When starting a new business, creating a functional, memorable, and visually appealing website is considered to be one of the most important aspects, as well as focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) efforts that will make your site more visible and highly ranked in search engine results, thus possibly attracting a wider audience. But when attempting to achieve online success, your website will heavily depend on two factors many often forget: your domain name and your web hosting provider. These aspects can significantly impact your SEO strategy, and here are just some ways in which this could happen:
1. Significance of a domain name
From appealing to your target audience to pleasing search engines, a good domain name can have a significant impact on the overall success of your website. However, one of the most important roles of a domain name is to establish trust with your customers, which can easily be achieved through customization. For instance, simply using a top-level extension such as the trusted me domain can help to personalize your website and genuinely appeal to your audience.
Apart from being a safe and secure option, such domain extensions are also an incredibly quick and simple way to create a more memorable website name that easily evokes images of a more refined, humanized, and trusted business. This is one of the most efficient ways of attracting new customers to your website, while slowly building up their trust and loyalty over time.
2. Keywords in domain names
In an effort to rank higher on search engine results and appear more relevant, many businesses will decide to incorporate a number of keywords in their domain name. Unfortunately, this could often have an adverse effect, especially if businesses don’t follow through on their websites by utilizing reviews, product descriptions, and other on-site copy.
While it’s true that relevant keywords could help your website rank higher, it’s recommended to only stick to one creative keyword that succinctly describes your products and services. Short and simple domain names that are easy to remember are often favored among audiences, which is why implementing one relevant keyword in a memorable phrase or playful manner might be helpful when it comes to search engine recognition, as well as attracting and retaining potential customers.
3. Increased website speed
Once a relevant and memorable domain name is chosen, it’s time to select the best web hosting options. When it comes to purchasing hosting, speed should be one of your top priorities. While we might think that customers have more patience and understanding, the truth is that a simple delay in loading speed of a couple of seconds could lose you around 40% of your audience.
Apart from leading to a loss in customers and revenue, slower loading speeds might also impact search engine results. For instance, Google has recently started rewarding websites that provide a better and more favorable user experience, meaning that if your website is significantly slower than other similar sites, this could lead to a noticeable drop in rankings, as well as overall SEO.
4. Improved website security
Although every website could be a potential target for hackers, this becomes an even larger concern when it comes to businesses. When you’re looking for the best web hosting provider, it’s not only the security of your own information you have to take into consideration, but that of your customers as well. In case your website gets infiltrated by someone wanting to exploit your site’s data, your customers might be subject to personal data breaches and identity theft, which could take a significant toll on your business’s reputation.
For this reason, opting for a superior host that offers maximum security and protection is always advised. But apart from the safety of your business and your customers, the host you select might impact your SEO as well, as websites that are often under attack tend to deter visitors, thus lowering in rank.
5. Availability of the website
Ultimately, no customer will be able to locate your site if it’s never there. A website that often crashes, goes through long maintenance periods, or simply takes several tries in order to fully load will truly destroy your SEO efforts, more quickly than any other aspect.
Of course, no host will be perfect. Even large websites such as Twitter and Facebook experience an occasional crash, but a good web host provider will ensure near-ideal network uptime. Apart from costing you new users, potential customers, and higher revenue, having a website that is constantly down might also communicate to search engines that you’ve closed your business, being one of the worst things that could happen to your SEO.
While web hosting and a domain name might not seem quite as important at first, they are clearly the key to a stronger online presence. The more you invest in the intricate decisions mentioned above, the higher your chances will be of surviving influxes of new customers, higher revenues, and overall growth.
