How Web Hosting, Site Speed and Location Affects SEO

SEO methods have changed considerably since Google announced its penguin and panda updates. However, the effect that hosting had on old methods still remains the same today. With increasing numbers of businesses now realising that SEO is an essential element to their online success, we want to outline exactly how hosting can make a ranking difference whether positive or negative.

So, have a quick read through this article and hopefully most of your questions will be answered in a timely, simple manner. Just remember that SEO is a bit of an art form, and there are many methods you can use to help improve rankings, so choosing to utilise hosting is not the be all and end all.

Location Is Important

If you run a UK business it’s usually important that you host your website within the UK to achieve the most fruitful results. Try buying a .co.uk domain and assess the improvements in ranking accordingly, even if your current host in US based. You’ll probably need to spend some time trying different options as the results can be different depending on the type of website you have, but generally, hosting within your home country is considered to be a very good idea.

Check Hosting Reputation

Thanks to an explosion of fantastic new website host review engines it’s now easier than ever to find out which hosts are most suited to your business and website model. Ensure you spend some time reading through all reviews before choosing an appropriate host, as some will definitely be much better than others. We also offer personalized hosting plans that are the fastest available servers running at only 70% capacity for short latency.

Site Speed

Now you’ve found the best host available to you, it’s important that you think about site speed. Although you may have the perfect host, if your page performance is poor and certain sections take a long time to load, Google may push your website further down the rankings.

You can actually use Google’s own webmaster tools to learn how well the search engine perceives your website. So take full advantage of this as it could highlight any issues that haven’t yet been brought to your attention. Other tools include http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

On Page SEO

Again, even with the best hosting service in the world, if your website isn’t SEO optimised, then you probably won’t get very far. Make sure you spend some time researching the best and most effective ways of optimising alt tags, page titles, and meta tags, as these will help to produce much more attractive and desirable results.

So there you have it my search engine optimisation friends. That was a quick and simple guide to understanding the basics of how hosting can have a huge impact on your optimisation success. As I mentioned previously, it’s always important to remember that SEO isn’t an open and shut case. There are many ways in which you can make your website rank higher, and in many cases, discovering the most useful will be very much an individual thing. Ensure you get the basics of your site right first. If design isn’t your thing, try and see if you can get some help from web optimization designers who can tweak your site and change hosting.

One last word of advice; don’t give up! Article by Doublespark Limited.