When you think of SEO, you might consider on-page techniques and technical factors but miss out on a critical factor for search engine rankings: a good website host.
While your ranking on Google isn’t directly related to which hosting provider you use, other SEO factors, like your site’s speed, security, and server uptime, depending on your WordPress hosting provider.
Let’s quickly recap what website hosting is.
Your web host is responsible for storing your website’s data in servers online and allowing your website users to access this data through the internet. The quality of web hosting you choose will impact your SEO as it will determine your site speed, data security, server uptime, and user experience of your WordPress site.
You might be interested in: Why Hire a WordPress SEO Agency for Your Business
But SEO is not the only reason to be careful when choosing your hosting provider. The hosting you choose for your WordPress site or e-commerce store will also determine your disc space, data transfer limit, monthly fee, and website traffic capabilities.
In this article, we discuss what factors to consider when choosing a WP hosting provider and recommend a few well-known providers.
What are the most important factors when choosing a web hosting provider for SEO?
A good host for your website will not magically boost your SEO, but a bad one can hurt it even if you’ve done everything else right. So, here is a list of considerations to keep in mind when picking a WP hosting provider.
1. Best for website load speed with the most server locations
Website loading speed is an important factor for website SEO and depends on several things like
- How data-heavy your site is
- How optimized are your images
- Your website hosting provider
There are a ton of WordPress plugins you can use to optimize other aspects of your site, but choosing a good hosting provider is essential.
The amount of time it takes for your website pages to load depends on how many servers your hosting provider has and how near they are to you. The more servers your hosting provider has and the closer they are to you, the better your site speed will be.
The best hosting provider for website loading speed is HostGator, and the best based on the number of server locations is GoDaddy.
3. Most secure hosting provider
Any business owner knows the importance of securing their website data with firewalls and other security measures. So, use a hosting provider with excellent security measures in place and check if it regularly undergoes updates and bug fixes. A secure website is essential to maintain your customer’s trust, protect you from data theft, and rank well on search engines.
Investing in a hosting provider that gives an SSL certificate, certifying your website’s security, will help your website appear more trustworthy and improve search engine rankings.
The best hosting provider for website security and SSL is SiteGround.
3. Highest uptime provider
Your website’s uptime is the amount of time it can be up and running without disruptions. This depends on your hosting provider. The host you choose should be able to run efficiently for long periods. Websites that require frequent downtime won’t rank well on search ranking and may be deindexed by Google.
The best hosting provider for uptime is HostGator.
4. Best for storing backups
After you put in the time and money to build your perfect site, you should consider backing up your data. Opting for a hosting provider that offers backup services can save you from a disaster should your site get wiped because of a virus or hacker. If this happens, not only would you lose all your site data, but you would also lose the search engine ranking that you worked so hard for.
The best hosting provider in terms of backups is InMotion.
5. Quickest customer support
This is another factor to look out for when choosing a website host because should you need help for things like a backup, a virus threat, or anything else, you want an efficient customer support team that you can rely on.
The best hosting provider for good customer support is A2 Hosting.
These are just a few factors to consider before choosing a hosting provider for SEO, and ideally, you want to pick a provider with a good mix of all these factors. In addition, based on your website needs, you can also consider other factors like your budget, monthly traffic, and storage requirements.
Overall Best Hosting Providers for WordPress Websites
Keeping these points in mind, here are our top recommendations for WordPress hosting providers for SEO. Usually, we recommend our clients opt for “managed WordPress hosting”, which gives you several additional WordPress features for a better and smoother WordPress site.
With managed WordPress hosting, you get support from WP experts, access to the best WP security practices, easy site management, and more.
These are our top hosting recommendations:
1. WP Engine: Perfect for advanced users
WP Engine is a hosting provider that is slightly on the pricier side, with monthly plans ranging from $24-$60. But, for a blog or e-commerce site with high website traffic, the price you pay is well worth the advanced features you get access to.
This might not be the best hosting provider for beginners only looking for basic features, and smaller websites might find many cheaper hosting alternatives to fit their needs.
2. Pantheon.io: Great for high-traffic websites
This is also a hosting provider on the pricier side and is a managed WP hosting option better suited for high-traffic websites. With Pantheon, you can choose the basic, performance, or elite plan to access various advanced hosting features.
If you’re looking for a hosting provider with excellent uptime that can manage high traffic and give you great security measures, Pantheon is the one for you.
However, if you’re a smaller business or just starting out, you might find these prices expensive.
Source: pantheon.io/
3. Hostinger: Best for cheap WordPress hosting
This easy-to-set-up hosting is priced as low as $1.99 a month and is great for new or small businesses that want to minimize their monthly expenses. Hostinger’s entry-level plan gives you 30GB of storage, two databases, weekly backups, and an SSL certificate, among other things.
However, at this price, you get slightly slower customer service, but their team is available around the clock. For the price you pay, Hostinger gives you a great value deal. The only con with this plan is that it requires a 4-year commitment to avail this price.
If you’re willing to pay a slightly higher price per month, you can get access to advanced hosting features on Hostinger.
Source: hostinger
4. BlueHost: Terrific for beginners
BlueHost is a widely used hosting provider because it is one that the WordPress site officially recommends. In addition, because of the number of people using this hosting provider, any kinks in hosting are quickly resolved. And, they have an award-winning customer service team ready to help you out, which is great for beginners.
This hosting provider is also super easy to set up and is reviewed to be reliable and trustworthy, while still being reasonably priced with plans starting at $2.75 a month.
Depending on your requirements, you can also opt for different types of hosting plans with BlueHost to find one that best suits your needs.
Source: bluehost
Website building can be complicated, and our web development team is happy to help you build the stunning and SEO-friendly site you deserve. Contact us today, and let’s get you seen!