Starting a business or a web project can be easier and cheaper if you advertise on the Internet. In fact, any startup needs to advertise, and this can be done easily on the Internet thanks to a good online marketing strategy.
What are the advantages of having your own space on the Internet? On the one hand, that the Internet offers a high capacity for content distribution, and on the other, it is to have full control of the site where the business information will be displayed. To take advantage of these advantages, you need to have a suitable web hosting, since it is the place where the information you want to present to the public will be stored. In addition, you have to choose it well to ensure that the project has all the advantages over the competition. That's where you start.
But before explaining the advantages that are sought in a web hosting service, it is necessary to explain the concept of online marketing for those readers who do not know this sector. Why is marketing so important? Because part of the success of a website depends on it, and that is that 90% of web projects die due to the lack of visits, or what is the same: due to a poor marketing strategy, for whatever reason. Online marketing can be divided into several branches: marketing on social networks, web positioning (SEO) to obtain organic visits from Google, pay per click advertising systems (Adwords, Facebook Ads), and a long etcetera. All these types of marketing can be ineffective if there are problems with the server or the site is down.
When buying a web hosting, what are the most important factors to ensure that the project has all the technical resources it needs and to improve positioning in search engine rankings? These are the features and technical support that the provider offers, the technical resources of the contracted product or plan and the geographical location of the servers.
One of the technical factors is the operability or functionality of the servers on which the website in question will be hosted. If servers go down frequently and search engine crawlers (spiders) visit the website while it is down they will not be able to read its content and will also cause you to lose ranking positions. Therefore, it is important to choose a hosting that guarantees 99.9% functionality and that has secure, stable and protected servers against all kinds of problems that may arise. It may be a good practice to search the internet for reviews of web hosting providers currently on the market.
Another factor to take into account is the speed of consulting the databases, which is often not indicated. There are servers that read databases very slowly - for example, those of the MySQL type that are the most widely used - and this causes a site that uses a content manager (CMS) to load more slowly. A website that uses a CMS does not access the data from the HTML itself - which is loaded by the browser - but does so through a query using a PHP code embedded in the HTML, and is interpreted by the server. Examples of CMS are the well-known WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, to name a few. If the page loads slowly, the search engines will reduce the value of the website in general, causing it to lose positions and, consequently,preventing a greater possibility of getting new clients.
The technical resources that a provider offers in each specific plan are another essential factor because it is very important that the service that is contracted meets the requirements of a defined web project. For example, if you are going to consume a lot of bandwidth or a lot of storage capacity, you may need a hosting plan with higher benefits than usual and with these benefits. If so, you can hire a Private Virtual Server (VPS) or even a dedicated server, which also allows you to have full control of it. But in general, and for an entrepreneur who is not going to have too much web traffic or consume too many resources, there is enough with a shared hosting.Anyway, if you have a strong increase in traffic, you can migrate to a higher-performance server. Many providers offer to perform server migration when the time is right.
The technical support that the provider can offer is very important because it is necessary to be able to contact them whenever a problem arises or to solve specific doubts. Most providers offer a ticket system in which a query can be initiated and a response is received in a few minutes; They also offer a phone number to contact by phone in an available way every day of the year. However, many providers are in English, and if what you want is to be able to talk by phone in Spanish, it will be a good option to contract the service with a provider that offers this type of care.
Another aspect to consider is knowing the type of control panel that the provider offers. Many providers have a control panel that is their own creation. These panels are generally intuitive and have been tested by people with little experience. However, it is appreciated that they offer cPanel or Plesk, two control panels that lead the market for being very complete and allowing any operation to be carried out. In addition there are many tutorials on these panels on the Internet, so it will be easy for an entrepreneur to learn to perform any task that is presented: create email accounts and FTP accounts, use marketing tools, install CMS with ease or manage databases.
It may also be useful to consider the geographical factor that depends on the location of the IP of the servers, although it is not essential. Google takes into account the geographic IP of a web hosting server to position a page in its search results. For example, if you want to position a website in Spain, it will be more advisable to have a server located in Spain and not in Japan.
Although it is not entirely essential, since you can later indicate to which audience the website is directed through Google tools for webmasters.
Finally, the factor to consider is the price. It is good to think in your pocket, but not as a priority. It is recommended first to think about the benefits that are needed, and when these are already clear, the price will be the final factor that helps to make an accurate decision; Although the economic issue is somewhat more personal.
