Entrepreneurship is alive and well in The Great White North. Small businesses and tech startups are popping up everywhere. If you have a game changing business idea brewing in your head and are finally ready to get started, a great place to begin is by launching your website.
As a Canadian business owner there are advantages to hosting your website with a Canadian hosting company that go beyond stimulating the Canadian community. If you bleed red and white maple syrup using a Canadian service might be enough of a reason in itself.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered if helping out your fellow Canadians isn’t enough of a reason for you and you’re more concerned about tangible benefits to your online business (particularly in the era of Covid-19).
Luckily for you, there are four very real advantages of using a top-tier Canadian-based web hosting service in 2020. Let’s take a look.
Web Hosting Across the World
Hosting a website on the internet wasn’t always as straightforward as selecting a hosting service. Before 1995, you would have to host your website on your own computer or server. Fast forward to 2019 and you have a countless number of web hosting providers to choose from.
These hosting providers are located all around the world, from the United States to India. While there are some great services from other countries, using a hosting service outside of your business home country can lead to some headaches that are best avoided.
Hosting services from Asia may seem like a fine idea due to the price tag of their hosting packages. The problem arises when you start dealing with slow loading times and either a language barrier when you need help or customer support time zone dead spots. Neither of which can be afforded when your website health hangs in the balance.
Using a service from our neighbors in the south may seem like it would be interchangeable with using a Canadian company. Well, it isn’t. Even though the United States is close by, servers being far away from major Canadian cities will slow down your website for your website visitors. Hosting in the United States, but serving a Canadian audience, will also impact your Google rankings..
Advantages of Hosting in Canada
Not all advantages for hosting your website in Canada are created equally but at the end of the day, there are 4 of them worth exploring.
1. Friendly Customer Support
Nothing is worse than when you need to contact the company you are relying on for a service and it is outside of their operating hours. If you’re using an overseas company those normal operating hours are probably when you’re asleep. Most companies offer 24/7 customer support but the reality is different than advertised.
You might be able to submit a support ticket at any time of the day but that ticket might go unanswered until normal business hours. You would just be stuck there refreshing your inbox.
The best thing about using a Canadian hosting service, ideally with 24/7 chat available, is that the company is awake when you are and the first language they use is English.
The same can be said with US hosting companies, which are generally better to use than companies in Europe or Asia if you are a Canadian. However, the next advantage does not apply to the US.
2. Easier Google Rankings
SEO is a fickle beast and a lot of the time the answer to ranking better on Google is in preparation rather than tricks and tips when creating content.
If you’ve ever been in another country you may notice that you will receive different search results than if you were in Canada. This is because a search engine results page or SERP is populated by using a great many factors including the country you are searching from.
When hosting your website, an IP address will be associated with your website. If you host your website in Canada, a Canadian IP address will be used for your website. That means that your website will be ranked higher on Canadian SERPs. The same is true if you have the word Canada in your domain name.
If you’re servicing Canadians, you need to have your hosting service based in Canada.
3. Faster Loading Times
Website loading times are kind of like the hot water in your house. If you have hot water you don’t think twice about it. If you don’t have hot water, you’re screaming at your shower head in anger.
The thing about website loading times is that people visiting your website have alternative websites they can visit in most scenarios. They’ll scream at your website in anger and then just go to your competitor.
You want to do everything you can to have a fast website.
That’s where geographic location comes in. Website speed has many factors that impact it. One of them is how close the server is to the website visitor. If you have Canadian visitors, you’re going to want a Canadian web server..
4. Data and Government
It’s relatively rare for the government to intrude on your business unless you’re participating in illegal behavior. However, it’s much easier to deal with the Canadian government if there is an issue with your website hosting rather than a foreign entity.
Canada also has a stable government as well as an advanced IT infrastructure. The only downside is the Canadian government does have the ability to access data if it so chooses. If your business operates on legal grounds, this isn’t an issue.
There is an extremely small chance that any reputable Canadian hosting service will be shut down by the government unless they are participating in illegal activity.
Decision Time
As for Canadian web hosting services, there aren’t a huge range of companies that stepped up to the plate to provide excellent hosting for Canadians. Luckily, there are several Canadian web hosts which provide excellent uptime and load speed along with being based in Canada.
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