When business owners think about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), they typically think about keywords, blog content, and backlinks. While these are important, they are useless if the foundation of your website is rotten.
That foundation is your web hosting. Google has explicitly stated that page experience is a ranking factor. If your hosting provider is slow, unreliable, or insecure, you are fighting a losing battle against the algorithm. At Custom Coded Websites, we often see clients migrate from cheap shared hosting to our high-performance infrastructure and see an immediate lift in their rankings. Here is how to choose a hosting provider that actively boosts your SEO.
1. Speed: The Core Web Vitals Connection
Google’s "Core Web Vitals" metrics measure how fast and stable your site is. The most critical metric here is LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)—essentially, how fast your main content loads.
Your hosting provider dictates your Time to First Byte (TTFB). This is the time between a user clicking a link and your server sending the first piece of data. The Rule: If your server takes 2 seconds just to wake up, you have already failed the Core Web Vitals test before your content even appears. Look for hosts that offer high-performance CPUs and NVMe (SSD) storage to ensure near-instant responses.
2. Server Location Signals (Local SEO)
Data has to travel through physical cables. If your target audience is in London but your server is in California, the data has to cross the Atlantic Ocean. This creates "latency" (delay).
The Strategy: For a London-based business, you should choose a host with data centres in the UK (London or Slough). Not only does this reduce load times for your local customers, but it also signals to Google that your website is relevant to UK searchers. This is a subtle but powerful signal for local SEO rankings.
3. Uptime: The 99.9% Standard
If your site goes down, Google cannot crawl it. If Google cannot crawl it, it cannot rank it.
If your site experiences frequent "micro-downtimes" (going offline for a few minutes every day due to server overload), Google’s bots will view your site as unreliable. Eventually, they will visit less often, and your new content will take longer to appear in search results. Always verify that your host offers a guaranteed 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA).
4. Security Protocols (HTTPS and Beyond)
Google wants to keep its users safe. HTTPS (the padlock icon) has been a confirmed ranking signal since 2014.
However, quality hosting goes further. A good host provides server-level firewalls and malware scanning. If your site gets hacked and starts distributing malware, Google will blacklist you immediately, and your traffic will drop to zero. Cheap hosts often lack these defensive layers, leaving you exposed.
5. Avoid "Bad Neighbourhoods" (Shared Hosting)
We have discussed Shared Hosting before, but from an SEO perspective, it carries a specific risk: the "Bad Neighbourhood."
On a cheap shared server, you share an IP address with hundreds of other sites. If one of those sites is a spam farm or an illegal gambling site, that IP address might get flagged by spam filters. While Google is getting better at distinguishing between sites, sharing a server with low-quality neighbours is an unnecessary risk. VPS or Dedicated hosting gives you a clean, dedicated IP address, protecting your reputation.
Conclusion
Your hosting bill is not just an IT expense; it is an investment in your marketing. Saving £5 a month on cheap hosting could be costing you thousands in lost organic traffic.
Does your current host pass the SEO test? If not, it is time to upgrade.