If you have studied or read anything about SEO and how to use it to gain a better ranking on search engines, especially Google, you will no doubt know that there are literally hundreds of factors that influence where a website will rank for any particular search term. What will not normally be at the top of that list of factors is your website’s hosting service, and whilst it may not normally be considered as one of the major SEO influencers, it most certainly does play a role.
When we say play a role, more specifically we mean that the web hosting service you choose plays a role, and therefore it is important that you choose wisely. Carry out research on the hosting company, check its reviews, and if necessary contact them to ascertain if the hosting service you are considering is likely to help or hinder your SEO efforts. It will help in 3 main ways, which we have outlined below.
Where Your Hosting Company’s Servers Are Located
In truth, many website owners do not even know where the servers their hosting company uses are located, and it is likely that many do not even care, but they should. The reason they should care, especially if they wish to improve the search engine ranking of their website, is that the location of servers can affect the performance of the website, and particularly with respect to the experience of a visitor landing on that website.
This is especially the case if you are a local business, and your customer base lives in a particular geographical area. For example, if someone in Perth, WA searches for ‘pet groomers’ on Google, Google will prioritize within its search results car mechanic websites it knows are local, over websites that are not.
One way they identify a local website is via the IP address of its hosting server and if your hosting company has servers located in that area, or even in Australia, they will show up more often on search results than a website that is hosted on servers located in the USA, the UK, or Canada for example, even if the other pet grooming business is a local one.