The bandwidth determines how fast pages load
Choosing the right hosting provider well in advance is crucial, and you’ll see why shortly. First, your hosting plan’s bandwidth determines the rate of data transfer between your website and visitors. The higher the bandwidth, the faster your pages load, especially if your website is rich in content. Conversely, more limited bandwidth slows down loading and sometimes even leads to incomplete page displays.
Google favors faster websites, and it’s a fact that its algorithms consider page load times. A slow host can cause your site to rank poorly. Bandwidth is paramount because more than 99% of searchers don’t click past Google’s first page. Websites attract more organic traffic by ranking higher on search engine results pages, and the share of organic traffic is gradually increasing. Its average monthly share is 58% as of 2025, increasing by 2.39% in 2024.
Choose a hosting company with a strong uptime guarantee
Search engines aim to provide the best possible browsing experience and results, and website uptime is a big part of that. This refers to the amount of time a website is accessible online. When a website is down, the consequences for both SEO and user experience can be disastrous. Search engines label a website that’s frequently down as unreliable, and its ranking drops, often permanently.
A hosting company with a strong uptime guarantee (at least 99.9%) makes sure that your site remains accessible. Reputable providers offer redundancy measures and uptime monitoring to keep their clients’ websites online.
WordPress hosting supports high-performance websites
Beyond how fast your pages load, how stable your website remains during traffic spikes affects SEO, which is why investing in powerful WordPress hosting is a good idea. Unlike shared hosting, WordPress hosting is developed to support high-performance websites. The best WordPress hosting providers offer websites a backend fine-tuned for enhanced visitor retention, higher search rankings, and a satisfying user experience.
Consider the server location
Your hosting provider’s servers’ physical location also impacts your SEO, especially for local search results. A Content Delivery Network will help reduce latency by distributing website content across servers in different locations. This way, your pages will load more quickly because visitors to your website will access it from a server in closer proximity.
If you’re targeting local audiences, using servers located in or near the target area will improve local SEO. This is important to consider as 80% of users searching locally convert into customers.
The host’s role in your site’s mobile-friendliness is crucial
As of 2025, almost 73% of Google’s visitors access it on mobile devices, and mobile optimization has become a critical aspect of SEO. Your web host plays an important role in making sure your site is mobile-friendly by supporting responsive design, which considers the device being used to adjust the website layout automatically. This is an essential element of Google’s mobile-first indexing and improves user experience.
Some hosting companies support Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP, an open-source initiative to speed up mobile web browsing. If your host supports AMP, it will further enhance your site’s SEO.
The bottom line
SEO is highly effective for digital marketers, with 91% reporting a positive impact on website performance in 2024. Choosing the right host before launching a website is highly recommended because your DNS settings also change when you switch hosts, which means that it may take visitors some time to rediscover your site. If you’re moving to a new hosting provider because you’re unhappy with your current one, make sure the new one is actually better. Finally, search engines prioritize secure websites in rankings, and the web host plays a crucial role in security.