SEO Hosting

Mostly your choice of hosting is not a factor for SEO. But in three areas it is highly important:

  • Speed – Google considers the loading time of your website to be a ranking factor
  • Price – if you have just one website, not so important. But if you have many, it can be
  • Secure – Google prefers sites that are https

Typically you won’t get a perfect host, that achieves all three.

If you want many sites that are secure and load reasonably fast, these are the options:

Hostinger – be aware that their plans that allow multiple websites only provide SSL for one of those sites. $1.99 (24 months)

Dreamhost – $1.99 (month by month) is the cheapest that has no commitment. WordPress says they are fast

Bluehost – $2.99 (12 months) gets you a bit more than the others – CDN, 24/7 phone support, Google Ads credit, custom themes. However, SSL is only included for free in the first year. They get rated highly in reviews because of their lucrative affiliate program

A2 Hosting – $2.99 (36 months) they say they are fast. 3rd party tests suggest they are ordinary, and not too different to the others mentioned here. Unless you pay for the “Turbo Boost” plans

Hostgator – $2.75 (36 months). They have a CDN, or they let you use Cloudflare’s free service.

Green Geeks – $2.95 (12 months). Servers in Europe, US or Canada. Great support. WordPress says they are fast

NameCheap (my domain registrar of choice..) $1.88 (12 months). This plan can host 3 websites! SSL is only free for the first year, then it is $10/yr per domain, or an extra dollar per month. They have a CDN, so this is great for just one year. Server locations of US, UK and EU, and in the US test sites load in under a second.

InMotion – $2.49 (36 months) for 2 websites, and both get SSL for the life of the account. This is the cheapest you’ll find for 2 sites. Loads fast often (results vary quite a bit), and they have been hosting sites since 2001. WordPress says they are fast

FastComet – $2.49 (up to 36 months) are a good choice if you need datacenters in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney or Mumbai. They have US and EU datacenters as well.

Creating a private link network is not for amateurs. Even so, if all of your sites have the same WHOIS info, or same IP addresses, Google will know, and any interlinking will be worthless. So a good starting point is individual hosting and domain registrar accounts.

Google is a domain registrar, they can see things…

And while there are free SSL options you can use, they are complicated, tedious, and require maintenance. You have more important things to worry about.