Nowadays, you cannot skip out having an online presence if you want your business to succeed. Doing so allows you to have a competitive edge, as well as expand your market reach.

However, you cannot have even a decent website without a reliable web host. Aside from allowing you to get your website published online, a web host can also have an impact on your business’ customer experience.

Here are six additional reasons why you need a reliable web host:

It Affects Your Website’s Load Speed

Back in 1993, Jakob Nielsen pointed out that large images are what slows down a website. Seven years later, the culprit behind a slow website loading time is complex data processing on the server.

In this day and age, it is important to boost your website’s page speed for a couple of important reasons:

  1. Good user experience. People engage more when they feel that they in control of navigating your website.
  2. SEO best practice. In case you do not know, Google has indicated site speed as one of its ranking signals.
  3. Impact on sales and revenue. During his presentation about big data, data scientists Greg Linden revealed that a 100-millisecond delay could lead to a 1% revenue loss on Amazon. What more on your website?

So, if you want to boost your website’s page speed right for the first time, make sure to pick a web host that provides industry speed performance.

Some popular web hosts like Bluehost and SiteGround will not reveal their servers’ speed performance. But there are online reviews that can provide you with the right information.

It Keeps Your Site From Going Down

Experiencing a website downtime can be frustrating for both you and your customers. However, that does not mean that there is nothing you can do about it.

Basically, taking preventive measures ‒ like protecting your website from a cyber attack ‒ can keep your site from going down. But when push comes to shove, what you can do is look for a host that guarantees more than 99% uptime.

Some of the reasons your website is down are because your server has maintenance, or it cannot handle massive website traffic. That said, looking for a web host with at least 99% uptime means that it can handle a steady traffic volume or considerable spikes in several site visitors.

As for server maintenance, it is usually done during non-peak hours, depending on the location of your host. This is done for the web host to update their server software easily.

It Improves Your Site’s Security

Website security should always be one of your top priorities, especially if your line of business requires acquiring customer information.

Unfortunately, not everyone understands what it takes to secure your data and your users’ data. This explains why you need a secured web host. They can do the heavy lifting to protect your website from cyber-attacks and data breaches.

Regardless of whether you are offering a product, service, or valuable content, having an online presence makes your brand a target of hacking, malware, DDoS attacks, and more eventually.

That’s why you need to look for a web host that is known for taking website security seriously. These are web hosts who have a team of system administrators who safeguards their infrastructure, conduct regular performance audits, as well as proactively implements patches on their servers.

It Affects Your SEO Efforts

Depending on your web host’s reliability, the three points mentioned above can affect your search engine optimization efforts:

  1. Website Speed. As mentioned earlier, complex data processing on the server is the primary culprit of a slow loading website. And when your website is slow, it can harm your search engine ranking.
  2. Website Availability. Your website’s loading speed will not matter if it is unavailable most of the time. Aside from your SEO efforts, your website’s uptime can also have an impact on your brand’s online reputation.
  3. Website Security. Your web host should provide you with a Secure File Transfer Protocol and SSL certificate to secure your website. They should also provide you with a tool that allows you to backup your website. Not to mention that they should also back up their servers regularly.

Keep in mind that major search engines favor websites with an “https” protocol when ranking search results. Plus, Google Chrome prevents a user from visiting an unsecured website, which could lead to a high bounce rate.

And a high bounce rate can hurt your search engine rankings

It Allows You to Backup Your Website

Backing up your computer prevents you from losing your files. Do you do the same thing with your website?

Regular website backups allow you to do the same thing ‒ preventing you from losing your files. This is especially helpful in case something unfortunate occurs.

If your web host provides you with tools that allow you to backup your website regularly, you will not need to start over. All you need to do is restore your website from your last backup.

This is important if your website runs on a content management system, wherein you will need all of your files to get your site up and running.

This also explains why Kevin Wood suggests that you backup your website on a daily or weekly basis. That way, you will not need to restore your website from a backup that is already a year old. It will not make sense for your site visitors.

That said, look for a web host that offers an online backup service. That way, your web host can take care of it for you. All you need to do is select which website you would like backed up.

It Provides Technical Support

Technical support should not come as an afterthought when putting a website for your business. After all, creating a website alone could present you with technical challenges that only your web host can help you solve.

So, who are you going to call when the need arises? The technical support, of course!

Thus, more than bells and whistles of a web host, it is important that you check on their support plan. This includes available contact options, and whether or not support is available 24/7.

After all, your need for technical support is not a matter of “if.” It is actually “when” you will need it.

Wrapping Up

Basically, you will need a great host because of the following:

  1. It allows you to provide an excellent user experience to your site visitors.
  2. It makes your website secure and available at least 99% of the time.
  3. It allows you to stay relevant and visible on search engine results.

So, which web host do you think can provide you with these benefits? Let us know in the comments!

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