Does web hosting play a role in search engine optimization? Yes, there are several factors that you will want to pay attention to when choosing a web hosting company.
The very first thing to look at is the physical location of the web hosting company. Most of the major search engines factor in the country location into their search algorithms. If you want your website to rank well in the UK find a web hosting company that has their servers physically located in the UK. If you want to rank well in Google.com, Yahoo.com and MSN.com you better find a USA web hosting provider.
“If you are looking for a hosting company within a specific country it’s good to find out from their support department where their servers are located. Some web hosts have multiple data centers in multiple countries. You may even want to go as far as asking for the IP your website will be hosted on so you can verify yourself.” Explains Stuart C. McHenry, CEO of McKremie Web Hosting
The second most important thing you need to consider is server speed. Does your website load fast? If not is it the web host or the coding of the website? Google has made mentions that they are looking into how fast a website loads as a ranking factor. Websites with higher loading time causes people to click the back button right away and defeats the purpose of ranking in the Google search results.
Watch this video from Matt Cutts and listen to the long term possibilities and he emphases that you “should” have a website that loads fast.
Often times it may not be the fault of your web host it can be the way the website is coded. Are your images too big or are there too many of them? This is often the main reason but here are some others:
The last reason but one of the most important reasons to have a good web host is too ensure your hosting company can handle all the traffic. If you are working on SEO or Social Media you are going to be sending lots of traffic their way. You are going to want a support department that knows how to optimize their servers and help you with the traffic levels.