus being down due to server issues. When your site is down, it hurts your SEO and even more importantly, people usually won’t come back to your site if they see that it is down so your conversions will take a dive. High quality hosting companies will give you at least 99.95% uptime. You may think that 99.9% is enough but it isn’t.
Website Security
Believe it or not, your hosting is the front line that is guarding your site against hackers, malicious code and malware. Of course there are a bunch more steps to take to secure your site such as SSL certificates and security software, do yourself a favor and start with a reputable hosting company.
In conclusion, great hosting is the foundation of your site; the rock that your site is built on. Make it strong and dependable, without any weak points. When you know you have great hosting, you can focus on all the other factors that go into great search engine optimization.
I recommend Siteground hosting to all of my clients and you can check out their great features and low pricing here. Robert Arthur Designs proudly serves Colorado, Douglas County, Castle Rock, Highlands Ranch, the Denver Tech Center, and Denver. Contact us to find out how we can help you with your web design needs.
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