How Can the Choice of a Hosting Provider Influence Your Online Exposure?

If you are building a website, be it a personal blog, or a platform for your business, chances are that you want it to be as visible as possible. If you are considering something like this, you have probably at least heard about SEO, but what you may not know is that the choice a good hosting provider can help greatly with your search engine optimization methods, or rather, choosing an inadequate one could seriously hurt them. Here are some things about a hosting provider that you need to consider before making your choice.

Amount of Control

Different hosting types come with different levels of amount of control that you have over server settings. For instance, you are rarely given any control with shared hosting, which is, after all, not too surprising when you consider the fact that you the settings are shared between your website and the others on the server. VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting, on the other hand, usually comes with more freedom, due to the fact that your site is hosted in a relatively isolated virtual environment, but the amount of control you’ll get will depend on the provider and the contract that you negotiate. Dedicated hosting, naturally, comes with most freedom, but this solution is too pricey for most. The ability to finely tune server settings could have significant influence on your attempts to increase your sites visibility, so make sure that you are at least aware of what exactly is it that you’ll be able to tweak.

Security and Neighborhood

Server security is something that you absolutely have to consider when signing a contract. While some of the security of your website is in your hands, some of its aspects are handled by the provider, so make sure that you are getting top notch service in this regard.

If you are using the services of a shared hosting provider, make sure to check if they are hosting blacklisted websites. Those websites have been found to engage in spamming activities, and have been blacklisted as a consequence. However, there is another way to fall into disrepute, and that is sharing a server and an IP with such websites. You can find that even if you never took part in spamming, your emails are marked as spam in people’s inboxes, and that your rankings are suffering. This could destroy your reputation, make it much more difficult to engage in any kind of email marketing, or simple correspondence, and generally, hurt your SEO efforts.

Reliability and Technical Support

SEO is all about keeping the visitors happy. If your site experiences frequent downtime due to the server issues you’ll be rapidly losing the support of your visitors, and consequently, your chances of achieving adequate exposure. Likewise, if the amount of bandwidth or other resources that you are allocated frequently fluctuates, this could reflect on your page loading times, a very important SEO factor.If there is a problem with the server, or with your website, you might have to consult the provider’s technical support team, and since every minute of downtime counts, you want to find a provider with trained, available and helpful technical support.

Article by Samuel Evans. Samuel is a blogger and writer. Currently exploring everything related to technology,especially web hosting, cloud computing and mobile phones.