Having a website for your business is important these days. It is no longer an optional choice for your business. There are lots of benefits of having a business website, but your choice of hosting provider can effect the success of your website. If you are running an online business, then downtime of a few minutes can be a disaster.
That is why it is important to choose a hosting plan from a reliable hosting company. There are lots of web hosting companies out there so which one is best. In this article, we will guide you through the whole process. The tips we are going to share will help you choose the best hosting plan for your website.
Importance of Local Hosting
The first really important factor is to buy local hosting if you are servicing clients in a local area. Because the geographic location of the website hosting is a factor in the local search query results. In other words, the big search engines like Google prefer to show locally hosted websites for local searches.
There are many other search engines like Yandex, Bing, Baidu, Etc. But we will focus on Google, as it is the major search engine in Australia. In the case of Google, the local hosting is a key factor in local search. Google does include overseas-hosting websites in the top results, but distance plays does play an important role.
The service location is a ranking factor too. So, if your business target markets is only in Australia then buy local Australian hosting from providers like The ICT Shak.
Strong Reputation
One of the important factors to consider is the reputation of a hosting provider within the industry. A well-established company with a good number of happy customers is always the best choice.
There are many third-party sources, where you can find evidence of their reputation. Look for their reviews online and see what the customers are saying about them. If the reviews from the customers are positive, then you can trust the hosting provider. You can also search the top rated providers for the exact hosting type you want. For instance, if you want PHP hosting, you should check out the Best PHP Hosting providers.
Customer Service
Sometimes things go wrong, and if you are unable to resolve an issue, especially related to the hosting, you need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone that is in the same time zone as you.
Many hosting providers have skeleton staff outside standard business hours, and the last thing you want to do is wait until the middle of the night (your time) to resolve the issue when their key staff arrive at work.
If the company does not have live chat, then make sure they are available on the phone to talk. The smooth running of your website is important, and if there are problems, you need to resolve them as quickly as possible. Customer support is one of the most important things.
Domain Management
It is good to keep all your hosting and related services under one umbrella. Therefore, you need to check that your local hosting provider can offer the local domain name required for your business. For example, a lot of domain providers outside Australia do not offer the Australian domain extension – com.au.
Make sure that the hosting provider is able to provide all the necessary elements such as domain name management. Because domain name is the first step for starting a new website.
Backup
Loss of data can be an expensive exercise and ensuring that you have offsite backups of your website and emails are critical for your business. Your hosting company should have an off-site backup of your website data.
You should expect that your hosting data is protected with automatic backups, which are stored offsite for a period, usually 7 days. In the case of disaster, you can easily restore your website. A backup file includes the website files and folders, and related database files and will include any emails stored on the mail server. It is a great time-saver in the case of hacking or human error.
Importance of Security
Security of data and protection against hacking are often overlooked but are an essential element of your email and web hosting. You need to make sure that the host is secured with a strong firewall.
Malicious software trawls the internet looking for unprotected webservers and can cause havoc to a website. Often embedding themselves in the website ready to be accidently downloaded on the website visitor’s browser. A strong firewall to serves as protection against these and many more threats.
Encryption using a SSL Certificate has become a really important factor for every website these days. The SSL or Secure Socket Layer allows for point to point encryption in the passing of data. So, when someone completes an online form covered by a SSL it’s like tucking the letter into an envelope that cant be opened by the receiver.
Speed
The load time of your website is a very important factor in getting users to your website and keeping them on your website long enough to convert. A major factor in this is the server’s resources allocated to the hosting account. The load time or speed of the website is now considered as a ranking factor.
As you can appreciate the allocated resources for a hosting account is reflected in the pricing. Cheap hosting often doesn’t allow for the required resources to give you a fast website, and as the functionality of the website increases, the website will slow down to a grinding halt.
Your web hosting is the foundation of your website, and regardless of how good your website is, if you don’t have good, solid, reliable web hosting, then you run the risk of your website not getting found, or clients not converting on your website.