Best SEO Hosting Companies
Last Updated on March 4, 2024 by James Wilson
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a major focus for many website owners. Quite rightly so, as so many of us use Google for just about everything. Businesses want to come up in the organic search results, preferably on the first page. Google is continually optimizing it’s ranking algorithms so that we get the best content appearing on our screen.
At least, that is the idea. Contrary to popular belief, filling your website with the best keywords and metatags is not the only approach to driving traffic to your website. The speed, server location, security, backups, uptimes and accessibility of your website also play a major role in SEO.
What is SEO Hosting?
There are several factors that web hosting (in particular) plays in the ability for a website to perform well in the search engines. With over 1.94 billion websites, the search engines are getting crowded and website owners need to deploy as many SEO strategies as they possibly can to beat the mounting competition.
In this article, we’ll explore the 5 search engine results pages (SERPs) factors that are impacted by your website host. As well as the 9 of the top SEO hosting providers of 2024, in a variety of areas, that offer the best possible solutions.
5 SEO Hosting Factors to Consider
#1 | WEBSITE SPEED
You’ll want your website host to have set up their servers in such a way that the website pages load fast. There are several factors that go into making a website fast, one of which is the server location. Google takes the time it takes for a site to load into consideration when deciding which results to show on the front page. The server location is also important for other reasons, as you will see in factor #2. You’ll want to look at the page load times offered by your chosen hosting provider if SEO is your primary objective, as the search engines downgrade sites that take to long to load.
#2 | SERVER LOCATION
The search engines take the server location into consideration when showing results. For example, if you are searching in the UK, then the first set of results are going to be from the UK. So you need to know who you want to visit your website and take this into consideration when selecting your website hosts. One way to get around this, if you are looking to serve people in a wide range of locations throughout the world is to have a version of your website for the main countries that you want to target. Have you ever seen the country selection, normally with flags next to them as you land on a site? That’s because they check your IP address to make sure that you are seeing the closest server to your actual location.
#3 | UPTIME
Uptime is the amount of time that your site is online. Uptime is the opposite of downtime, which is the amount of time your website is offline. The search engines take into consideration the amount of time that your site is online. If it goes offline too often then your site could lose its search engine rank. So say for instance you get lots of SEO done on your website – tags, content, titles, page titles, and metatags are all on point. Your site starts to rise in the search engine and gets to the front page for your desired search term. Then your website goes down for a few days, it’ll likely lose its page rank. The reason that Google and other search engines take this into consideration is so that when you find a website, the link doesn’t take you to a dead end.
When it comes to uptime and speed, most hosting providers will boast a 99.9% uptime, but make sure that they are being honest about that – look for an “uptime guarantee”. Hosting providers need to ensure that they have suitable generators and backup solutions to keep websites on 24/7/365. Also ensure that your host isn’t in a location that is prone to natural disasters, as that can affect your uptime.
#4 | EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SUPPORT
I can’t state enough how important it is to have a responsive website host. You’ll want them to be on the ball and ready to help you the second you need it. Issues need to be resolved ASAP when it comes to maintaining a high ranking website. Bear in mind, many companies respond nicely to prospective customers, however when you become a customer and are paying them, they step back and you can get substandard service. If you can, make sure that your new host is focused on swift technical support, so that you can eliminate any issues the second they arise. Leaving things off can drop your ranking that has taken a long time to build up.
The ability for a website host to help you boost your search engine results pages (SERPs) raking (eg. to get to the top/ first page of Google) can differ depending on your website needs. You’ll need to choose a website host that offers tools in the area that best suit your business, for example, a blog, eCommerce store and a WordPress website all have differing requirements in relation to SEO.
#5 | SEO TOOLS & FEATURES
Check out the type of SEO features that your new hosting partner offers – both free and paid. Some hosts offer great tools for an extra fee, while others offer some great tools free of charge. SEO tools can enhance your search engine presence.
9 Best SEO Website Hosts of 2024
Let’s dive into the Best SEO Website Hosts of 2024, these are SEO website hosting providers that should fit most requirements. Check out the “BEST FOR” under each hosting provider to select an SEO host that fits your needs.
1. Hostinger
BEST FOR – Customizable hosting packages
Hostinger is a well-known hosting company that integrates a full selection of SEO tools, integrations and technical SEO benefits. Its selection of hosting services is wide-ranging, including web hosting for medium and small websites, cloud hosting for larger projects, VPS hosting that provides dedicated resources and more. The platform comes with various features to make website optimisation an absolute breeze.
Hostinger SEO Features
You’ll find that Hostinger offers four essential SEO features, including the ones below:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- SEO tools
- LiteSpeed cache
- In-house CDN
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
To prevent downtime, Hostinger provides you with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. They aim to ensure and maintain constant accessibility to your website at all times with this guarantee and eliminate the chances of downtime. I found this feature essential since downtime could reduce the chances of customer engagement.
SEO Tools
Hostinger offers SEO tools with its website builder. It also makes it easy to add a domain to the Google Search Console and optimise the website using data from AI heatmaps. With Google Analytics insights, Google Tag Manager features and additional marketing integrations, ranking highly with your website with the SEO tools Hostinger offers is possible.
LiteSpeed Cache
With Hostinger, users can access LiteSpeed web server technology. This technology is a cache that works at the server level on WordPress to optimise and greatly improve the loading times of a website. It’s this hosting SEO feature that keeps visitors on the page, which I noticed led to increased dwell time on my website.
In-house CDN
You’ll receive a free, in-house content delivery network (CDN) with Hostinger. This content delivery network is another caching tool that further optimises the website speed by caching content. Since it works on multiple servers across the globe, it will access the server closest to you. Loading times increased by at least 40% thanks to several features such as cache purging, JavaScript and CSS minification and many more tools.
2. A2 Hosting
BEST FOR – Customizable hosting packages
A2 Hosting is another large hosting provider rooted in the US. They offer just about every type of hosting that you could possibly need, from cloud hosting to dedicated servers, and everything in between. One thing that is great about A2 Hosting is that they know that each website owner has specific needs. For that reason, they offer a flexible, customized service so that you can create your hosting environment exactly as required. A2 Hosting is a great hosting partner for this reason.
A2 Hosting SEO Features
A2 Hosting offers 5 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Free SEO Tools and Plugins
- Free Website Transfer
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Blazingly Fast Servers
- Multiple Data Centers
Free SEO Tools and Plugins
The SEO tools and plugins offered from A2 Hosting are brilliant, plus they are easy to implement – directly from your user dashboard. Best of all they are completely free. They do this by implementing the world’s most popular SEO tools called “Attracta”. Attracta is dedicated to providing the best in class SEO packages that get you ranked highly on the search engines.
Free Website Transfer
The downtime that people often experience when porting their website over to a new host can negatively impact your SEO efforts. Therefore free website transfer that is completed by experts keeps the whole migration process smoothe. A2 hosting offer a completely free website migration service, which assures that your website is kept online with minimum disturbance to your site or your SEO.
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This means that they have gone to extreme lengths to ensure that their tech stays online as much as is humanly possible. It’s important that your SEO host offers this type of guarantee as downtime can drastically reduce your search engine ranking (SERP).
Blazingly Fast Servers
A2 Hosting is a great option if you are looking for a host that provides fast server speeds to enhance SEO and user experience. The speed at which your pages load alters the SERP ranking of your website. A2 Hosting’s servers are 20x faster than regular servers, so you have checked this SEO item off your list if you go with A2 Hosting.
Multiple Data Centers
If you’re looking for an SEO-friendly host, then making sure that they have a server in your desired area is a must. This is not necessarily your own physical location, but it should be the physical location of your desired website audience. A2 Hosting has servers in just about every area of the world, such as Argentina, Brazil, the US, Australia, and China. So no matter where you want to place your website – A2 Hosting has you covered.
3. Bluehost
BEST FOR – Beginners due to their one-click & shared hosting packages
Bluehost is one of the most infamous web hosts on the planet and they power over 2 million websites all over the world. Many people choose Bluehost because they offer a one-click WordPress install and optimized options. They also have some decent shared hosting plans that are great for people who are just starting out. They offer 4 shared hosting plans that differ according to the amount of storage space/ bandwidth that you need.
Bluehost SEO Features
Bluehost offers 4 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Unlimited Storage Space
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free Website Statistics
Unlimited Storage Space
Unless you go with their very basic plan, you’ll get unlimited storage space from Bluehost. This impacts your SEO efforts as it can impact page load times. As we covered above, the speed of your website is a key determining factor in Google’s algorithms. Unlimited storage space is ideal for people who are running an eCommerce store or have lots of images/ data to transfer.
Another way that unlimited storage space impacts SEO is that you can cache your pages, meaning your site performs better and can accommodate high traffic. A site that doesn’t have unlimited storage space could go down if it gets too busy. This would negatively impact your SERP and could take months to restore.
Unmetered Bandwidth
The bandwidth of your website determines how well it performs, it affects load times and therefore can impact your SEO efforts. Bluehost offers “unmetered bandwidth” which essentially means that your site will run smoothly and pages will load fast.
Free SSL certificate
As we covered in a previous article, an SSL certificate (HTTPS) is another important factor that is taken into account by Google. Bluehost has you covered, they offer a simple one-click SSL certificate for free with their hosting packages. Which covers this aspect of SEO.
Free Website Statistics
To improve the SEO of your website, then you need to measure how well it’s performing. Bluehost offers several web stat tools Google Analytics, Awstats and Webalizer for free so that you can assess how well your website is performing. When you know the stats you can take measures to tweak your site and enhance performance.
4. Fat Cow
BEST FOR – Budget SEO website hosting
If your budget is something you’re basing your choices on, then Fat Cow could be a good solution for you. Fat Cow is owned by Endurance International Group, which also owns other website hosting companies like Bluehost and iPage. They’ve also been around for two decades, so they have a lot of experience. Fat Cow has a strong focus on SEO and for this reason, it makes our list.
Fat Cow SEO Features
Fat Cow offers 4 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Fast Page Load Speeds
- Free Daily Backups
- Unlimited Disk space and Bandwidth
- Free SSL Certificate
Fast Page Load Speeds
Ensuring that your pages load incredibly fast is a priority for an SEO hosting provider. The speeds that your pages load impacts the SERP ranking. Fat Cow has invested in next-gen technologies, that ensure that your web pages load instantly.
Free Daily Backups
Website hacking is an increasing issue that can result in downtime as you try to ascertain what has happened to your website. Having a backup can save much needed time, effort and heartache. It would be terrible for your website to be hacked, and worse still to lose it’s SERP ranking due to the fact that it experiences some downtime. Having a backup is the ideal solution. You can then simply restore your website to a previous version. The fact that Fat Cow offers free daily backups is fabulous.
Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth
Fat Cow is very generous when it comes to disk space and bandwidth. They don’t put any restrictions on either resource. This means that your website will stay online and perform faster. Downtime or slow websites negatively impact the SERP rankings of your site, so making sure that this aspect is covered with an “unlimited” amount of storage space and bandwidth offers peace of mind.
FREE SSL
A Socket Secure Layer (SSL) certificate is required for Google to rank your website. If you don’t have this sort of encryption on your site then Google (and other search engines for that matter) deem your website unsecure. Fat Cow offers a free SSL certificate that you can activate in your account management area.
5. HostGator
BEST FOR – Scalable SEO web hosting
HostGator is another giant in the website hosting space, they power over 9 million websites all around the world. They offer just about every type of hosting that you can imagine and are also pretty decent on the SEO hosting front.
HostGator SEO Features
HostGator offers 5 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Free Website Transfer
- 24/7/365 Customer Support
- Unlimited Bandwidth and Web Space
- Free SSL Certificate
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
HostGator offers an honorable – 99.9% uptime guarantee. Therefore you can rest assured that your website will not lose it’s SERP rankings due to downtime.
Free Website Transfer
If you decide that you want to port your website over to HostGator, then you can do so with little to no downtime. They offer this service free of charge, which can take the headache of moving to a new host out of the equation. Also, your site will experience minimal disturbance when moving over to HostGator, which should mean your SERP ranking is kept intact.
24/7/365 Customer Support
Making sure that your SEO hosting provider has great customer service, that are available whenever you need them is of utmost importance. HostGator has a great track record when it comes to reliable, responsive customer support. They offer a variety of ways to get in touch with them via live chat, phone, and email. You never know when you might need the tech team to help you so having them by your site 24/7/365 is perfect when you are looking to optimize your website’s SERP ranking.
Unlimited Bandwidth and Web Space
Enjoy fast load times with HostGator with their unlimited bandwidth and unlimited webspace. Both the webspace and bandwidth can restrict your website’s performance, especially if you have a lot of visitors coming to your website. Knowing that you have unlimited space and bandwidth will ensure that your pages load faster and your site should not experience downtime related to having not enough space.
6. WP Engine
BEST FOR – WordPress Websites
If you’re looking for an SEO hosting provider that specializes in WordPress, then WP Engine could be for you. WP Engine has geared its entire offering towards providing an end-to-end hosting experience specifically for people who have built (or are going to build) their website in WordPress. They are a great company for speed, security and website owners that want their hosting provider to seamlessly scale with the company.
WP Engine SEO Features
WP Engine offers 4 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Speed – Fast Page Load
- Security
- Servers Located Across the Globe
- SEO Tools and Plugins
Speed – Fast Page Load
Ensuring that your website pages load as fast as possible is a must for an SEO website hosting provider. The quicker they load, the better as far as both users and the search engines are concerned. Google is focused on providing access to the best websites out there, and for this reason, they take the speed at which your web pages load seriously. Thankfully the cache system that WP Engine uses optimizes your website speed for both desktop and mobile users.
Security
Another aspect of your website that Google factors in when ranking it is security. You must have an SSL certificate if you want your website to rank at all. WP Engine has you covered, they offer a free SSL certificate so that your website will appear as HTTPS instead of HTTP. This means that data is encrypted and the experience is safer for everyone involved. Additionally, if you don’t have an SSL certificate then your website visitors will see a warning message upon entering your website. To avoid your visitors lacking trust in your website, and the fact that you’ll not get onto the first page of google until your site is secured, quickly activate the free SSL that you get from WP Engine.
Servers Located Across the Globe
The location of your server is important for load times and your SEO ranking. Google shows locally hosted websites first, as well as giving a higher status to pages that load faster. For this reason, the fact that WP Engine has servers located in a variety of international locations is a great reason to select this hosting provider. They have servers in places like Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Ireland, and the US. You’ll want to select a server that is located close to your target customer/ website visitor location. People from other countries will still be able to visit your website, however, they might face slightly longer load times.
SEO Tools and Plugins
WordPress has some great SEO plugins that you can use to optimize your WordPress website for the search engines. This can improve your SERP ranking and in return drive more traffic to your website.
7. iPage
BEST FOR – Small businesses and individuals
iPage has been around for two decades and is now owned by Endurance International Group. They power over 1 million websites and specialize in offering cost-effective hosting packages for small businesses and individuals. One downside of going with iPage is that you need to pay an extra £80 to use their SEO tools. But for this price, they’ll do SEO copywriting, back-links and reporting for your website, which sounds like a pretty decent deal.
iPage SEO Features
iPage offers 5 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Fast Page Load Speed
- 99.97% Uptime Guarantee
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Professional Email Address
Fast Page Load Speed
iPage is focused on ensuring that pages load as fast as possible. They even have blogs written to help you further your efforts in regards to improving your website page load speed. Making sure that your website pages load fast is a key factor in whether or not you get ranked highly in Google or not.
99.97% Uptime Guarantee
Selecting a host that provides a guarantee as to how much time your website might go down is important. If your website goes down for any length of time, this can negatively impact your SERP ranking. Thankfully iPage has a nice 99.97% uptime guarantee, so they have covered that base for you.
Free SSL Certificate
In the past it was ok to have a website that had just an HTTP prefix to their websites, meaning they were unsecured. Fast forward to today and it is now a crucial factor for your website security, SEO and for customer trust. You’ll get a free SSL certificate from iPage so that your site will have the HTTPS prefix, meaning that your data is encrypted and secure. They also offer SiteLock which will provide an extra layer of protection against cyber threats. If your site goes down due to a hacking attempt, this can destroy your SERP ranking, so this extra layer of protection is awesome.
Unlimited Disk Space
With iPage you’ll get unlimited disk space. This is important for SEO because if you run out of disk space your website will run slowly (impacting your SERP ranking) and ultimately your website will break and could go down, which also affects your SEO. They also offer scalable bandwidth which allows your website to expand as and when required.
Professional Email Address
iPage provides you with a free business email address that you can manage in Webmail. This won’t improve your search engine rankings, however by using your professional email address, you’ll be spreading the word about your website and in turn, you’ll get more traffic over to your website. The more visitors you get, the more popular your website is and the higher the value assigned by Google and other search engines.
8. DreamHost
BEST FOR – Uptime – DreamHost offers an outstanding 100% uptime guarantee.
DreamHost is an award-winning website host that is based in the US and was founded 23 years ago. DreamHost offers an amazing 100% uptime guarantee, which is brilliant for your search engine optimization.
DreamHost SEO Features
DreamHost offers 4 key SEO-friendly features, as follows:
- Free SSL Certificate
- 100% Uptime Guarantee
- Fast Page Load Speeds
- 24/7/365 Customer Support
Free SSL Certificate
If you choose DreamHost as your SEO hosting provider then you’ll get a free SSL certificate, no matter what plan you decide to go for. They also offer some other security features that will help your site stay online, benefiting your SERP ranking. For example, they also offer Multi-Factor Authentication to make sure that hackers can’t do a breach of entry.
100% Uptime Guarantee
I don’t know how they do it, other than investing in some serious tech, but DreamHost offers an unheard of 100% uptime guarantee. This means that your site should never go down due to a server issue. This is great for your SEO efforts, as your site is always online is a factor that Google looks at when deciding what sites should appear on the first page of their search engine.
Fast Page Load Speeds
The fast load speeds offered by DreamHost are also due to their strong server infrastructure and environment. The fast page load speeds are an important factor that Google looks at when deciding what websites rise to the top.
24/7/365 Customer Support
DreamHost is great for customer support, you can get in touch with them at any time of the day or night and a tech expert will be on the other end of the phone, email or chat – ready to help you. This will ensure that you can get instant support when needed, avoiding any disruptions that might mean that your websites SEO suffers.
9. InMotion Hosting
BEST FOR – Green data centers & auto backups.
InMotion Hosting is a reputable SEO website host that has been around for the past 18 years. InMotion offer hosting that is good for the environment out of their Green Data Centers
InMotion Hosting SEO Features
- Free Auto Backup Service
- Free SSL Certificate
- Fast Page Load Speed
Free Auto Backup Service
It’s always nice when a company offers free backups, especially when they are automatic. It’s just one more thing off your mind. A backup is crucial for timely recovery from your website being hacked. If your website goes offline, then it negatively impacts your SERP ranking, so it’s important to ensure that you always have a recent backup of your website.
Free SSL Certificate
If you choose InMotion as your hosting partner then you’ll get a free SSL certificate. HTTPS or a website that is secured with an SSL certificate is one of the critical factors for SEO. Quite simply put, if you don’t have an SSL certificate, your website will not rank highly in Google, period. InMotion also offers other advanced security features like DDoS protection which will further prevent your website from being hacked. Like they say – “prevention is better than a cure”.
Fast Page Load Speed
Making sure that your website loads fast is now an important factor from both an SEO and an end-user perspective. InMotion has some decent tech to ensure that your website loads fast, which is great for SEO.
All in All
I have outlined some of the best options for SEO-friendly website hosting. Which one you go for depends on your individual requirements. For example, WP Engine and CloudWays are exclusively WordPress hosts. While InMotion, Dreamhost’s or BlueHost allow other CMS solutions. Check out the “BEST FOR” section under each of the above hosts to select the best solution to fit your needs.
