It’s entirely possible that you’ve been using your own inexpensive hosting plan thus far for your business. Or maybe you’re on a platform such as Wix or Squarespace where the hosting component is built into the service entirely.
If you’re looking for ways to level up your online marketing game, you won’t want to neglect your website’s hosting features.
“All I need hosting for is somewhere to store my website, and I have that already,” you may be thinking.
Here are a couple important things that may change your mind.
Some hosting is fine… right up until certain thresholds.
A relatively small website with very little traffic can load pretty quickly with little fuss. When you aren’t thinking SSL certificates, site backups, or whether certain features will still make sense as your business hits new milestones, it’s easy to set it and forget it.
But all it takes is a successful social media campaign to start driving a bunch of new traffic to your site consistently, or for your SEO efforts to pay off and do the same. And then, those quick loading times turn into hanging screens or server crashes.
The line where one becomes the other is finer than you might think.
Hosting plans that cost a few dollars per month often fall into this category, and simply aren’t robust enough to handle big surges of traffic or the attention of hackers as your brand grows.
The trouble with platforms like Wix or Squarespace, despite the convenience of hosting being provided for you, is that there aren’t really any settings available to your team to optimize.
Meaning, if certain security measures or speed tweaks could help your new operation scenario, there aren’t really any changes that you can make. You get what you get.
“I’m not a big enough deal for someone to hack.”
When we talk to business owners, this is something we hear a lot. The trouble with this thinking is that it assumes hackers only target big websites, and as long as you’re flying under the radar you’re in the clear.
Hackers are constantly scouring the internet for opportunities and can use bots (small programs that operate online) to scan thousands of websites at once for vulnerabilities.
When they compile a list of sites with weaknesses, they might not care how large or small those sites are if they can deploy similar bots to attack several of them simultaneously.
However, as your brand becomes more prominent and your website attracts more traffic, the odds of these malicious bots discovering your site increase.
Whether these bots find easy vulnerabilities or deem your site a “soft target” heavily depends on your hosting configuration.
The industry is irrelevant as well.
We’ve seen websites in industries such as dental practices, law firms, nonprofits, and home remodeling be targeted by hackers. These sites can be particularly valuable to cybercriminals, especially if they contain sensitive information or if the site’s traffic can be exploited for ads or other malicious activities.
Types of Hosting That Affect Website Speed
Page load speed is a critical factor in SEO as it directly impacts Google’s ranking algorithm, user experience, and mobile optimization. Faster-loading websites tend to rank higher because they provide a better user experience, leading to lower bounce rates and improved engagement. Google also prioritizes mobile page speed due to mobile-first indexing. Additionally, faster sites are crawled more efficiently by search engines, ensuring better indexing of content. Google’s Core Web Vitals, which include metrics influenced by load speed, further emphasize the importance of fast-loading pages for optimal SEO performance.
Avoiding a bad scenario is an underrated value for your business, too.
When gauging whether a hosting upgrade provides enough value to your business, it helps to think more broadly than only whether faster speeds or more reliable uptime could make you more profitable.
Yes, faster load times are helpful with SEO. Continuous downtime can negatively affect SEO. Depending on your total traffic, these can have measurable impacts on your bottom line.
But consider this as well:
- What is the cost of your site being hacked and displaying trashy ads just as a valuable prospect you’ve been courting for a while happens to check you out?
- What if you’ve paid good ad money to promote a special offer, but your site loads so slowly under the traffic surge that half those people bail out and leave?
- What if a random server error takes your site down as you’re giving a presentation, and keeps the site down for hours?
Ready to take your website’s performance and security to the next level? Why not explore our hosting plan tailored specifically for businesses like yours?