Cloud computing is the future. We already know more businesses are starting to take up cloud hosting as part of their hosting infrastructures. You might be taking advantage of the report from CDW that businesses are now saving 3% on average.
The question on everybody’s minds is will these savings come at the expense of your SEO ranking?
The answer is no. In fact, cloud hosting can increase your ranking in a number of ways. We’re going to go discuss how they increase your rankings.
User Experience and Loading Times
Google wants to actively promote the user experience. They want to move away from the idea you need to meet lots of technical checkpoints to get a good ranking. In other words, good SEO happens naturally for websites which put in the effort to please their customers.
They seem to be paying attention to this with their latest Hummingbird update and the fact they’ve further moved the goalposts towards genuine popularity. One way in which we can see this at work is with page loading times.
Hosting on the cloud will increase your page loading times. This is a proven fact. Most websites will load within two seconds.
The cloud also better equips websites to handle high levels of traffic by distributing resources in a superior fashion to standard hosting.
By enhancing page loading times, which Google tracks, you’re giving yourself an immense advantage in your bid to get onto the first page of Google.
In some cases, hosting the website specific to the country it’s located in can help with SEO. Register with the Companies Registry to make things easier.
Damage Limitation
Content scraping bots and link spamming bots will cause serious damage to your ranking. There’s very little you can do about these things. Cloud hosts are better equipped at dealing with bots, though. They provide enhanced security as part of their standard packages.
You don’t need to have a personal tech team on hand to stop this. You won’t always be able to stop the occasional bot from making an attempt to damage your ranking, but this is an issue experienced by the vast majority of websites.
Location Retained
Much has been made about the lack of a solid location for cloud hosting. Say you choose a company like Singlehop for your cloud hosting needs; your data will be stored online.
Your data could be under the control of multiple servers around the world. Your pages are still delivered locally, though. This is the key to cloud hosting in general. Google can still categorize your website’s true location geographically, but the data is secured by multiple data centers all over the world.
The idea that cloud hosting will negatively impact your SEO ranking due to this location differential is a myth. It comes from a misconception and shouldn’t be believed.
How does it boost your ranking, though?
As well as preventing your ranking from falling, it improves your ranking through better security and stability. Cloud hosting is more stable because the data is secured by multiple data centers in different countries.
It’s highly unlikely your website will go down. If your site is always up and running as it should be, your ranking will go up. The User Experience (UX) rating takes into account your uptime. Google considers a strong uptime as part of the overall experience.
Should this be a Priority?
Cloud hosting shouldn’t be the priority due to what it can do for your SEO. It will only ever be a small part of the process. Technology has advanced so much you’re only moving forward ever so slightly by opting for cloud hosting. Since the margins between competitors are so thin, this can make all the difference.
Either way, savvy website owners will realize cloud hosting is more than just a way to boost your SEO ranking. For a start, you’ll be able to save a lot of money on expensive hosting packages. You aren’t renting huge physical server tower blocks any longer.
Cloud hosting will also help your customers on a direct level. We have to remember Google is minor compared to how consumers react to your offerings.
