In 2021 and beyond, a modern, responsive website is essential to succeed online. If you invest time and money into building a fast website for your law firm, it helps generate new leads and clients from the web. Ultimately, choosing the right website hosting platform can get your law firm in the right direction.
What is website hosting?
Website hosting provides a secure place to store files, such as code, content, images, videos, PDFs, etc. and makes them accessible for viewing online. Every website you’ve visited has a website hosting provider. It’s almost like real estate — you rent or buy a property to live in, and an address (a domain name or a URL) is attached to this property so you can find it.
But setting up a website hosting doesn’t have to be as complex as it sounds. Many web hosting platforms simplify this and even help you (the site owner) set up the whole process.
The importance of website hosting in legal marketing
Without reliable digital storage, it’s challenging to operate and access your files online. This makes website hosting a crucial part of developing a solid online presence for your law firm.
With website hosting, users can store their files offsite, reducing costs and the physical footprint associated with local storage. It also makes building an online presence more effortless because of the built-in features such as backups for your law firm website’s security and support.
While web hosting can happen locally on your desktops or servers, cloud-based providers are more used and preferred. You can explore a variety of free and paid choices once you start looking for a web hosting service.
Choosing the right website hosting for your law firm
When looking for the right website hosting provider for your website, here are the essential things you should consider:
- Uptime
A competent host will have a guaranteed 99% uptime. The best way to judge a web host provider’s reputation and consistency is by looking through review sites and choosing a host with a substantial amount of positive feedback. - Downtime
Downtimes don’t happen frequently but can heavily affect your clients’ decision making. Your law firm wouldn’t want your leads and clients to go to a website that doesn’t work. So if a website hosting provider cannot guarantee an uptime of 99%, you should consider a different provider. - Technical support
Things can go wrong when you least expect it. Choose a website hosting provider that is easy to reach, will communicate in your preferred way, and is guaranteed to assist you the best way they can should an issue arise. There are different ways to interact with support: live chat, email, phone, tickets, etc., so pick a provider with a support method that your law firm will be most comfortable with. - Costs
While this shouldn’t be your main criteria in picking a web host provider, your law firm should still consider what plan you should go for. Simple websites often opt for typical shared hosting, and bigger companies prefer a more competitive plan. Still, focus on the reputation for uptime, downtime, and customer support.
Stability and security are most crucial when choosing the right provider. Since plenty of options are available, it’s good practice to compare costs and functionality when exploring web hosting providers.
How quality website hosting for your law firm affects SEO
Picking a reliable web hosting provider affects the quality of user interaction in your law firm website as well as the position of your website in search engines. Googlebot, for example, depends on being able to access your website’s information consistently and quickly in order to index your content for related searches. Making sure your website is responsive improves your crawl budget in Googlebot and ultimately improves your rankings on Google.
Especially with the Google core update last July, your law firm website’s load time can heavily affect its rankings on search engines. Something as simple as choosing/switching to a better web host provider for faster page load is a huge factor in SEO.
Need help choosing the right web hosting provider? Fast Firms can help.
There is a lot to consider when looking for the right web hosting provider for your law firm’s website. Identifying what your law firm’s specific needs are can help you in making the right choice. It’s also best to keep in mind the skill level and the time you have for setup.
If you need a professional team to expedite this process for you, Fast Firms have expertise in website hosting for law firms and a reputable team to guide you in choosing a reliable web hosting provider.