Content rules the internet. It is the driving force of user engagement and no matter what kind of business you have, if you want to be successful online then a blog is one of the most essential components to your website.
No matter what you need a blog.
Small business websites boost their brand’s awareness with the content they roll out on their blogs.
If you’re an individual and you’re establishing yourself as a brand ambassador, influencer or authority in a specific niche, your blog is the vehicle that will take you there.
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Why blog?
Well as we said, a blog helps to engage your audience and establish you as an authority in your chosen field. The purpose of a blog is to supply fresh content that gives valuable information to your audience and bolsters reputation as a source of great advice.
While most companies focus on creating fresh, exciting and compelling content they tend to forget that UX (user experience) must be taken into consideration if they want their blog to be the go-to for their audience.
In order to assure high scores in user experience your website’s blog needs to load at lightning speeds. Users are accessing your website for the most part on a mobile device during their commute and their attention spans are short. If your blog takes too long to load then they’ll simply move to the competition that is just a fraction of a second faster.
All of this is greatly contingent on the effectiveness and power of your hosting provider. So how do you know if your host is meeting the mark? Well, you need to consider the essential server necessities you need. In addition, it may also mean that you may have outgrown shared hosting and it is time to upgrade to VPS Hosting.
The Importance of VPS Hosting for your Blog
Perhaps you started your small business or blog on a shared hosting plan. However, after investing the time in your business you’ve grown your audience, and your constant stream of compelling content has enabled you to receive a boost in traffic. Naturally, you’re probably on the precipice of outgrowing your shared plan. It is time to consider the scalability of your business and its expansion.
In steps VPS Hosting. VPS stands for a virtual private server. Within the hosting environment, each server contains individual private servers that have their own resources and thus all of it is allocated to your website. You don’t have to share anything with any other user. Because of this, the server experiences faster speeds, more bandwidth, and much more. If you’re serious about taking your blog and business to the next level that making the switch to VPS is crucial. Your server’s capabilities directly affect your website and your blog.
Shared hosting is great when you are first starting out and need a cost-effective web hosting solution. But for scalability, nothing beats VPS hosting, especially in terms of price point and the robust features your website enjoys as a result.
Here are the six server aspects that directly impact your blog.
1. Server Uptime
Simply put, uptime is the percentage of time the server has been running effectively without experiencing any downtime that is, going offline.
The higher your uptime percentage the more you can assure that your blog is creating a deeper foothold as a dependable authority on a given subject. Uptime directly affects your blog and business’ reputation.
This is a logical given. The percentage of time your blog is available to users around the globe is essential to its success. You want a hosting provider that can guarantee 99.99% of server uptime.
Due to the structuring of VPS hosting, being a private virtual server within a shared environment your uptime is failsafe.
2. Load Time
When it comes to website metrics page load time is tantamount. As we said earlier your site needs to load in less than a second in order to capture and retain the short attention spans of your users. More importantly, page load times greatly affects your SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation remains a prerequisite for a successful site, with high traffic rates daily and even higher conversions.
Google tends to reward sites with quick-fire load times by indexing them high on the search pages. You want to rank on page one. This shows that Google trusts that you’re an authority in your field, you create valuable and helpful content and it brings you more customers.
Still not convinced? Think about your own experience when surfing the internet. How frustrated are you when a site takes longer than three seconds to load? How engaged are you? Online metrics and statistics show that users will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
These are sites that are usually hosted on a shared plan, where other websites on the server are sucking up the resources. With VPS you don’t share any of the resources and thus your site is sure to have load times of less than 2 seconds.
3. TTFB (Time to First Byte)
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the main underlying factor of your page load time. This is categorised as the time required for the server to send the requested information to the user’s browser. Thus, each time someone clicks on a page throughout your website or blog, their browser requires byes to be sent from the server your website’s blog is hosted on.
TTFB impacts your page load time greatly and because of this Google tracts it closely. In fact, Google has given specific guidelines on your server’s first-time response. As such it is recommended that TTFB must be under 200ms to be considered in the “green zone”.
It is well to note that server location plays a role in TTFB as well. The distance between communicating servers greatly speeds up or slows down the rate of bytes being communicated. Therefore your hosting provider should be in the same region as your website and primary audience.
4. Website and server back-ups
In life, we always need a backup plan just in case something happens to destroy all of our hard work. Your website is no different. Regardless of how great your hosting provider is, even if you’ve made the switch to VPS hosting, human error and other disasters can still potentially wipe out all of your time, effort, blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into your website.
That is why you need to have an effective backup plan for your website. Having a back-up plan in place ensures that your website, blog and all of its content is saved and stored for easy retrieval in the unlikely event of data loss.
A powerful hosting provider has backup services available to you. Discuss your options with them and make sure that you have all of your bases covered.
5. Security
The internet is chock-full of cybercriminals and hackers lying in wait to destroy or infiltrate your website or blog. There is a myriad of ways these malignant individuals can launch assaults against your blog resulting in catastrophic losses and the full degradation of your brand’s reputation.
For this reason, security is a top priority for you as a business owner. Your blog and website need the utmost in internet security. Starting with SSL Certificates, and other protections your hosting provider can discuss with you. With VPS Hosting an added layer of protection is built in since you don’t share the actual server with any other website but your own. In addition, there are options to install specific firewalls for added protection.
The Take-Away
We hope that we’ve adequately illustrated the importance of having a great hosting provider and the right hosting solution to ensure that vitality and longevity of your blog. The server side of your website has to be running at optimum levels to ensure your blog and website is performing and peak levels translating to overall high UX and continued brand awareness. When you weigh all the factors it is apparent that hosting greatly impacts your blog’s performance.
