SEO is more than simply keywords and content, it relates to the user experience in general.
In other words, it’s not just posting good content that is properly infused with the right keywords. It is making sure that where you post it is sound. After all, what good does all your work towards creating excellent content with the proper keywords do if the site itself is holding it back from being ranked highly?
What follows are some common issues that affect your SEO and what you can do about it. It is important to act quickly once you discover that something is amiss.
The Detriments of Slow Download Speed
If your website takes longer than two seconds to download on a computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, then you are not only losing customers, you are dropping in SEO rankings as well. SEO is not just based on the keywords that you include. It also accounts for the speed in which the site downloads onto different devices.
There are several factors that go into determining download speed, some of which you have little control. However, what you do have control over is the hosting site which transmits your website on the internet. And the size of the files on your site which affects how fast they can be downloaded to different devices. Inspect all the files on your site and reduce the larger ones so you can maintain a fast download speed.
Your goal should be to have your website fully downloaded to all devices in under two seconds. This will not only bolster your SEO rankings, it will improve the user experience which means that customers will not only be impressed, they are more likely to come back time and time again.
Establishing Proper Connections
You can discover if your website hosting is having difficulty with connection errors by visiting it from the outside. Have a friend or family member access your website from their device. If they see warnings such as “Database Connection Failed” or “Internal Server Error”, then your site has database connection issues.
This may be a result of an error in configuration, but most of the time such errors are caused by the database being accessed by more users than it can handle. An example is an article, image, or video on social media that goes viral and is trying to be accessed by many thousands of people all at the same time.
You can mitigate that to a certain degree by finding a hosting site that has built-in safeguards against overloads. This means that files are stored on alternate sites which reduces the number of connections needed. If your site is really taking off, you may want to switch to a dedicated or Virtual Private Server (VPS) which eliminates other websites from taking up traffic that may affect your site.
Security Issues
Having a safe, secure website is paramount these days, especially with all the reports of hacking that is filling up the newspapers. If your website interacts with anyone’s personal information, such as their credit card number for example, then you will need to ensure that the proper security measures are in place.
This is even true if your site does not store any personal information. This is because customers are quite wary of sites that have a less than ideal reputation when it comes to their internet security. All it takes is one breach to wreck the reputation and brand of your site.
The first step is having a quality SSL certificate that protects the information on your site.
Sharing IP Addresses with Spammers
If your site is a shared hosting site which means that hundreds, if not thousands of other websites are present, then you may run into issues if some of those sites are run by scammers, spammers, and other unscrupulous individuals. It’s like living in a neighbourhood which is mostly nice except for one or two houses that are in such poor condition or they center on crime that it drives down the property values for everyone else.
If your IP address is flagged, which means that it is considered malicious, then your website rankings may plummet considerably even though you had nothing to do with the reasons why. A proper website host will remove all spammers as soon as they are noticed, but it is better to check out the IP address itself by doing a reverse IP technique. This service will let you know if the IP address is solid or if it has some issues.
Your website hosting can affect your SEO ranking if you do not keep up with security matters, place your site on a VPS or dedicated server, keep up the download speed, or establish the proper connections. By doing the basics, you can ensure that your content stands the best chance of being ranked highly when you address the other important areas of your website.