As a site owner, choosing the right web hosting plan is a crucial decision as it plays a fundamental role in its performance. There are various types of hosting services available designed to cater to the varying needs of websites. Of these, Shared Hosting is the most popular and commonly used hosting service.
Most new websites opt for Shared Hosting as it is cheap and allows them to get started in no time. However, many site owners are concerned about the SEO of their site, especially if they opt for a Shared Hosting server. In this article, we will explore the impact of Shared Hosting on a website’s SEO to help find some answers.
Search engines rank websites based on a wide range of factors. Few of these factors depend on the hosting server, as explained below:
Speed & Performance
Online users have a low tolerance towards websites that take more than 2-3 seconds to load. They tend to abandon slow sites to never return. This results in high bounce rates and low user engagement rates. Search engines strive to offer users the best online experience and rank slow-loading sites lower than their faster counterparts.
While there are many factors that affect the speed and performance of a website, the webserver plays an integral role in the same. In Shared Hosting, the server and its resources are shared between multiple users. If the provider does not follow ‘fair usage practices’, the performance of a site can get impacted and, in turn, impact the SEO score.
Location of the data centre
Every website targets certain users based on various demographics. If you have a website targeting customers in India, but the webserver is based in the US, then every time a user visits your site, the request will be relayed to the US to get a response from the server.
This can increase lag and can impact the performance of the site and impact its SEO score. With Shared Web Hosting, unless you choose a provider who has a data centre close to your target market, your site’s performance can get impacted.
Downtime
A webserver will need downtime for maintenance and unforeseen issues. With a Dedicated Server, you can choose the planned downtime based on your site traffic. However, in Shared Hosting, since multiple users are present on a server, this is not possible. Therefore, the downtime can impact the user experience on your site and lead to a drop in the SEO score, which makes it imperative to opt for a provider that offers a 99.9+% uptime guarantee.
Does this mean that Shared Hosting will negatively impact your site’s SEO?
No.
While other hosting services like Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, etc., can offer certain SEO benefits, the answer to this question will depend upon your site and the quality of services offered by the hosting provider. If your site has basic hosting requirements, then a Shared Hosting service will suffice, provided the hosting provider offers high-quality services.
Choose the best Shared Hosting plans and take steps to optimise your site for SEO. You can understand how to choose a good Shared Hosting plan from the following video:
How To Choose The Best Shared Hosting Based On Your Needs?
Summing Up
Remember, SEO is all about user experience. If your site visitors spend more time on your site and are happy with the site services, then it will invariably translate into a good SEO rank. Apart from the hosting plan, take all factors into consideration to boost your site’s SEO. Good Luck!
