Choosing the Right Web Hosting Plan for Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Intro

In this digital age, where milliseconds can make or break your online presence, your web hosting choice wields more power than you might realize. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes into the digital waters, choosing the right web hosting plan for your digital marketing strategy might seem like an intimidating task.

But there’s good news—once you know what to look for, it’s not as hard as you think to find a web host that aligns with your goals. There are a lot of moving parts to it, but we’ve put together this guide to help you focus on the important stuff and avoid wasting time and effort on the inconsequential things.

Give it a read, make yourself a list, and get ready to learn all about the intricate relationship between your web host and your digital marketing.

Evaluating Your Digital Marketing Needs

You won’t know what boxes you need to tick until you’ve got a solid idea of what your digital marketing needs are. Start by laying out your company's goals.

What do you want to achieve with digital marketing? Whether it's brand awareness, lead generation, sales, or customer retention, having well-defined objectives is the foundation.

From there, you can decide what kind of digital marketing strategies you need to focus on. A well-rounded digital marketing strategy usually covers content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, PPC, and more.

Knowing your objectives, your strategies, and what actions you plan on taking as a company to reach them is key to figuring out whether or not a web host will work for you or not.

We’ll outline a few factors below to pay close attention to when choosing a web host. Your web host can either align with your needs and boost traffic, sales, and revenue, or clash with your goals and hamper your efforts.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Web Host

Not all web hosts are equal. Some are excellent, many are average, and some should just be avoided from the start. Here’s how to tell which is which.

# 1. Uptime Reliability

Every minute your website is down, you could be missing out on a conversion. Spending money on social media ads and PPC ads is wasted if you’re paying for every click but your website isn’t able to receive visitors!

Plus, if someone clicks on an ad or finds your website on social media only to be met with a web page that’s down, your brand reputation takes a bit of a hit. And then there’s the fact that bounce rate impacts SEO negatively… So choosing a host with a reliable uptime guarantee is a MUST.

99.99% Uptime Guarantee

Avoid throwing money down the drain by making sure you ONLY consider web hosts who offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee. This is the industry standard—anything less will put you behind pretty much every other competitive website out there.

Original image created in Canva

Server Reliability

As well as a robust uptime guarantee, your chosen web host should have strong server infrastructure. The servers need to be able to handle spikes in traffic, especially if you’re running a marketing campaign and expecting more traffic than usual to pop in.

# 2. Load Time and Performance

Your website loading time is the first thing a new visitor to your site notices. If it’s slow, more than half of your visitors will bounce—and by “slow”, we mean if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Aside from annoying first-time visitors and chasing away potential customers, slow loading times also have a bad effect on your Quality Score on various PPC platforms. This means you might end up spending more for ads that aren’t as effective.

Fast Load Time

Your web host plays a bigger role than you realize in your website loading speed. They should have fast, stable servers that help your site load up quickly almost every time.

There are a number of actions you can take to help optimize your loading time, like enabling browser caching and above-the-fold loading, optimizing images for the web, and hosting your videos on an external site.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Choose a web host that uses a CDN (content delivery network). This goes a long way towards improving web page loading speed, because it smartly stores a cached version of your site on servers around the world.

When someone nearby pops onto your site, it doesn’t have to wait for all the data to arrive from your host’s server—it can start loading already with the cached data. This simple step can make a huge difference… And save a huge chunk of your traffic.

# 3. Scalability

If you’re planning on growing your business (who isn’t?), then you need a web host that’s able to accommodate your site as it grows. If you outgrow your web host, you could find your site crashing due to high traffic volumes, slowing down, or just not working like it should.

All your hard work going in the digital marketing strategy will be wasted if your site needs more resources than it’s currently getting.

Scalable Resources

When you’re just starting out, choose a web host that makes it easy for you to upgrade to a new tier plan or simply add resources when you need them. Just for interest’s sake, cloud hosting is extremely flexible so if this is a concern for you, opt for cloud hosting upfront.

Easy Upgrades

If the host makes it difficult or complicated to upgrade our package, you’re only going to be frustrated when that time comes. Check with the hosts you’re comparing and see what their upgrade process looks like—it should be simple, easy, and fast.

# 4. Security

Never skimp on security. If you’re doing business online that involves customers giving you card or banking details, you don’t want to be that company that gets hacked and exposes sensitive data.

Plus, if your website isn’t secure, social media might get fussy about displaying links and showing your content. Social media platforms are wary of insecure websites, so you’ll be shooting your own marketing efforts in the foot if you don’t take security seriously.

SSL Certificate

At a minimum, your website host should offer a free SSL certificate. This doesn’t just secure your site, but it adds a layer of trust when a customer is considering doing business with you.

Regular Backups

Nobody wants to contemplate their website crashing, but it happens. Your web host should perform (very) regular backups of your data just in case something does go wrong.

Find out their backup frequency… And make sure they actually do offer backups, because some expect you to do it yourself.

Security Measures

Aside from the SSL certificate, your web host company should also offer things like malware protection, scanning, firewalls, two-factor authentication, and other security features. Don’t neglect security.

# 5. Compatibility and Integration

Not all web hosts are compatible with all web apps. Depending on your business, you may need to integrate your website with other apps or platforms, and it’s vital that your chosen host can do this easily and seamlessly.

Compatibility with eCommerce Platforms

E-commerce businesses need a hosting provider that supports the e-commerce platform they’re using. You should also check for compatibility with SEO tools because SEOing your product descriptions is a huge part of any digital marketing strategy.

Integration with Marketing Tools

Regardless of whether you’re e-commerce or service-based, marketing tool integrations are a must. If you’ve already got particular tools that you prefer using, double-check if the host works with those specific ones.

If yes, you’re good to go. If not, decide if you can live with another tool or if you’d rather settle for another web host.

# 6. SEO Considerations

SEO is a vital part of any digital marketing plan. Aside from being easy to integrate with SEO tools and plugins, the location of your host’s server can make a big difference (either good or bad), and so can their IP reputation.

Server Location

If your main audience is in the USA and you’re using a web hosting server in New Zealand, you’re going to run into trouble. The closer the server is to your target audience, the faster your site will load, and remember—slow-loading sites get penalized by search engines, dropping their SEO rankings.

Choose a host with a server near your audience. Your page load time and SEO will improve, your audience will be happy, and you’ll make more sales. Alternatively, find a host that uses a CDN based near your audience.

Original image created in Canva

IP Reputation

IP reputation checks how many unwanted requests a particular IP address sends. For example, if it’s shooting out unsolicited emails, it’ll lose points. If it sends out authentic emails to people who’ve opted in, it’ll gain a positive score.

Your web host’s IP reputation can trickle into your own website and cause issues. Here’s how:

Email Deliverability

If your host’s server is blacklisted, your emails may be automatically flagged as spam… Or worse, just not arriving in your recipients’ inboxes. Those who are on a shared hosting plan can also be affected by what other websites do—if your neighboring site is sending out spam, it can make your site look bad too and you can both get blacklisted.

Search Engine Ranking

That pesky neighbor on your shared server can also cause Google and other search engines to assume that you’re just as spammy and knock you down the rankings. If you’re not on a shared server, it’s not as worrisome, but the host’s IP rep still plays a role.

Security

Your web host’s poor IP reputation might be an indication of insecure servers. And if your host is using servers that aren’t secure, your site will be at risk of malware or hacking. Every bit of marketing you’ve ever done will be worthless if a security breach compromises your customers’ data.

Partnerships

If forming partnerships is part of your digital marketing strategy, a negative IP reputation could be a red flag for potential partners. Even if you’re a reputable company, your web host’s IP rep can make you look bad.

We recommend checking a web host’s IP reputation before signing up with them, no matter how good their offering seems to be. You’ll be surprised how much of a positive difference it can make to your marketing efforts.

# 7. Type of Web Hosting You Choose

You should already know that shared hosting isn’t the best choice. But you might not know much about alternatives. Here’s a quick overview:

• Shared: Cheapest, but offers fewest resources and least amount of control. Plus, you’ll be sharing digital space with any number of other websites.
• Dedicated: Various resource offerings are available, and you have full control of your own, unshared server. Slightly pricey, but excellent for high-traffic sites.
• VPS: Affordable and in-between. Your site rents a space on a server, but has resources dedicated to it, not shared. More reliable than shared hosting, but not as good as dedicated hosting.
• Cloud: The newest, fastest, most reliable, most scalable, and most secure. Also the most expensive, but worth it if you want top-notch performance.

It goes without saying that choosing a less stable option with fewer resources could spell trouble if your site gets a spike in traffic. Cloud hosting has you covered with everything, so you can focus on our marketing knowing you’re all good in the background.

# 8. Customer Support

Unless you’re extremely tech-proficient (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this article), you might need to contact customer support at some point. Choose a host with 24/7 support that can be reached in a number of ways—call, email, chat, and so on.

The staff should be knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly. The best way to figure this out is real-people reviews.

Best Practices for Choosing a Web Host

Here’s a quiet “best practices” checklist to help you find the right web host quickly and painlessly.

• Read Reviews: Learn about other people’s experiences with the host. Look specifically for feedback on uptime, security, and customer support.
• Compare Features & Price: Avoid hosts that don’t meet your business needs. Compare those that do and figure out which ones have an edge. Look at things like storage space, bandwidth, domain registration, and extras like email.
• Check Reputations: Check their IP reputation and what others say about them. They should have a proven track record.
• Find a Specialist Host: If you have a WordPress website, choose a web host that specializes in WordPress. For e-commerce sites, choose a host that specializes in e-commerce. It’ll give you a bit of peace of mind that they’re actually experts.
• Pricing & Contract Terms: Clear and transparent pricing and flexible contract terms are two must-haves when signing up.
• Try Before You Buy: If possible, test out a web host that seems great before signing a contract. Many web hosts (SiteGround, A2 Hosting, InMotion, and more) offer a free trial period, so use the time to analyze and figure out if it’s for you or if you foresee issues.

Conclusion

Choosing the right web hosting plan for your digital marketing strategy isn’t as hard as it seems. Keep this checklist handy when searching for your perfect web host, and take your time—finding top quality doesn’t happen overnight!