Search engine optimization. If you have a website of any kind or size, it’s a term you’ve certainly heard. Typically what comes to mind when one thinks about search engine optimization, or SEO, is researching and properly using keywords, linking them strategically, and incorporating tags and descriptions. So, what does a web host have to do with any of that?

While website owners certainly have a lot of control over the SEO on their website, web hosts also have some control over it. This is because in addition SEO tactics that you incorporate into the content, Google also looks for other SEO strategies such as website speed, availability, and security. And those are components that are only available through a web host.

You have some control over the loading speed of your website, and you can keep it loading as quickly as possible by optimizing code and images. However, if your web host simply takes too long to load, then none of the measures you’ve taken will matter. When looking for websites to direct visitors to, Google will look at how long those websites take to load and send the most traffic to those that don’t keep people waiting.

Google won’t like it if your website takes forever to load, and it also won’t like it if your website is consistently down; and this is something only your web host can control. If their servers are constantly shutting down and inhabiting access to your website, the search engines won’t rank it well.

Just like you can take measures to help with the loading time of your website, you can also secure your website with privacy settings within the control panel and virus protection and firewall software. However, if you’re the only one taking these security measures and your web host isn’t as secure, it’s like locking your bedroom door but keeping the rest of your house open.

But how does security affect your SEO?

It doesn’t really, until your website becomes hacked or worse, spreads malware or viruses to other computers or servers. If you’re hacked and your site gets shut down, the website’s ranking will drop, and if your website is responsible for spreading a virus, Google will certainly look on that negatively.

These are just a few ways a web host can affect any website’s SEO efforts, but they’re very important. SEO web hosting isn’t necessarily a specialty type of web hosting, but there are some web hosts that claim to be experts in SEO or SEO-focused and these can be great options if SEO is especially important to you. To find a web host that can help with the SEO for your website, simply call around to different hosts and ask them how they can help, and what SEO measures they take. In a day when websites are becoming more competitive than ever, SEO is one easy way to increase page ranking and get your website in front of the eyes of many more visitors.