A website can be down for various reasons. It can be due to a server issue or because you forgot to renew your website hosting or domain services. A site can also go down due to a hack attack. Whatever the reasons for server downtime, you need to make sure that the issue is resolved as soon as possible.

Here are some of the ways extended website down will have a negative impact on your online business.

Loss Revenue Potential

Website downtime can hurt your online business. Downtime will result in a negative user experience. Online users will not visit your website if it remains down for an extended period. They will instead visit your competitors.

Every customer lost to your competitors will harm your company’s revenues. Every second your website down represents lost revenue potential for your company.

Reduced Online Credibility

Your brand image will also be hurt if your website remains down for an extended period. A survey by Wirehive had found that the majority of participants – over 65 percent – would negatively rate a company if the website remains down when they try to access it.

The survey also found that most customers – about 60 percent – won’t buy from a company that remains down.  Website downtime will hurt online credibility that negatively affects your business.

Reduced Website Ranking

Google expert Matt Cutts said that a website downtime for just one day won’t likely have any negative impact on your website ranking. Google bot generally visits a website after about 24 hours to check if the services have resumed.  The ranking will return to normal when the website becomes online again. But a website that remains offline frequently will hurt the rankings.

According to Google engineer John Mueller, your website ranking will fluctuate for one to three weeks even after remaining offline for less than a day. So, you need to minimize the website downtime to ensure that it does not have a deleterious impact on your online business.

Causes of Website Downtime

Now that you know about the negative impact of website downtime, let’s take a look at some of the causes and proactive measures to avoid downtime of your website.

1. DDoS Attacks

One of the common reasons for website downtime is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Hackers flood the website server with a lot of requests. Responding to the requests takes down the server due to which your website will go offline.

To avoid DDoS attacks, you must sign up for load balancers or content distribution networks (CDNs). This will reduce the traffic to the servers. You should also use access control lists (ACLs) and firewalls to restrict traffic to your site.

2. High Traffic

High traffic can also lead to website downtime. If your website receives more traffic than the server could handle, your site can become offline.

You must plan your bandwidth capacity to ensure that it can handle your website traffic. Consider scaling up your website overtime to ensure that it can handle a growing number of online users.

3. WordPress Updates

Server downtime can also occur due to an issue with the website. Website themes and plugins can cause your website to go down.

Theme and plugin developers regularly provide updates that increase security or upgrade the features. But they can also inadvertently release bugs that can take your website down. The only way to prevent a crash due to a plugin or theme update is to create a clone of your website with the same theme, plugins, pages, and posts. This will allow you to test the updated theme or plugin to ensure that it does not result in a crash.

4. Website Hosting Issues

Website downtime can also occur due to a server issue. A virus can affect the server or it can be hacked. This will take down your website.

You should make sure that the hosting service provider has a plan to ensure website uptime is not affected by a server problem. Some of the measures that good hosting providers take to ensure maximum website uptime include installing antivirus software, creating website backup, and using strong password encryption.

Choosing a reliable hosting provider will prevent a lot of headaches due to website downtime. Good hosting providers have experienced technical support who can quickly proactively address issues to ensure maximum uptime.

Monitoring Your Website Uptime

Website uptime monitoring tools can help you ensure that your website is online. You can use different website uptime monitoring tools.

You should select a monitoring tool that checks server status, SSL expiry, and other actions that lead to website downtime. You should also make sure that the tool can carry out ICMP and HTTPs checks and alert you in case of any problems with accessing the site.

You should also ensure that the website monitoring tool checks the page loading speed. A website may not be offline but the page speed may be too low. Web browsers terminate a website it does not load for a few minutes. So, you need to check whether the website is loading quickly.

A recommended app for monitoring your website is Uptime. The tool has all the important features required to monitor the accessibility of your website.

Conclusion

Website downtime can have a negative SEO impact. While a temporary downtime won’t hurt rankings, extended downtime will result in a significant drop in rankings. The impact will be more significant the longer your site remains offline.

Make sure that you use a website uptime monitoring tool to ensure that your website is always running. Monitoring your website continuously is important. It will ensure that your website does not remain down for an extended period due to hacking or other technical reasons.

SEO can boost the ranking of your website. We have experienced professionals who can improve the visibility of your brand online. Contact us today to learn more about Huntsville web design and SEO services.

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