Why Your Web Hosting Still Matters in the Current Online Climate

by Megan sashyl Blogger & Content Writer

The Internet and websites are part of our daily lives. Today, decades after the internet became publicly available; there are approximately 2 billion websites online. Businesses need websites to thrive and expand their reach. Individuals use web pages for CVs, entertainment, gathering information, fun and a means of connection.

Websites are quite useful. But because there are so many of them, your site must meet a basic standard before it can thrive in the present online climate. To have that standard, every part of your site matters –design, content and hosting. Web hosting is the foundation of your site.

The Importance of Web Hosting

Choosing the right web hosting option is important, no matter the type of site you want to build. This is because it affects your site’s performance. Site performance has to do with how fast the contents of your site’s page are displayed on the user’s browser, your site’s availability, mobile compatibility and other features.

Site performance affects traffic and engagement. For example, if your pages load slowly, visitors will leave before it opens. Let’s look at the different site feature and performance aspects that are affected by hosting.

1.       Uptime

Web hosting determines the availability of your site. Your site’s uptime matters a lot. If your site is always up, people can always access it. If it experiences downtime frequently, your site’s traffic and search engine ranking will reduce. Since search engines want to provide a quality user experience, they won’t redirect users to your site. Besides, visitors have the option of visiting many sites that are like yours. If your site is not available day and night, they’ll stop trying to access it.

Downtime = No traffic. While downtime cannot be avoided completely, it can be curbed to the minimum by choosing the right host. A good hosting service has an average uptime of 99%.

2.       Security

Hackers will try to infect your site with malware and use it for cybercrime by adding malicious codes, fake backlinks, spam pages and invisible text. Search engines have zero tolerance for all these things. Once they detect malware, they blacklist the site. Whether hackers succeed in infiltrating your website or not depends on how tight its security is.

The type of hosting plan you choose and your web hosting services affect the security of your site. Websites on free hosting are more vulnerable to cyber attacks than others. This is because all the websites on a server are connected. Moreover, sites with malicious content are more likely to use this kind of hosting. Malware is uploaded onto the servers. Since most free hosting companies don’t have a technical team to handle such a problem, all the sites on the server are infiltrated.

So, what do you look out for, in terms of security, when picking a hosting service?

●        Are there measures put in place to prevent malicious violations? The hosting company should have firewalls and other barriers that will stop your site from getting infected.

●        Does the web host regularly scan for malware and other security breaches on the server?

●        Is there a team that handles security issues with skill and speed?

●        What is the hosting company’s policy against distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks? The web host should be strongly against it. That way, if there’s a security breach the hosting system will still be available to you.

●        Does the host offer Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate? Information is sent from the server to the browser before it can be displayed on the user’s computer. SSL encrypts it, blocking it from being viewed by hackers. Personal information, credit card numbers, bank details and passwords are blocked from cybercriminals.

●        Is SFTP – Secure File Transfer Protocol offered? SFTP ensures your files are not modified before they get to their destination.

●        Does the web host maintain its servers and upgrade them?

 

3.       Customer and Technical Support

You’ll end up needing customer and technical support one way or the other. This is where the difference between ordinary web hosting and good web hosting becomes obvious. Companies with good hosting services have knowledgeable and skilled teams. Their customer support is available 24/7 and responds to issues speedily. They have different options of contact – chats, calls and emails. With the right web hosting, you can be sure you’ll get support when you need to troubleshoot your site or solve problems.

4.       Site Speed and Page Load Time

Visitors care about site speed and how long it takes the page to open. Page load time affects customer experience. A page that loads quickly will lead to customer satisfaction while the one that loads slowly won’t be opened by most visitors.  When your site is quick and responsive, your search engine rankings will increase, you’ll have happier customers and more conversions.

Aside from code and content, your site speed depends on your web host. A hosting company with quality infrastructure and a plan that gives adequate disk space and memory to your website will lead to greater speed, better performance and high return on investment.

5.       Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS enables a user’s browser to connect to the IP address and server of your website. While this is often overlooked, it’s a very important feature. If the DNS of your web host is down, your site won’t open. So, check the DNS services of your hosting company and make sure it is good.

6.       Scalability

We want our website to have increased traffic and become popular. While content is king and will help attract long-time users, hosting scalability will keep site performance at above the average level. Your site performance should always be good even if you have a spike in traffic or your visitors per month are growing at a high rate.

A good hosting service will accommodate spikes in traffic. It will make sure that your site and hosting plan is upgraded to meet your site’s growth.

7.       Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN ensures that a visitor accesses the contents of your web page from a server close to them instead of the central server. That way, the central server is not overloaded and the probability of your site having downtime is reduced.

CDN works based on the server and geographical location of the user; the closer the CDN server is to the user, the faster the contents of your site will be delivered to the browser. This means that you should search for a web host that is in the same location as your target audience and has good CDN hosting.

8.       Backups

Backup is an essential feature for every site. With regular backup, you can easily restore all data and re-launch your site after it has been hacked or encountered a problem. Some web hosts backup website data regularly. Find out from the hosting company

●        How the data is backed up

●        How often it is backed up

●        If some of the files or all the data is backed up

●        Where the data is stored.

How Your Web Hosting Impacts Your Business

Your web host is essential to your site’s performance and reliability. With a good web host, you can

1.       Maintain a good professional image. When your site has good page load time, performance and adequate security; customers can trust your company. They will have an excellent user experience and your sales will not tank. If, on the other hand, your site is always down, your business will lose its reliability and your brand image won’t be good.

 

2.       Have improved search engine ranking. Google algorithms punish sites that don’t have the resources to give customers a quality online experience. With the right web host, security and customer support, your site ranking won’t be reduced. Instead, your content will push your site to the top of the search engine results page.

 

3.       Save extra cost. Extra cost that could have been used to buy extra storage or maintain your site is saved when you have the right host. It might seem that you’re minimising cost when you patronise cheap hosting services. In the long run, you pay more when you need to buy extra space or you lose sales when your site is down and you don’t get adequate customer service support.

 

4.       Have happier customers. The top-notch services of good web hosts lead to a wonderful user experience and customer satisfaction. This results in happier customers and brand loyalty.

 

5.       Have steady traffic. Building organic traffic takes time, quality content and hard work. Imagine getting all that only to lose it to downtime or slow site speed. With the right hosting company, you won’t have technical difficulties or lose the traffic you’ve built.

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Created on Jun 29th 2019 06:44. Viewed 462 times.

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