So you have decided you need a hosting account, but wonder why get web hosting based in the UK?

Just to clarify first of all, when we say “web hosting in the UK” we don’t just mean a web hosting company in the UK but rather a hosting company in the UK that provides hosting on servers located in the UK.

Many companies offer hosting that is US based, as data transfer and datacenter rack space is cheaper than here in the UK. So is this a big deal or does it not really matter?

Below are some of the Pros and Cons that I believe are involved in hosting on servers based in the UK.

Something you would do well to consider, before selecting a hosting company is, what will your websites target audience will be? Is it going to be a worldwide venture or are your customers going to be from only one country source?

This is important because from an SEO perspective, Google ranks a UK hosted company website higher for UK searches, it makes sense really, UK based hosting, UK based searches, UK based company, they all match up, so it makes perfect sense to rank these websites higher on a google.co.uk search.

On this SEO note, not to get too side tracked, having a .co.uk domain name and also setting up Google’s webmaster tools and geo targetting your website can also assist you in getting better results on google.co.uk result pages.

A con would be; In the UK, as our transfer costs are higher this generally means the cost of hosting accounts in the UK tend to be higher.

To counter this however, when you are hosting your website in the UK you will benefit from a higher ping rate. A ping is how long it takes for a packet of information to travel from your server to whomever asked for it. As a searcher clicks on your domain in Google, their ISP makes a request for the website, your server responds to this request and starts sending the data back to the user. We all know how frustrating slow websites are, minimise on this by hosting your website in the country your target audience lives.

As a final note, how frustrating is it to find an issue with your site, have a problem uploading your new web pages and then have to wait until noon or beyond for the US based support desk to be open. Hours of service can really make a big difference, even if you just want to make sure your registration has been received correctly, to be able to pick up the phone without having to think about time zones can’t be underestimated.