Reliable and high performing web hosting is a key part of every successful website. When you’re looking into a new website or even just refreshing parts of your existing site, your choice of hosting is often one of the last things on your mind. Not choosing the right host can have negative effects on your business and brand.
With so many website hosting companies and options, it is easy to opt for the cheapest route. However, web hosting is such a crucial part of your website that unless the cheapest option does provide dependable and fast hosting then you can’t afford to make that mistake.
Think of your hosting as the foundation or backbone of your site. You wouldn’t have a house on an unstable foundation, and neither should you have a website with a low-quality or unreliable hosting.
With the increased activity of human hackers and hacking bots in recent years, you don’t want to take chances with the security of your website hosting. It is paramount that whatever hosting you choose and whichever host company you decide to go with, you find out how seriously they take the security. If security is not one of their priorities, you should find another host who does put protection and safety first.
The best hosting companies will also put SSL (Secure Socket Layer) on your site which means any data input to your site will be protected.
SSL Certificate will give visitors to your site confidence as any personal details they enter will be kept safe and not intercepted by hackers. At Guzzbury Studio, all our hosting comes with free SSL certificate as standard.
With a good quality hosting package your host should also take regular backups of your website. This is essential as should your website ever have an issue; you can relatively simply restore a previous version of the site and have it up and running with minimal downtime.
Security doesn’t just affect you and your website; it effects visitors to your site and also search engines which brings us onto the next point:
Search engines don’t like sites that are slow and neither to web users. Poor performance and downtime on your website will reflect on your company and brand, especially if you rely on the site to generate leads and sales. If your website has been efficiently coded and is continually optimised for speed, but it is still not performing well, it is likely that you need to upgrade your hosting package or change providers altogether. Getting the right hosting for your websites requirements is key to achieving the best possible performance and therefore giving users the great experiences they deserve.
When hosting isn’t adequate for a website, it is likely to slow that site down. Search engines like Google do not favour sluggish loading or slow response on any website. Likewise, if your hosting is often crashing causing downtime of your website, search engines are less likely to increase the ranking of your site.
In fact, downtime is likely to cause a website to be ‘down ranked’ and loose its current ranking position due to increasing bounce rates. Of course, this would not happen immediately after one instance of your website being down but will come about if that starts taking place on a regular basis.
Since the last quarter of 2017, Google has pushed for SSL certificates on every website with the aim to become the most trusted search engine. This means that Google is less likely to show your website in search results if it doesn’t have an SSL certificate. Search engines will also warn visitors to your site that it is not secure if you do not have SSL certification or if the certification has expired.
It is also very important to remember that your hosting requirements will differ depending on the type of website you are wanting to host. For example, a busy Ecommerce site will need a lot more storage and power to enable it to keep running smoothly than a simple one-page information website. There are many questions to ask a potential host company before agreeing to a contract with them. Don’t be afraid to ask the questions and ensure you get the best solution for your website.
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