subject: Web Hosting And Seo: How To Choose An Seo Company [print this page] When it comes to search engine optimization or SEO, most people focus on website design and linking strategies, but your web hosting is the foundation of your website and ties right in to search engine ranking. As web hosting and SEO go hand in hand, you ideally want your web host to also be your SEO company, so your website is optimized from the backend to the frontend.
These are the 4 ways web hosting and SEO are directly related and what you should consider when choosing an SEO company:
1. Uptime
The efforts you put into SEO only work if your website is online and available. Whether it's due to a server crashing or service that's too slow, an unreliable web hosting and SEO company could mean that your website is offline for chunks of time. Not only would you lose potential visitors or customers, presenting a poor and unprofessional first impression, but your search engine ranking is also affected if a search engine bot finds your website in that state.
2. Software Updates
A trustworthy web host is timely about installing plugins and software updates that affect how well your server, content management system and website function. This is the first line of defense that protects your website and decreases your chance of getting hacked or attacked by malicious code, which ties right in with the relationship between website accessibility, web hosting and SEO. Just one missed update could make your website vulnerable and could even lead you to lose your website along with all the SEO effort you put into it.
3. Page Speed
How quickly your website loads also factors into SEO and search engine ranking. Search engines are concerned about the websites they recommend to Internet users and they'd prefer not to recommend your website if it frustrates users who expect webpages to load within seconds. Your web hosting and SEO company should have high-quality servers that allow your website to load as fast as possible.
4. Unique IP Addresses
Your Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique identifier that helps you communicate with other computers on the Internet. Some web hosts put all websites on the same server with the same IP address. This can confuse search engines that interpret the situation to mean that all of those websites are from the same person, and any interlinking would negatively affect SEO. An honorable web hosting and SEO company would assign unique IP address to each hosted website.
