How to Select the Best High-Traffic WordPress Hosting
WordPress is a fabulous content management system (CMS) that can be used to build beautifully designed websites with content that is both engaging and informative. Being open source, it is absolutely free to use and install, and it is extremely versatile. The only downside is that it can be difficult to get noticed online if your site doesn’t appear in the popular search engines such as Google.
Luckily, there are several methods that you can use to ensure that you get the exposure that you deserve. One of the simplest and most effective methods is to host your site on a high-traffic WordPress hosting plan. When people visit a website, they generally tend to stay for a short period of time and then move on to other sites. With this in mind, it is crucial that your site loads quickly and that the structure and design are such that people want to return. A few things that you should look out for when selecting a high-traffic WordPress hosting plan are:
Stability And Performance
When you’re selecting a website host, you should firstly look for stability and performance. This goes without saying, yet many web hosts can be pretty unstable and slow; therefore, you should avoid these types of hosts if you’re looking for a smooth and fast website. When you host your website on their servers, they gain control of your entire web traffic and can manipulate your content and slow down your website as they see fit. When you host your site on your own server, you guarantee that you have full control over the performance of your site and can optimize it to work best for your audience. This is why most website owners select a dedicated hosting plan or a vps (virtual private server).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Another important factor to consider when selecting a web host is SEO (search engine optimization). As the name suggests, SEO optimizes your site’s content and structure so that it can rank higher on search engines (SERPs – search engine results pages) for relevant keywords. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner to come up with a keyword list and then use free tools such as Google Analytics to track which keywords are driving traffic to your site. Essentially, you want your site to be optimized for as many keywords as possible so that you can attract as many potential visitors as possible. Using the right keywords will make a massive difference to your SEO and will undoubtedly increase your traffic.
Security
Last but not least, let’s not forget about site security. Hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated, and therefore, it is critical that your web host is extremely secure. You don’t want your website to be hacked into because there is something valuable on it does you want to keep. Some basic but critical things that you should check for are to make sure that your site is not vulnerable to SQL injections (SQLi), XSS (cross-site scripting), or heuristic scans (such as Google Scrape). You can use free tools such as Sucuri to test your site’s security and see if it is vulnerable to any online threats. If you want to host your site on your own server, you can use SSL (secure socket layer) to keep things 100 percent secure when transferring information.
In summary, when selecting a high-traffic WordPress hosting plan, you want to look for stability, performance, and security. Of course, you want your site to look good and you want to feel confident that all your content is there and will not be removed in the future. Also, make sure that the website host has a dedicated support team that is available via phone or email around the clock. Last but not least, look for a website host that comes with a money-back guarantee in case something goes wrong.
Hopefully, this post gave you a good idea of what to look out for when choosing a high-traffic WordPress hosting plan.