Things To Consider When Choosing A Website Hosting Provider

______________________________

Dilemma: You wrote and created your content for all your pages. and chose the perfect images. You then optimized your pages for SEO and now are ready to go live. Now you need a hosting solution, that holds all your files that make up your website. What is it that you should consider and look for in a website host?

You should want a reliable and quality website host to match the quality of your website design and content that you worked so hard on. We have broken down the things to consider into 4 areas. These areas are the most important factors in choosing a website hosting company. They are the factors that matter the most and effect whether or not your website will be successful.

These four areas are:

1. Performance & Speed
2. Reliability
3. Scalability
4. Security

Performance & Speed

How fast the website loads will ultimately effect your SEO. Besides that Google algorithm factor, your website should come to your visitor as fast as possible. The patience consumers and internet researchers today have is minimal. We all want our information and products quickly. Your hosting provider should have different plans, like dedicated servers and business hosting. Shared servers are not a great choice because one server hosts multiple websites. One website on that server could hog resources of the server like the RAM, processor or hard drive. One bad apple could cause all the other websites to perform sluggish on that same shared server.

Reliability

If your website goes offline, it could severely damage your brand. Sites that go down will psychologically tell consumers that you are a rinky-dink operation. You want a website host to have a guarantee of 99.9% up-times. Not being able to rely on your website to remain visible online to your customers or interest group, is a business headache. This is the last thing you need to worry about.

Scalability

You could get so lucky and have one of your pages or your entire website to go viral. With all these visitors, your requests on the server could get overloaded. Your website host should be able to provide you with an upgraded hosting plan on the fly if this occurs. If your website stops working with too many requests, the whole point of going viral will stop in its tracks. You need a 24/7 customer support solution that will be able to quickly upgrade you to the next level in cases where overload occurs.

Security

Your website hosting company you choose, should be able to provide SSL certificates. This allows your website to start with https:// vs http:// the extra "S" stands for security. It allows encryption to take place between the user and the website. This is important for secure transactions and communication. When someone types something or sends data within your website, it is secure from prying eyes. Only the person interacting with the website and the website server itself can see the information being passed. Without SSL someone on your website, could have someone on the same WIFI listening in on their activity with your website. An SSL secure website is also now a ranking factor of SEO. Google and Bing want to make sure all their website results are safe for their search customers. Google and Bing will rank websites that are secure higher at the top of the search results.

Summary

______________________________

In summary, make sure your website hosting company is always ready to make hosting changes based on your needs. Make sure the host is fast to load your content and that it is always up and reliable. Be sure the website hosting provider has security options like SSL certificates to make your website safe for your visitors to transact and communicate. Paying close attention to these factors will no doubt leave you satisfied with your choice of a web host provider. Now you understand the 4 things to consider when choosing a website hosting provider.