In March 2024, Google updated some of its ranking rules, directly tying them to the quality of your web hosting. In this explanation, we’ll look at which parts of your web hosting can affect your site’s ranking. We’ll also break down why these factors are important for your site’s success.
Effect of Web Hosting Options on Google Ranking
The type of web hosting you pick can have an impact on how well your website ranks on Google. Here’s how:
Website Speed
Website speed is crucial for search engines because it improves the user experience. If a website is slow to load, people tend to leave it quickly, which leads to higher bounce rates. Google takes note of this and is less likely to rank slow websites high in its search results. A slow site reflects poorly on Google, so it prefers faster websites. Also, your site needs to load quickly on both mobile devices and computers to perform well in rankings.
While web hosting plays a big role in your site’s loading speed, there are some things you can do to make your site faster, even if your hosting isn’t the best. These include optimizing images, using caching, compressing files, and using content delivery networks (CDNs). However, in the end, your server’s performance is key.
Google looks at several factors when measuring speed, such as:
- How quickly your site starts loading on a browser.
- How fast the page becomes interactive.
- How long it takes your server to respond when someone clicks on a link or takes action on your site.
If your server is too slow in any of these areas, your website’s ranking on Google can suffer.
To speed things up, choosing a web host that uses high-performance servers (like those with SSD drives and Intel Xeon processors) can make a big difference. You can also consider upgrading to a better hosting plan, such as VPS, cloud, or a dedicated server for improved performance.
Downtime:
If your hosting provider has frequent outages, your website may not be available when Google tries to crawl it. This can lead to lower rankings because Google prioritizes sites that are always available.
Google generally avoids directing users to slow websites, and it’s even less likely to send them to sites that are often offline. If Google keeps sending people to websites that are unavailable, users may start using other search engines. To avoid this, Google checks how often sites are online and factors this into its rankings.
There are several reasons your site might go offline. Some are related to actions you take on your site, like putting it in maintenance mode, installing incompatible software, or making coding errors that cause it to crash. Other reasons are tied to the quality of your web hosting, like when your server needs updates or maintenance.
With poor hosting, your site may go offline more often, which Google doesn’t like. For example, if the server hardware is outdated or unreliable, it may keep crashing. Or if you’re using shared hosting with limited resources, your server may struggle to handle high traffic, causing your site to go down. In both cases, this can negatively affect your Google ranking.
To avoid this, make sure your hosting provider offers guaranteed uptime with a service level agreement (SLA). You should aim for at least 99.95% uptime. If you need 100% uptime, consider using cloud hosting, which is more reliable.
Server Location
Hosting your site on a server far from your target audience can slow down its load time. Choosing a hosting provider with servers closer to your audience can improve your website’s speed and performance, which helps with ranking.
When information travels from one place to another, the further it has to go, the longer it takes. This increases latency, meaning your server responds more slowly to requests from a user’s browser, which reduces your website’s speed.
Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help speed up global loading times, but this only works for static content—things on your site that don’t change often. For websites with a lot of dynamic content, like pages that change for each user or show search results, having a server closer to the user makes a big difference in performance.
Ideally, your server should be located closer to where most of your visitors are. For example, if you’re an India-based company, it’s better to host your website on servers in India.
However, some web hosts store their data in large data centers around the world, often in the US. Even if your company is based in India, your website might still be hosted on a server far away, like in the US, which can slow down its performance for users in India.
Also Read – What Is SMTP in WordPress? And How To Configure It?
Security
A secure hosting environment (with SSL certificates and regular updates) protects your website from hackers. Google values secure sites and ranks them higher, so choosing a hosting provider that prioritizes security can boost your rankings.
The lock symbol you see in web browsers is a clear sign that Google takes security seriously. Google doesn’t want to send users to websites where their financial or personal information could be at risk due to an insecure connection between the browser and the website.
Having a secure connection is now important for ranking well in search results. The way to get the green lock symbol is by installing an SSL certificate, which encrypts the data exchanged between the user’s browser and your server. You can usually get an SSL certificate from your web host.
There are different types of SSL certificates, and the one you need depends on how secure your website needs to be. A good web host will offer these different types and provide help to set them up if needed.
What many people don’t know is that a basic Domain Validated SSL certificate can now be obtained for free from the Let’s Encrypt certification authority.
Scalability
Scalability refers to your hosting plan’s ability to handle sudden increases in traffic without affecting your website’s performance. If your hosting can’t manage these traffic spikes, your website may become slow or even crash during peak times, which can lead to a poor user experience. Since Google prioritizes user experience in its ranking algorithms, it tracks these performance issues, and any slowdowns or downtime can hurt your site’s ranking.
Here’s how scalability impacts your website and rankings:
- Traffic Fluctuations: During sales, promotions, or viral content events, traffic can spike significantly. If your hosting plan has limited resources, such as with shared hosting, these traffic increases can overwhelm the server, slowing down the site or causing downtime. This affects your site’s reliability, which Google measures when ranking websites.
- Types of Hosting: Scalable hosting solutions, like cloud hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), or dedicated servers, allow you to adjust resources (like bandwidth, memory, and storage) based on your needs. With these plans, you can handle higher traffic without a dip in performance, which ensures a better user experience and helps maintain or even improve your search rankings.
- Impact on SEO: Google considers page load time and uptime as part of its ranking factors. Sites that consistently perform well, even under heavy traffic, are more likely to rank higher. Websites that frequently slow down or crash can be penalized, as they offer a subpar experience to users.
- Future Growth: Scalability is essential for long-term success. As your website grows, you’ll likely attract more visitors, and having a hosting plan that can adapt to your needs ensures you can maintain good performance over time. Without scalability, your site’s performance may degrade as traffic increases, affecting both user retention and Google rankings.
Choosing a hosting provider that offers scalable solutions helps safeguard your site’s performance, ensuring that it can handle growth without sacrificing speed or availability—both of which are crucial for maintaining strong rankings on Google.
In simple terms, good hosting keeps your website fast, secure, and always available, which Google rewards with higher rankings.