SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of increasing the number of visitors to a website through organic search results. Search engines such as Google will use bots to crawl every website on the internet to collect information about them and organize them in an index. This index is what appears whenever someone searches for anything online and is organized in a way to ensure that the top results are high-quality, accurate, and relevant. Your website’s rank on this index depends on dozens of factors, most of which are directly influenced by the quality of your web host.
As search engines want their users to have the best user experience possible, they will rank the top-performing websites highest. But, this is just one factor. Other factors that influence a website’s rank on search engine result pages (SERPs) include content quality, keyword use, site security, server location, mobile friendliness, and on-page optimization. Carefully considering SEO is vital as your website’s rank in SERPs can either make or break your online business or blog. In fact, the number one result in Google receives 31.7% of all clicks whilst only 0.78% of users clicked on any result from the second search page.
As mentioned above, your web host can drastically impact your website’s SEO. Factors like speed, security, and uptime are all almost entirely dependent on the quality of your web host and therefore can influence your website’s SERP rank. To help make sure your website is getting the proper exposure through organic search results, we’re compiled a list of the best web hosts for SEO in 2023.
What web hosting factors impact SEO?
Here are a few important factors that can drastically impact your website’s SEO ranking –
- Speed – To ensure the best possible user experience, search engines will use page speed as a ranking factor and prioritize the fastest websites. Therefore, it’s essential to have a web host that can provide rapid server speeds so that your web pages load quickly. Ideally, a website should take no longer than 3 seconds to load as, after this, an estimated 53% of visitors will give up and leave the page.
- Uptime – A website’s overall stability is also a key factor when it comes to ranking on SERPs. When a search engine’s bots crawl a website, they will record any inaccessibility due to downtime and report this back to the search engine. These search engines won’t want to direct their visitors to pages that are regularly down as this will negatively impact their overall reputation. To avoid penalties, you need a web host that has an average uptime of at least 99.9%. This equals just under 9 hours of downtime per year, which is a reasonable amount for any website.
- Security – Search engines will favour trustworthy and secure websites, so you should opt for a creditable web host that employs protocols to protect your website against security threats. In addition to this, Google has recently confirmed that having an SSL certificate can increase your website’s rank on their SERPs.
An SSL certificate encrypts and safeguards sensitive user data during online transactions. SSL certificates can sometimes be costly, however, many web hosts include them in any standard web hosting plan. It’s best to check beforehand if your chosen web host provides SSL as a free addition so that you can save money whilst improving your SEO.
- Server location – Choosing a local web host can directly impact your website’s speed as well as improve your SEO rankings. Search engines will want to link visitors with local results, so it’s ideal to have a web hosting server that is geographically close to your target audience. For example, if you want to appeal to a US audience, then you need a server with a US-based IP address to optimize your SERP rank.
- SEO tools – Some web hosts will include various SEO tools in their hosting plans that can be effective in improving your website’s SERP rankings. Be sure to check out any web hosts to see if they provide any helpful SEO tools in their hosting plans. This can be a cost-effective way to boost your SEO without having to pay for additional tools and plugins.
Our top recommended best web hosts for SEO
Choosing the wrong web host can be disastrous for your SEO rankings. Anything from slow speeds to subpar security can leave you far away from the top result on SERPs, which can lose you both visitors and potential sales. So, we’ve laid out a list of the top best web hosts for SEO so you can keep your visitors happy and rank well on SERPs.
Hostgator
Hostgator is a high-performing web host that offers shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud hosting plans for affordable prices. With a 99.9% uptime guarantee, specialized tools, robust security, and super-fast server speeds, Hostgator can ensure that your website is optimized for SEO.
To begin with, Hostgator has thousands of servers in data centers that are based in Provo, Utah and Houston, Texas, making it an ideal choice for those who want to target a US audience. These top-tier. data centers are monitored 24/7 by system administrators and on-site technicians to ensure maximum uptime and reliability. Hostgator’s average uptime is 99.95% which is well above the industry average and their server speeds can deliver an average page loading time of 700 ms.
Hostgator offers free SSL certification in all of its hosting plans whilst also providing advanced DDoS protection in its dedicated and VPS plans. This web host has built up a reputation for being secure and reliable so you won’t have to worry about security vulnerabilities that could be detrimental to your SEO rank.
Hostgator has two SEO tool packages that can be purchased alongside any of their hosting plans. The start package is ideal for beginners who want to improve their SEO and want advice and statistics that can help them optimize their website. This package features search engine submission, weekly scans, a 50-page analysis, 5 keyword ranking reports, analysis of 2 competitors, monthly email reports, and a marketing report. This SEO package is also included in any of Hostgator’s business plans as a free addition.
Alternatively, if you want to seriously improve your website’s ranking and drastically increase traffic, then you can opt for the grow SEO package. With this, you’ll receive everything included in the start package as well as daily dashboard updates, daily scans, a 500-page analysis, customized tasks, 15 keyword ranking reports, analysis of 4 competitors, proactive alters, and a dynamic marketing report with targeted recommendations. With these SEO packages, Hostgator aims to seamlessly integrate SEO analysis and optimization into their user’s daily schedules. From there, users can gain an in-depth understanding of how SEO works and learn how to easily make changes to their website to improve its ranking.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting prioritizes speed and performance for all of its hosted websites, so you’ll be sure to rank consistently high on SERPs when hosting your site with this provider. A2’s specialized turbo servers promise up to 20x faster server speeds, which not only improves your SEO ranks but also lowers bounce rates and increases conversion rates.
These turbo servers are included in A2 Hosting’s premium shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. These servers use upgraded server hardware, advanced caching, increased RAM, NVMe storage, and other performance add-ons to ensure reduced page loading times and increase all visitors’ overall user experience. A2 Hosting currently has data centers located in Michigan (US), Arizona (US), Amsterdam (Europe), and Singapore (Asia).
As well as ultra-high speed servers, A2 Hosting also boasts a very impressive uptime guarantee of 99.9%. If your website experiences more than 0.1% of unscheduled downtime throughout a single month then A2 Hosting will provide a service credit of 5% of the paid fee for that month. This shows how dedicated this web host is when it comes to ensuring that their customers’ websites experience as little downtime as possible. With less than 0.1% downtime on average, your site has a much better chance of ranking high on SERPs.
A2 Hosting also has plenty to offer when it comes to security. With any of their hosting plans, you’ll receive reinforced DDoS protection, dual firewall, a virus scanner, 2FA, and brute force defence. An SSL certificate will automatically be included and automatically set up for your domains whenever you purchase any hosting plan. All in all, A2 Hosting provides impressive speeds, security, and overall fantastic performance that will improve your site’s SEO rank as well as increasing your traffic and reducing bounce rate.
Siteground
Siteground is a feature-rich web host that provides reliable, secure, and fast hosting plans. With Siteground, your website will have optimal performance, meaning it will have a great chance of ranking high in SERP. If you’re looking for flexible hosting plans that can improve your website’s SEO and provide a range of helpful features, then look no further than Siteground.
This web host has a fantastic average load time of 500ms which means your website will load almost instantly, leading to a reduced bounce rate and an increase in visitors. This also means that search engines are much more likely to rank your site higher, as they’ll want to promote websites that have satisfied visitors who don’t immediately click off the web page.
Additionally, Siteground has powerful caching technology, ultra-fast PHP setup, and in-house built interfaces that guarantee incredible site performance and even faster loading speeds. Siteground also has an average recent uptime of 99.9% which means that your website will spend little to no time offline, which as we already know, will help improve the site’s SEO ranking.
Siteground has a great selection of security solutions that are included in all hosting plans, such as anti-hack systems, sam protection, automatic daily backups, and server monitoring. SSL certification is also included in every single plan, so you don’t have to worry about purchasing this separately. Although Siteground doesn’t have specific SEO tools on offer, this web host provides detailed tutorials and guides that outline how to optimize your website for SEO.