SEO Question: Is Hosting Important For SEO?

I have set my site up on the cheapest hosting I could find & my site appears OK. I keep reading stuff about hosting being very important if you want to really perform well. How true is that & is hosting important?

Deeho Says:

Hosting is a critical component for your website. Your hosting server is the engine that drives your site. You wouldn’t build a Rolls Royce and fit it with a Citroen 2CV engine would you?

Your Hosting server is the computer that holds your website, delivering it whenever someone requests to view it online.

There are several different levels of hosting available;

Low Cost Shared Hosting

At the bottom end is low cost, shared hosting. Typically costing just a few pounds per month, your site will be parked on a server that is shared by several hundred other sites.

You have no control over the other websites that you will be sharing with and in many instances this can lead to problems. Each server has a four part IP address, and all the websites hosted on it share the first three parts of the IP address (referred to as Class C). the fourth part of the IP address is then numbered from 1 – 100+ depending on the amount of sites on the server.

As far as search engines are concerned, all the sites, on the server have the potential to know each other. If they link to each other for example, then links to and from them are treated with suspicion and Google especially will be inclined to suspect that one person owns them all (even if it’s a coincidence and they don’t).

Additionally, if some of the sites on your shared server do things that Google doesn’t like, your innocent site will be tarred with the same brush. In extreme cases, servers can be blacklisted, rendering your website as useless.

You have no control over the other sites on your server, which can be an unnecessary gamble.

Private Servers

Many web designers and SEO companies have their own servers. This can have positive as well as negative affects on your site.

While your site on a private server will still share it’s Class C IP with the other sites on the server, you are less likely to be sharing with undesirable websites that might be flagged as spam sites and negatively affect your sites performance.

It usually costs a bit more to host your site on a private server, but offers a better level of protection against spam and bad neighbourhoods. Typical costs £10 per month

Dedicated Servers

At the top end of the scale are dedicated servers. This is where your website sits on its own server, with it’s own Class C IP address that is unique to you.

A dedicated server gives you ultimate control as no other sites share your server space. This maximises your available bandwidth, giving your site maximum availability & letting you avoid potential issues caused by other sites on your server.

If your site has a lot of visitors, and lots of pages then the more bandwidth you have, the faster and more reliably your site will be served.

Dedicated server costs start from around £150 – 200 per month depending on the technology being used and can rise from there if you specify high performance technology.

Recommended Hosting Solutions

Our recommendation for hosting WordPress sites in the UK or US is WP Engine which is a custom optimised WordPress hosting service.

They use high quality, fast loading UK based servers with high availability and great reliability. Additionally, they offer a high level of WP security and are very knowledgeable WordPress experts.

They offer shared hosting and dedicated hosting options depending on your budget, requirements and site needs.

Read more about quality website hosting here

More Frequently Asked SEO Questions

Additional Reading:

What is SEO?