How to choose the best hosting for your website?

Choosing the right web host, part 1

When it comes to choosing hosting for your website, there are several key aspects to consider. Beyond the obvious factors such as price and size of hosting space, it’s also crucial to consider the impact of hosting on your site’s SEO. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these important points to consider when choosing a hosting solution.

1. Server performance:

Server speed and reliability are essential for your site’s SEO. Search engines are placing increasing emphasis on page load speed. Choose a web host with fast, high-performance servers, to guarantee an optimal user experience and better ranking in search results.

How to evaluate the performance of a hosting server?

2. Server localization:

The geographical location of your server can also influence your SEO. If your site primarily targets an audience in a specific region, it’s best to opt for hosting with servers in that region. This can contribute to faster loading times and greater relevance for local users.

3. Safety:

Security is a crucial aspect of any website. Reliable hosting should offer robust security measures, such as firewalls, SSL certificates and regular backups. Search engines pay particular attention to website security, and secure hosting can have a positive impact on your SEO.

4. Availability and uptime:

Your site must be available to users at all times. Choose a hosting provider offering a high availability guarantee (99.9% or more) and optimal uptime. Frequent interruptions can harm your search engine rankings and discourage visitors.

5. Scalability:

Your hosting’s ability to evolve your site is important for its future growth. Check whether the hosting provider offers scalable hosting plans, with the possibility of upgrading to higher packages as your site grows. Easy scalability will save you technical headaches and ensure a seamless user experience.

Case study

Some well-known hosting providers, such as GoDaddy, BlueHost and others, offer very good prices (for the first year), robust and always available technical support, but the choice of server location is limited to one geographical location per continent. So it’s not possible to know exactly where the servers are, other than to choose North America or Europe, for example. If you’re in Montreal and your server is in Texas or Arizona, the extra milliseconds it takes for the server to respond will impact your SEO.

What’s more, GoDaddy turned to offering email in partnership with Office 365 because their servers had been overused to send spam from the company’s inception. As a result, the free mailboxes offered by GoDaddy are flagged as fraudulent by most servers worldwide, and only 1 in 3 emails (on average) will reach their destination, having not been rejected by the receiving server.

You also need to watch out for hosts with offers that are too good to be true, such as WHC. Despite the company’s assurances of security, reliability and the promise of external backups, 5 of its 12 servers were hacked in 2021 and the entire data of hundreds or thousands of companies was lost. This meant that the data was not kept in a safe, off-site location.

We hear stories like these every month in the business. That’s why choosing the best web hosting is essential to guarantee the success of your site. In addition to the obvious aspects such as price and storage space, consider server performance, server location, security, availability, uptime and scalability. Don’t forget that these factors also have an impact on your site’s SEO. By making informed choices when it comes to hosting, you can deliver an optimal user experience, improve your search engine rankings and help your website grow.

If you’re a Quebec-based company offering local (not international) services, your best option is a hosting service like Likuid, for example, which offers local services, on servers located in Montreal and Laval, with accessible, qualified customer service offering solutions to all your needs.

Choosing the right web hosting is essential to the success of your site. In addition to the obvious aspects such as price and storage space, consider server performance, server location, security, availability, uptime and scalability. Don’t forget that these factors also have an impact on your site’s SEO. By making informed choices when it comes to hosting, you can deliver an optimal user experience, improve your search engine rankings and help your website grow.