After choosing a domain for your ready-to-launch website, the next step is to find the right platform to host the website. Web hosting Dubai offers quite a lot of good deals in this regard. But before finalizing a good web hosting service provider, you should also assess how the potential host can aid you in your SEO efforts after launching the website.

The web host you choose actually plays a role in the search engine optimization of your website. You just need to take into account a few factors to choose the host that will give your website the right SEO edge. 

Location of the server

The server location is an important factor for choosing an SEO friendly web host. It’s recommended to choose a host with server located at the place you are targeting for your business. Reportedly, Google considers websites as relevant for those locations where they are also hosted. This simplifies search engine optimization.

For example, if you are targeting Dubai for your business, you should go for a web host with a server location at Dubai. Couple that with a reliable search engine optimization Dubai service, and your website will greatly benefit from it in the long run.

Operating system

Choosing an OS for the host server is the next step. It’s preferable to use Windows servers for ASP.NET websites. But if you require PHP or MySQL support, UNIX should be your choice. For Web 2.0, MySQL support is a must-have. Therein lies the link to SEO. 

Disk space

It is easier to find hosting packages that offer large storage capacity. If you plan to use a lot of rich multimedia content in your website, you should be aware that this can affect your website loading speed. Low website loading speed negatively impacts your search engine rankings. 

So it’s better to assess the size of the multimedia files you will be uploading to the website before finalizing a disk size from a hosting package. The content will have to be optimized to smaller sizes before uploading to ensure it doesn’t affect the loading speed. So you won’t require too large a disk space.

Uptime

It’s a metric relevant to SEO as frequent downtimes of a website can negatively affect your website’s search engine rankings. Google doesn’t appreciate it if your website is frequently unavailable. This doesn’t mean you should just list down those companies that guarantee a 99% uptime. You should do some research and check reviews to make sure they deliver what they promise. 

There is also one other thing you can do. In case of a downtime or scheduled server maintenance, make sure your hosting provider doesn’t redirect visitors to your site but displays a 503 page. This is to indicate to search engines that your website is under maintenance and will be available soon.

Bandwidth

The bandwidth provided by your web host is important if you are expecting a lot of traffic (number of visitors to your website). If your future SEO efforts drive a lot of traffic to your website, your bandwidth should be able to accommodate them. You may have noticed “unlimited bandwidth deal” advertisements from web hosting providers. 

However, there will most likely be some kind of condition for it, which might end up with you paying for each extra MB once the so-called ‘unlimited’ bandwidth limit is reached. 

Bonus tips

• Never opt for a hosting provider who offers search engine visibility services in their package. It’s a ruse. Host providers may not necessarily be SEO experts. But they will be charging more for this particular add-on. You don’t need to pay to increase visibility of a website which is already going to be public.
  
• Free site-building tools (or paid) from your hosting provider might sound like a good deal but it actually does more harm than good for your SEO plans in most cases. Most of them are not SEO friendly. And if they are proprietary, it makes it difficult for you to move your site to another host when you want to.