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Tips for choosing hosting and how it affects SEO

Tips for choosing hosting and how it affects SEO

The choice of hosting is one of the first things that everyone is puzzled by when launching a website. Even at this stage, when before the active work on promotion, it seems far away, it is appropriate to think about search engine optimisation, because the hosting factor is directly related to SEO. On a dubious server you will deprive your project from the start of important advantages, and in particularly severe cases - put a cross on the effective promotion.

Types of hosting. A short libécé:

All websites differ in size, file volume, traffic loads, etc. it is obvious that different resources need servers with their own hardware and software capacities. That's why there are different hosting formats. The most popular are three.

Virtual hosting (Shared). The simplest and cheapest format for hosting a website. The provider divides one physical server into many parts, and provides each of them for the use of subscribers. Somewhat similar to living in a dormitory, where you can choose a room of the necessary size (disk space), but in all other respects, you have to share space with your neighbours: CPU resources, RAM, even in some sense traffic. All server administration tasks are handled by the hoster. IP-addresses are shared: sometimes this increases certain risks for SEO, which we will talk more about.

Virtual Server (VPS / VDS). A type of hosting in which several virtual machines are created on one physical server. With the help of special programmes emulate a dedicated server for each subscriber. Users are completely isolated from each other: if a neighbour consumes a lot of resources, it will not affect the work of other sites. At the same time, each subscriber can administer their own virtual server: install the necessary software, scripts and customise the hosting for the project. And finally, placing a site on VPS / VDS, each subscriber gets his own IP-address. The functional part of such hosting is close to a full-fledged dedicated server, but it costs much cheaper.

Dedicated server (Dedicated). The most powerful variant of hosting. This is a separate physical machine in the rack data centre, which is fully at the disposal of the client. The format does not provide for any neighbours. Even the provider does not have access to the server. The latter is responsible only for the smooth functioning of the equipment. This format of hosting is necessary for resource-intensive sites with large databases and many thousands of visitors

Should I refuse shared-hosting?

It is easy to guess that most SEO risks are associated with the placement of the site on shared-hosting. Does this mean that you should immediately abandon this idea? We think not. Virtual hosting is the optimal format to start with. It allows you to rationalise your budget and use the money saved to solve important issues of initial optimisation - content, links, site audit, etc.

When the project becomes crowded, you can always move to a more advanced hosting format, with expanded resources and administration capabilities. Usually it is recommended to do when the attendance of the site exceeds 2-3 thousand visitors per day. With a competent move can not worry about any problems with search engine optimisation - sagging traffic, pages out of the index and other scares from SEO-forums, but this is only possible due to the quality work of experienced professionals.

Of course, all this makes sense if you cooperate with an adequate provider, which controls the parameters of the efficiency of its hosting and does not place on the servers of dubious sites. Next, we will tell you what criteria are used to evaluate the quality of hosting and how not to cause problems to your SEO-promotion due to the provider's fault.

What hosting parameters affect SEO

Hosting factors not only directly affect the performance of the site, but also have an indirect impact on promotion. In the first case, everything is clear: a downed server means an inaccessible site. As for the factors affecting the promotion, here everything is more complicated. Externally, the site may work normally, but unobvious problems on the part of the host will affect the attitude of search engines to the resource and, as a consequence, will create difficulties for its promotion. To re-insure against such scenarios, we recommend you to pay attention to the basic criteria of hosting quality.

Uptime

Uptime is an indicator that shows the average time of server operation without interruptions, that is, the availability of your site. For example, on hosting with uptime 99% the site will be unavailable on average 14.4 minutes per day. Obviously, this factor affects ranking. A down site frustrates users, but more significantly, it creates problems for indexing. The inability of search engine robots to access the site, leads to the fact that important pages may not get into the index for a long time or may drop out of it altogether. Therefore, a high Uptime is the first thing you should pay attention to. An uptime of at least 99.8% is considered a good indicator. These figures mean that on average your site will be unavailable for less than 3 minutes a day. The optimal variant is when the uninterrupted operation of the equipment is kept at the level of at least 99.98%.

Speed Performance

The fact that website loading speed is an important ranking factor today is not questioned by anyone. A fast loading page improves search factors: bounce rates decrease and the number of views and their duration increases. Such scenarios are liked by search algorithms: they treat fast sites more loyally, which has an impact on high positions in the rendition.

The speed of page loading depends on two factors: internal optimisation (this depends on the site owner) and server side features (this is the responsibility of the hosting provider). If the site is implemented basic recommendations to accelerate the loading speed, but its performance is still not up to acceptable parameters - this is a reason to wonder if the hoster does not limit your capabilities.

The browser loads pages in several stages, and the speed may drop at any of them. Thanks to a variety of metrics, you can more accurately understand what is slowing down the site. The hosting status is indicated by the summary "server response time". A response that does not exceed 200 ms is considered a good indicator.

When choosing hosting, we also recommend that you pay attention to additional parameters that affect the loading speed and quality in general:

channel bandwidth;
class of equipment used by the provider;
server software features;
type of drives: classic HDD discs or superfast NVME SDDs;
virtualisation technology used (for VPS / VDS).

Once again we repeat: the factor of responsibility for the download speed is equally divided. It is unreasonable to make claims to the provider if the site is not optimised from the inside or when the owner hosts on the simplest shred-tariff with a daily traffic of several thousand people.

Security and reliability of the infrastructure

These are two more important characteristics that affect seo promotion. Evaluate the reliability of hosting should not be assessed by empty assurances of the provider, but by quite objective metrics. In AVSEO it is the use of modern software and its constant updating, which excludes the possibility of vulnerabilities that can be used by ill-wishers. The second important point is the regular checking of servers by anti-virus. The third is the neighbourhood factor.

The overall reliability of the server infrastructure is assessed according to the Tier standard. All data centres are divided into 4 categories - Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV. We recommend to choose certified data centres of the category not lower than TIER III for hosting websites. In addition to high reliability of infrastructure, hardware and software, they provide for duplication of active equipment. Thanks to this scheme, subscriber sites remain available regardless of the situation: scheduled maintenance or force majeure.

Server localisation

When choosing hosting, not the least role is played by the geographical factor. The farther the servers are from the users, the longer the data has to travel. All this also has an impact on the speed of page loading (remember, this is an important factor in search engine ranking). Therefore, if your site is aimed at a local audience, it is foolish to host the project in a data centre across the ocean. Servers should be as close as possible to the main CA of your site.

For globally orientated projects, the best solution is to use content delivery networks (CDNs). This technology provides minimal ping no matter where in the world the user is located.

Does a shared IP hinder promotion and what is the dubious neighbour factor?

All sites hosted on the same shared hosting have a common IP address. This fact causes fears in many people. In some cases, they are not unfounded. We should start with the fact that the dedicated IP itself does not affect the position of the site in the issuance. This has been repeatedly confirmed in Google and Yandex. But problems are quite possible. This happens when your project is a neighbour of other sites and, accordingly, shares with them a common IP.

Potentially dangerous neighbours are banned sites, torrents, spammers, phishing resources, and sites that distribute virus software. If the search engine decides to block their IP address, access to other resources will also be restricted. The second bad scenario - this is the entry of the site in the additional index of Google. In this case, the resource is not shown in the main issue, but is displayed only if you click on the link "Show hidden results". Naturally, no one follows such links. As a result, through the fault of neighbours, your site will completely lose search traffic from Google.

SEO news

You can re-insure yourself against such scenarios in two ways. Firstly, do not chase after suspiciously cheap shared hosting (we do not even consider free options). Secondly, always check which sites you share a common IP address with. You can do this with the help of special online services literally in a few clicks.

Does changing IP affect SEO performance?

More and more often you can meet the opinion that the transfer of the site to a new hosting and the change of IP-address leads to a loss of positions in the issuance. This is more of a myth. At AVSEO, we believe that nothing will happen to your project if it is transferred professionally. But moving a website to a new server is always best left to qualified specialists with sufficient experience and technical support. The owner of the project, in turn, we recommend to pay attention to several important points: