Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in a website’s visibility. It’s estimated that 68 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine. As such, it’s essential to optimize online content so your website appears in searches when target audiences are seeking information about your industry, expertise, products and services. While content is a significant driver of SEO, the platform your website is built on also influences your search rankings. By understanding the relationship between website host, content management system (CMS) and SEO, organizations can ensure their expertise is well-positioned to attract relevant searchers and that it stands out from the crowd.
The Connection Between Web Hosting and SEO
SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website and content for search engine results. The goal is to improve your site’s rankings in popular search engines, primarily Google, with keywords and terms that are related to your product, service and expertise. With over half of all website traffic coming from organic searches, optimizing your site for search serves as a valuable way to build credibility, website traffic and inbound leads.
Your choice of website host can profoundly impact your website’s SEO performance. “Hosting isn’t often discussed as an SEO factor, but it can significantly impact your rankings, traffic, and conversions,” writes Jeremy Holcombe of Kinsta. “Google doesn’t care which host you use, but it does care about factors like site speed, reliability, server uptime, and security—all of which are affected by your choice of host.” Whether developing a new website or working toward an improved search engine marketing (SEM) strategy, your website host may play a bigger role than you think.
Five SEO Essentials for Your Website Platform
By focusing on the following five essential factors of your website platform’s impact on SEO, it’s possible to understand the intricate relationship between the two and take targeted steps to elevate your website’s search engine performance.
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Intuitive, straightforward SEO tools.
Finding the right building and optimization tools is one of the biggest factors to consider when choosing a website platform. Ease of use when creating and maintaining a website is a top priority for organizations. For example, user-friendly WordPress is behind more than nearly half of the websites on the internet and its CMS market share is roughly 64 percent, according to W3Techs. This dominant position may have to do with its diverse suite of tools. “The reason why WordPress sites may tend to rank better is due to WordPress’s SEO-friendly features. Not every CMS allows you to do advanced SEO,” writes SEO expert Bruce Clay. “This is what you want in a CMS.”
Other website hosts such as Weebly, Google Cloud Hosting and Amazon Web Services have different tools that may or may not address your goals. From managing meta tags to generating sitemaps and optimizing website structure, it’s important to utilize a website host that aligns with your strategy and allows you to fine-tune your site’s SEO elements for better search engine visibility.
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Optimal website speed.
It’s true that in today’s digital realm, attention spans are fleeting. This means website speed can influence whether someone stays on your content or clicks away to something else. Search engines prioritize websites that load quickly. Your website host plays a pivotal role in determining your website’s speed. By choosing a reliable hosting service that optimizes server performance, you can ensure your website loads swiftly, satisfying both search engines and visitors.
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Continuous uptime.
If your website goes down, it can be disastrous for your customers, prospects and business operations, not to mention your website’s SEO efforts. Uptime, which refers to the percentage of time your website remains accessible and operational, is a critical factor for SEO success. Frequent downtime can negatively impact your search engine rankings and lead to missed business opportunities. To ensure an uninterrupted online presence, opt for a trustworthy hosting service with robust infrastructure and efficient technical support.
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Robust and frequently updated security.
Website security is crucial for protecting sensitive data but also for maintaining your SEO standing. Hacked or compromised websites face severe penalties from search engines, resulting in significant drops in rankings. Make the security of your website platform a priority. In a fast-paced digital realm, regular updates that address evolving vulnerabilities are a must. When combined with a reputable hosting service that employs rigorous security measures, you can bolster your website’s defenses against cyber threats, enhancing your credibility in the eyes of both search engines and visitors.
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Relevant regional outreach.
Did you know the geographical location of your hosting server can significantly impact local SEO efforts? This is important for businesses targeting specific regions or local audiences. Search engines consider the server location when determining the relevance of a website for geographical searches. This can mean working with a local host or using a global CMS, which allows you to choose to host servers in various locations, effectively catering to target audiences.
It’s All About User Experience
Each of these five elements is a vital component of successful search engine optimization. That’s because they contribute to the user experience (UX), which is a pivotal factor in website success. It refers to the ease of use of your website ranging in factors from engaging and fresh content, navigation, accessibility, attractive design, loading time and recommended actions. A positive UX not only keeps visitors engaged, but also signals to search engines that your website is valuable and relevant. The search engine crawler that ranks your website imitates what a typical user would do. The bottom line to SEO? When you optimize your website for the user, you optimize your website for search.
