Does the hosting service you choose for your website impact your SEO rank? Most people seem to think that isn’t the case, and other factors like keywords and link building are much more important.

But the hosting service that supports your website does have a lot to do with SEO success. Your SEO efforts should begin with the host you choose. So how does web hosting affect SEO rankings?

Hosting a website is not difficult at all nowadays, You can get started with managed hosting services like FlyWheel or you can choose an affordable hosting services like NameCheap.

5 Common Web Hosting Myths Debunked

Here are 5 misconceptions about hosting and SEO.

1. Search engine crawlers don’t put much emphasis on speed

In fact, the opposite is true. Some people may see speed as more of a factor in human terms than search engine algorithms. But those algorithms are developed chiefly to gauge a site’s usefulness to human visitors, and speed is a big part of that.

Slow load times are extremely detrimental. Most users will quickly move on rather than sit and wait for content to appear every time they click something. Google was one of the first to start penalizing slow websites.

Tools like Alexa can help monitor this, but going with a host like FlyWheel that provides fast page loads and high bandwidth in the first place is your best bet.

2. Premium hosting is better than shared hosting

Many SEO experts have claimed that shared hosting, where your site exists in the same server memory alongside others, is a negative factor.

At least, compared to sites that are hosted on their own exclusive physical or virtual server. Shared resources typically use the same IP address, leading to problems that search engines may penalize you for.

Think of it like renting an apartment; if your neighbors are scammers, it won’t look good for you, whether you are aware of it or not.

However, Google and others have stated that they judge each domain independently, no matter how it is hosted. You might even consider reputable hosting as the best alternative; you can check out 1&1, NameCheap and BlueHost for a start.

You can read this detailed review article about reputable yet affordable web hosting services.

3. A little downtime won’t affect SEO ranking too much

First, you have to define “a little”, Fifteen minutes may not mean much for a small blog, but it could mean thousands in lost income for a busy e-commerce site.

Minimal downtime and maximum accessibility are always preferable. If your site isn’t available, nothing else matters. Search engines will penalize sites that are excessively found to be unresponsive.

You need a Reputable WebHost that promises high uptimes of 99.5% or more and stands behind them. That means also having good tech support so that any downtime issues are quickly addressed.

4. Security and SEO are separate issues

How can more secure web hosting affect SEO rankings? The search engines understand that getting hacked is not just a major inconvenience to you, but alarming for you customers and perhaps even an unacceptable risk to them if you’re storing purchase information.

Sites that show indications of being a high-security risk may be penalized, and eventually even black-listed or de-indexed from rankings.

Be certain your host takes security very seriously. To make sure everything is in order, you can use a remote control desktop applications that will enable you to take advantage of the remote-control technology.

5. SEO ranking is something you build yourself through your content

That’s only partly true. While things like organic SEO and internal links are crucial, these things can be undermined by a hosting service that’s not knowledgeable or concerned about support for their client’s SEO efforts.

It is uncommon, but it does happen. Hosts have been known to restrict or even request removal of SEO-friendly plugins or other features that they feel put an unacceptable burden on server resources.

Some web-hosting providers may even add criteria to the robots.txt files that restrict which bots can access your site. This can severely limit your visibility. Look for a host demonstrating awareness of how difficult and important SEO can be.

Does web hosting affect SEO rankings? The good news is that most reputable providers understand that the answer is “YES!” As competitive business owners, they recognize the need to satisfy you the customer.

However, you should take the time and do the research to find a hosting service that lives up to its promises. Better SEO means bigger payoffs in the long run.