With the rise of the internet over the past few decades, establishing an online presence has been of the utmost importance for businesses. In essence, the internet for businesses has has become what the phone book was, only superpowered. We have essentially reached the point where if a business cannot be found online, people will wonder if it really exists, and whether it is trustworthy.
But being able to be found online is just for starters. After all, the internet is a bastion of opportunities, a way for businesses to compete on as level of a playing field as possible. If you offer the right goods/services at the right price, you will find yourself winning. But in order for that to happen, people will need to find you. This is where SEO, or Search Engine Optimization comes into play. By getting your website to rank high on search engines, you have visibility, and visibility equals opportunity.
In order to maximize opportunities, businesses hire SEO services, assuming that they will take care of everything, thereby getting their website to rank. And yet, even if you hire the greatest SEO on the face of planet Earth, their efforts may be hindered due to the silent website killer: your hosting platform. Wait, WHAT?!? Are they not all one and the same? Far from it.
Your hosting platform can truly make or break your website performance, which goes hand-in-hand with your website rankings. As such, it is important to determine the necessary elements in a web hosting provider for optimum SEO performance.
The most logical place to start is by looking for server uptime guarantees. This is of the utmost importance, as if the server is down, then so is your site. When this occurs, it is not only a bad reflection on your company, but it also means that people cannot access your site. More importantly, when Google attempts to crawl your site it will be unable to, meaning your pages will not be indexed and won’t rank. Other SEO factors that will be affected by your website being down are your dwell time and bounce rate.
In order for your website to perform optimally, the physical location of your provider’s servers may be important. The reason for this is that the closer the servers are to your users, the faster the speeds your users will experience. This can easily turn into an issue of logistics, but fortunately there is a workaround. RapidSEOHost engage the use of a content delivery system (CDN), a geographically distributed group of servers that use caching (a process by which files are temporarily stored) to allow for faster content delivery to users, regardless of where they are located.
Of course, you can have the fastest and most available site, and it would be all for naught without proper security measures in place. In the past, the communication protocol Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) was sufficient. And yet, in reality it wasn’t, which brought about the need for an extra layer of encryption. Enter Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which encrypts the connection between a web server and a browser, thereby preventing third parties from getting their hands on the information being transferred. It was combined with the previous protocol, forming https (with the “s” standing for secure), guaranteeing three things: confidentiality (the visitor’s connection is encrypted, so cookies, URL’s and other valuable and sensitive metadata is obscured); authenticity (the visitor knows they are communicating with the real site, not an intermediary or impersonator); and integrity (the user can be secure in the knowledge that the information sent has not been tampered with). The standard has become so important that Google lists it as one of its ranking factors. With Rapid, SSL encryption is the standard, and we ensure that our servers are impenetrable, with a host of firewalls, persistent network monitoring, and multiple layers of authentication requirements to ensure that access is only granted to the right people.
Another factor to consider is changing circumstances. For example, let’s say that you are currently a small business owner. You may not need a fully dedicated server, so you should have the option to go for a more basic plan. However, when the time comes and your business has expanded sufficiently, that dedicated server will come in handy. In an ideal world, you would be able to have that server without switching providers, so everything can continue running without a hitch. This would benefit your clients and your SEO efforts, as there will be zero adjustment period or associated costs of switching. At Rapid, we offer several tiers to suit your needs, with the top two tiers even featuring website development time! Moreover, it goes without saying that having a support team will go a long way ensuring that everything runs smoothly. They are there in case of issues, giving you peace of mind. The catch is, you still need to call them. At that point, you are at the mercy of their service department, a process that can take hours of your time. And as everyone in business knows, time is money. That is why we’ve taken things a step further. Some hosting providers give theri clients hosting, and nothing more, with the clients having to do everything. Others offer managed hosting, whereby they will help with hardware and software configuration, backups and disaster recovery, and application support.
But what if there was another way? At Rapid, we feature the first fully turn-key solution to hosting needs. It starts with our free in-person onboarding process, with our in-house experts beginning the process by backing up all your files and ensuring a quick, pain-free transition. From there, you enjoy monthly website backups, server-end image optimization, and more, for the most efficient, secure, and easiest web site hosting experience available anywhere.