As one decides to start a new e-commerce business, a primary concern is selecting the right domain name and hosting service provider. However, there are several people who are still not aware of the importance of web hosting and domain name, when we consider its SEO aspects. An online business does benefit from SEO organic traffic when it has a sound e-commerce SEO strategy for web hosting and domain name.
So, how does web hosting and domain name affect the search engine traffic. Here are a few aspects which are worth considering.
Speed of The Site Does Influence its Rankings
If it is about purchasing a hosting and domain name, speed is important. Remember, people will not wait eternally for your page to load. It is known that a load time of even two seconds, can imply a loss of 7%. In case there is a delay of some more seconds, the loss will rise further. Google does reward site by ranking them favourably. It is seen that slow sites have witnessed an overall drop in the rankings. With a good hosting, comes a solid infrastructure to build the business.
Security of the Website
E-commerce stores are often a target of hackers. When you are looking forward to web hosting for your ecommerce website, you must think not just about your own information, but also the information of your customers as well. If the site gets hacked, there will be a compromise on the customer’s data. An inferior host might not be able to provide the protection you need. If this happens SEO gets impacted as well. The search engines start to notice. With a good host and an SSL certificate, the search engine realizes that the site is secure.
Besides, you should remember that when your users have a successful shopping experience, it will help in bringing back customers to their website. This is one of the reasons, why you need to think about integration of versatile payment gateways. It is also important to analyze the site payment gateway and its server security. This is important to get the trust of your customers.
Availability of The Website
How will anyone find your site if it is never there?
If the site crashes often, or it goes through a lot or frequent maintenance or it is just that it takes several tries to load, it is going to have a negative influence on your SEO. Remember, it is true that no host is perfect. There will be problems but if these problems are too many, it is going to influence the performance or usability of the e-commerce store. Customers and search engines will not rely on your website any longer.
Get in touch with your hosting provider and try to find out how they will tackle the situation, when there is a downtime or crash. How do you get in touch with them? How quick will they respond and what is their usual process.
Exclusiveness
There are many hosts which will provide you a shared network. This implies that as a user, you will be sharing your server space with different other websites. A virtual private server, VPS hosting is a good solution for this. This will not just help you with a dedicated server space, but it also helps in increasing the availability and loading times. Besides, a VPS can also be used for different purposes. It helps in providing a cheap backup for your website. Thus, with a VPS, there is total content on your site, its content, customers, and every other thing which is important to help your site stay active. All this will have an influence on the rankings and overall visibility of your website.
Importance of Domain Name
The domain name of a business is quite critical for its success. It needs to be selected after considering several factors.
- The domain name should be easy to remember. To create a lasting influence on how people, perceive your business, you need to select a domain name which is easy to remember.
- The domain name should be easy to spell. Ideally there should not have hyphens or misspellings.
- It is good to keep domain names short, distinctive, and unique.
Keyword in Domain Name
All businesses aim to reach many people. When a business reaches out to several people, it needs to choose a domain name, which has the keywords. For instance, businesses which sell just electronic items, should have a domain name which contains that specific word.
There are several stores which choose to have common extensions of domain. This is an effort to keep the brand name protected. This includes .biz, .net. and .co versions. Remember, misspellings can hamper the online reputation of your company. It is ideal if the spelling of your brand is uncommon.