By owning a website, your objective is to turn as many eyes as possible on to it, right? Whether you aim to sell products, notify services, or to entertain others, you have to focus on steadily building an audience and reach to the maximum. However, it is not that easy.

Where to Begin?

There are many ways to drive in traffic to your site, and the backbone of all such promotional strategies is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a mix of tactics and techniques which help your web pages to rank on top of the SERPs (search engine results pages).

There are various benefits if your website gets optimized for the leading search engines as:

• A site ranks high on SERPs will naturally have greater visibility and better traffic.
• A top-ranked website will be perceived as more reputed and trustable by the audience.

As discussed above, there are various approaches to optimize your website for search engines. In this article, we will discuss one of the most basic, but frequently overlooked aspects of it as web hosting.

Web hosting for SEO

Often downplayed, web hosting is a crucial component of any successful website. For WordPress websites, there are plenty of hosting options available and then choosing the best in light of your needs can surely enhance the SEO value of your site. There hosting options now include:

• Free
• Shared
• VPS
• Dedicated, and
• Managed WordPress hosting.

Further, in this guide, we will try to explore these in more details to help the users choose their best hosting options.

Basic hosting requirements

WordPress websites run on a light-weight script, which is compatible with almost all leading web hosting services. Though, the baseline requirement for WordPress hosting include:

• PHP 7 or higher version.
• MySQL 5.6 or higher version.

As WordPress is now the No.1 CMS in web development, all hosting companies now offer one-click install features for WordPress sites. Further, we may explore the significant things users should consider while choosing a good WordPress Hosting service.

Customized hosting

At the first point, security, speed, and reliability are the three primary factors to consider while choosing WordPress hosting. However, all these needed to be assessed in light of your unique requirements like how to write an rfp or other priorities before signing up for WordPress hosting to save time and money.

Evaluating the Needs

As mentioned above, there are various modes of web hosting from free to personally managed, which one need to understand in better details to take an appropriate decision.

1. Free hosting

Free WordPress hosting can be found through forums and groups. These hosting services are usually managed by resellers who are offering a space of their rented service. Their major catch in it is the scope of putting in their ad or banner on to your site and get some traffic through it. Then they sell the banner space to cover up the cost of free hosting.

The major disadvantage of free hosting is that these ads may be unreliable if you are running a business or info site. You also don’t know when the provider is going to stop the free service and you may be left hanging. If you are planning to host your business website or other serious websites, free hosting is not advisable.

1. Shared hosting

Shared hosting is a popular mode of WordPress website hosting for beginners. It is more affordable too when compared to dedicated hosting. There are a large number of sites hosted on the same shared server, which ultimately reduced the cost.

The primary advantage is that we get shared hosting services across the providers. However, you shouldn’t get confused with the ‘unlimited space’ offer they put forth. There may be some usage restrictions, which you need to understand clearly. If your site needs a substantial server load to perform well, it is ideal not to go for shared hosting as it may slow down the site performance with many others hosted on the same.

1. VPS Hosting

VPS or otherwise Virtual Private Server is a virtual cloud machine, which uses the technology of partitioning a server to turn into multiple servers based on the user needs. Even when you are sharing one server with others as in case of shared hosting, unlike that, you get full control over hosting as like a dedicated server.

It also offers the privacy of custom configuration like a separate server. Medium size bloggers, developers, high traffic blogs, and intermediate users tend to use VPS hosting to scale websites. If you are not that much tech-savvy, it is ideal to look for a managed VPS, in which the providers manage system upgrades and other technical aspects of hosting.

1. Dedicated hosting

It is the use of a dedicated physical server for your website only. Even though costly compared to other modes of hosting, dedicated hosting offers you full control over the host server. You may choose most comfortable OS and hardware configuration etc.

Dedicated hosting may not be required as a beginner, however once if start to see enough volume traffic getting generated, then you may upgrade it to a dedicated server. If you are not much experienced in system administrator or not maintaining a skilled server administrator, then managed dedicated server may be an ideal option.

1. Managed hosting

As there are plenty of WordPress sites now, hosting providers now offer various options in managed WordPress hosting. The benefit of managed hosting is that everything will be taken care of by the provider. They also ensure that the website is secure, regularly backed up and, and all the optimization measures are taken.

Managed WordPress hosting can be an excellent option for established bloggers too who can easily justify the cost involved with the revenue generation. This is also ideal for people in business who don’t have enough technical skills or time to deal with the technical aspects of hosting.

Now, as you know various options in WordPress hosting, it is time to consider the benefits and drawbacks of each in light of your need in hand and take a decision. Even on finding a particular mode of hosting most suitable for you, one can further explore various providers offering the same service and compare the cost, rating of the provider, feedback and other aspects of service excellence to choose one.