There are so many different web hosting companies around that it can be very confusing choosing the right one for your business. One of the main considerations is whether you should opt for a local web host or an overseas company.

So, to help you make the right decision for your business, here are 4 reasons why a local Australian web host might be best for your business.

Speed loading times are faster

Loading speed is one of the factors that Google includes in its ranking algorithm and web pages that rank faster, tend to rank higher as well. It certainly pays to have a web host who can load your website fast when visitors click on your link in the search engine results pages (serps). What you need to know is that the location of your server heavily impacts on the loading speed of your web pages. If your server is in Australia, your web pages will load fast here. On the other hand, if your server is in the US for example, your web pages will load fast there and much slower here.

So, the question you need to ask yourself is – where are your customers? If most of your customers are in Australia, then you definitely need an Australian server. If all of your customers are in the US, then you want a US server. Many businesses however, have customers around the world – so in this case, make sure that your web hosting company have multiple servers around the world, each of which can host your website for faster local loading.

Customer support is available during local office hours

With an Australian hosting company, customer support is available when you need them most. It can be very frustrating with US web hosts because their customer support hours don’t usually match our time zone. Even if your US web host offers 24hr customer support, our daytime problems happen during the night in the US, so customer support might not be at the top of their game.

Local web hosts update during your downtimes

Web hosts always try and time their updates and maintenance schedules to low traffic times, which is generally during the night. Unfortunately, the middle night in the US is likely to be the middle of our working day in Australia. So whilst your server might be down for planned maintenance in the US, when they know their traffic is at the lowest – it is at the highest here in Australia. Local Australian hosts however, will plan their updates and maintenance schedules during Australian low traffic times, which is during our night.

Better search engine visibility

Search engines always look at the IP address of the searcher, so they can present the best local results in the serps. If your web hosting is overseas, then Google might not believe that your website is not really relevant for local Australian searches or might simply be too confused and can’t decide on your relevance. Of course some of this does depend on whether you have a .com.au or a .com URL, but as we don’t know exactly how Google ranks websites, it is always best to err on the side of caution.

Armed with this information about Australian vs overseas web hosting, you should have all you need to select the best web hosting company in Australia for your business.