Feb 28 2025
9 Trends You Should Watch To Keep Your Website Afloat in 2025

This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Is my website ready for 2025’s tech and SEO changes?

How can I keep my site fast, secure, and user-friendly?

What makes a hosting provider future-proof?

In 2025, the extent to which you adapt to emerging technologies, changing user expectations, and evolving search engine algorithms will determine if you’ll thrive or struggle to stay relevant.

Staying ahead of emerging trends is essential for maintaining a fast, secure, and user-friendly website.

Optimizing performance, strengthening security measures, and enhancing user experience will be key factors in staying competitive.

The first step to ensuring your website remains resilient and future-ready is choosing a reliable hosting provider with scalable infrastructure and built-in optimization tools.

1. AI-Powered User Experience

Artificial intelligence has transformed how websites interact with visitors, making online experiences more personalized, engaging, and efficient.

Use AI For Higher Conversion Rates

AI-driven personalization allows websites to deliver tailored content and product recommendations based on user behavior, preferences, and past interactions to create an intuitive experience.

The result? Visitors remain engaged, increasing conversions.

Chatbots and AI-powered customer support are also becoming essential for websites looking to provide instant, 24/7 assistance.

These tools answer common questions, guide users through a website, and even process transactions, reducing the need for human intervention while improving response times.

And they’re gaining in popularity.

71% of businesses in a recent survey either already have a chatbot integrated into their sites and customer service processes or plan to get one in the near future.

And they’re reaping the benefits of this technology; 24% of businesses with a chatbot already installed report excellent ROI.

Use AI For Speeding Up Website Implementation

AI is also revolutionizing content creation and website design.

Based on user data, automated tools can generate blog posts, optimize layouts, and suggest design improvements.

This streamlines website management, making it easier for you to maintain a professional and visually appealing online presence.

For example, many hosting providers now include AI-powered website builders, offering tools that assist with design and customization. These features, such as responsive templates and automated suggestions, can make building and optimizing a website more efficient.

2. Voice Search & Conversational Interfaces

Voice search is becoming a major factor in how users interact with the web, with more people relying on smart speakers, mobile assistants, and voice-activated search to find information.

To put this into perspective, ChatGPT from OpenAI reportedly holds 60% of the generative AI market, performing more than one billion searches daily. If just 1% of those are via its voice search, that equates to 10 million voice searches every day on ChatGPT alone.

Reports estimate 20.5% of people globally use voice search daily. And these numbers are increasing.

You need to adapt by optimizing for conversational SEO and natural language queries, which tend to be longer and more specific, making long-tail keywords and question-based content more important than ever.

To stay ahead, websites should structure content in a way that mimics natural conversation:

  • FAQ-style pages.
  • Featured snippet optimization.
  • Ensuring fast-loading, mobile-friendly experiences.

If this is an upgrade that makes sense for your industry, be sure that your host supports SEO-friendly themes and plugins that help websites rank for voice queries.

3. Core Web Vitals & SEO Best Practices

Google continues to refine its ranking algorithms, with Core Web Vitals playing a critical role in determining search visibility.

Implement Core Web Vital Data & Monitor Website Speed

These performance metrics, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), measure how quickly a page loads, how responsive it is, and how stable its layout appears to users.

Websites that meet these benchmarks not only rank higher in search results but also provide a better overall user experience.

One study found that pages ranking in the top spots in the SERPs were 10% more likely to pass CWV scores than URLs in position 9.

Ensure Your Website Is Faster Than Your Competitors To Rank Higher

As part of the prioritization of performance, mobile-first approach remains essential; Google prioritizes sites that are fast and responsive on smartphones and tablets.

Ensuring faster load times through optimized images, efficient coding, and proper caching techniques can make a significant impact on search rankings.

Leverage Structured Data To Tell Google What Your Website Is About

Structured data, on the other hand, helps search engines better understand a website’s content, improving the chances of appearing in rich snippets and voice search results.

4. Mobile-First & Adaptive Design

With mobile devices accounting for the majority of web traffic, mobile optimization remains a top priority in 2025.

Google’s mobile-first indexing means that search engines primarily evaluate the mobile version of a site when determining rankings.

A website that isn’t optimized for mobile results in overall poor performance, lower search rankings, and a frustrating user experience.

To keep up, many websites are adopting:

  • Adaptive design – Ensures that websites adjust dynamically to different screen sizes, providing an optimal layout on any device.
  • Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) – Combine the best features of websites and mobile apps, offering faster load times, offline capabilities, and app-like functionality without requiring a download.

Best practices for a seamless mobile experience include responsive design, fast-loading pages, and touch-friendly navigation.

Optimizing images, minimizing pop-ups, and using mobile-friendly fonts and buttons can also greatly enhance usability.

5. Enhanced Website Security & Data Privacy

Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated.

You must take proactive measures to protect your websites from attacks, data breaches, and unauthorized access.

Implementing strong security protocols not only safeguards sensitive information but also builds trust with visitors.

Key security measures include:

  • SSL certificates – Encrypt data transmitted between users and a website, ensuring secure connections—something that search engines and users now expect as a standard feature.
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – Adds an extra layer of security by requiring multiple verification steps before granting access, reducing the risk of compromised credentials.
  • Zero-trust security models – Ensures that all access requests, even from within a network, are continuously verified, minimizing potential security gaps.

Beyond technical defenses, compliance with evolving privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA is essential.

You must be transparent about how they collect, store, and process user data, providing clear consent options and maintaining privacy policies that align with current regulations.

6. Sustainability & Green Web Hosting

Every website, server, and data center requires energy to function, contributing to global carbon emissions.

Optimizing websites through lighter code, efficient caching, and reduced server load also plays a role in minimizing environmental impact.

Choosing a hosting provider that values sustainability is an important step toward a greener web.

For example, Bluehost has taken steps to improve energy efficiency, ensuring that website owners can maintain high-performance sites while supporting environmentally friendly initiatives.

7. AI-Generated & Interactive Content

AI tools can assist in creating blog posts, product descriptions, and videos with minimal manual input, helping businesses maintain a steady content flow efficiently.

Beyond static content, interactive features like quizzes, calculators, and AR are becoming key for user engagement.

These elements encourage participation, increasing time on site and improving conversions.

To integrate interactive features smoothly, a hosting provider that supports interactive plugins and flexible tools can help keep websites engaging and competitive.

8. The Role of Blockchain in Web Security

Blockchain is emerging as a tool for web hosting and cybersecurity, enhancing data security, decentralization, and content authenticity.

Unlike traditional hosting, decentralized networks distribute website data across multiple nodes, reducing risks like downtime, censorship, and cyberattacks. Blockchain-powered domains also add security by making ownership harder to manipulate.

Beyond hosting, blockchain improves data verification by storing information in a tamper-proof ledger, benefiting ecommerce, digital identity verification, and intellectual property protection.

9. The Importance of Reliable Web Hosting

No matter how advanced a website is, it’s only as strong as the hosting infrastructure behind it. In 2025, website performance and uptime will remain critical factors for success, impacting everything from user experience to search engine rankings and business revenue.

Scalable hosting solutions play a crucial role in handling traffic spikes, ensuring that websites remain accessible during high-demand periods.

Whether it’s an ecommerce store experiencing a surge in holiday traffic or a viral blog post drawing in thousands of visitors, having a hosting plan that adapts to these changes is essential.

Reliable hosting providers help mitigate these challenges by offering scalable infrastructure, 100% SLA uptime guarantees, and built-in performance optimizations to keep websites running smoothly.

Features like VPS and dedicated hosting provide additional resources for growing businesses, ensuring that increased traffic doesn’t compromise speed or stability. Investing in a hosting solution that prioritizes reliability and scalability helps safeguard a website’s long-term success.

Future-Proof Your Website Today

The digital landscape is changing fast, and staying ahead is essential to staying competitive.

From AI-driven personalization to enhanced security and sustainable hosting, adapting to new trends ensures your site remains fast, secure, and engaging. Investing in performance and user experience isn’t optional, it’s the key to long-term success.

Whether launching a new site or optimizing an existing one, the right hosting provider makes all the difference.

Bluehost offers reliable, high-performance hosting with built-in security, scalability, and guaranteed uptime, so your website is ready for the future.

Get started today and build a website designed to thrive.

GET STARTED WITH BLUEHOST TODAY

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluehost. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Feb 12 2025
Google Reveals How It Prefetches Search Results For Faster Loading via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has shared new details on how it uses the Speculation Rules API to speed up clicks on search results.

When searching in Chrome, Google preloads parts of a webpage before you click, leading to faster load times.

Here’s an overview of how it works and the benefits Google has observed.

How Prefetching Works

Google loads the top two search results before you click them. When you see the results on the screen, your browser automatically fetches these links.

If you click on one, it will already be partially loaded, reducing your wait time.

Google explains:

“Google Search has been making use of the Speculation Rules API to improve navigation speed from the search results page to the result links and they’ve been using a few features of the API that may be of interest to other site owners.”

Early on, one of Google’s primary tactics was:

“One of the first uses of speculation rules was to prefetch the first two search results.”

In other words, your browser quietly fetches the HTML from the top search results as soon as you land on the results page, giving you a head start if you decide to click.

Performance Gains

Tests show a noticeable speed boost.

On Chrome for Android, Google recorded a 67-millisecond drop in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), while Desktop Chrome users saw a 58.6-millisecond improvement.

Beyond prefetching the top two results, Google selectively prefetches other results when a user’s cursor hovers over them on desktop:

“[The Speculation Rules API] was enhanced with an eagerness property that allows speculations to only happen when the user hovers on, or starts to click a link. Google Search decided to move beyond the first two search results and also prefetch remaining search results—but only when the user hovers over the link…”

The hover action triggers a moderate prefetch, saving bandwidth for links that might not be clicked.

Mobile devices, however, lack hover functionality, so Google didn’t see the same benefits there.

Future Experiments & Browser Support

Google is exploring prerendering entire search results pages (SERPs) in certain scenarios, such as when you start typing a search in Chrome’s address bar.

Other search engines can adopt this technology, too, but Google remains the main implementer for now.

The Speculation Rules API currently works in Chromium-based browsers like Chrome.

Why This Matters

Prefetching can shave critical milliseconds off your page load time.

Google notes that even slight speed boosts matter, especially with billions of daily searches.

If your audience primarily uses Chrome, you could see performance gains by implementing the Speculation Rules API on your site.

Featured Image: Thaspol Sangsee/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 18 2024
10 Hosting Trends Agencies Should Watch In 2025

This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Which hosting service is best for agencies?

How do I uncover what will be best for my clients in 2025?

What features should my hosting service have in 2025?

Hosting has evolved well beyond keeping websites online.

Hosting providers must align their services to meet clients’ technological needs and keep up with constantly changing technological advances.

Today, quality hosting companies must focus on speed, security, and scalability. Staying ahead of hosting trends is critical to maintaining competitive offerings, optimizing workflows, and meeting client demands.

So, what should you watch for in 2025?

The next 12 months promise significant shifts in hosting technologies, with advancements in AI, automation, security, and sustainability leading the way.

Understanding and leveraging these trends enables agencies and professionals to provide better client experiences, streamline operations, and reduce the negative effects of future industry changes.

Trend 1: Enhanced AI & Automation Implemented In Hosting

AI and automation are already transforming hosting, making it smarter and more efficient for service providers, agencies, brands, and end-point customers alike.

Hosting providers now leverage AI to optimize server performance, predict maintenance needs, and even supplement customer support with AI-driven features like chatbots.

As a result, automating routine tasks such as backups, updates, and resource scaling reduces downtime and the need for manual intervention. These innovations are game-changing for those managing multiple client sites and will become increasingly important in 2025.

It only makes sense.

Automated systems free up valuable time, allowing you more time to focus on strategic growth instead of tedious maintenance tasks. AI-powered insights can also identify performance bottlenecks, enabling you to address issues before they impact your website or those of your clients.

Agencies that adopt these technologies this year will not only deliver exceptional service but also be able to position themselves as forward-thinking.

Bluehost embraces automation with features like automated backups, one-click updates, and a centralized dashboard for easy site management. These tools streamline workflows, enabling agencies and professionals to manage multiple sites with minimal effort while ensuring optimal performance.

Trend 2: Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Solutions Are Now Essential

In 2025, as businesses demand more flexibility and reliability from their online infrastructure, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions will become essential in the hosting world.

These approaches offer the best of both worlds:

  • The ability to leverage multiple cloud providers for redundancy and performance.
  • The option to combine public and private cloud environments for greater control and customization.

For agencies managing diverse client needs, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies provide the scalability and adaptability required to meet modern demands. Multi-cloud solutions allow agencies to distribute their clients’ workloads across multiple cloud providers, ensuring that no single point of failure disrupts their operations.

This feature is particularly valuable for agencies with high-traffic websites, where downtime or slow performance can have a significant impact on revenue and user experience. Hybrid cloud solutions, on the other hand, let agencies blend the scalability of public clouds with the security and control of private cloud environments.

This service is ideal for clients with sensitive data or compliance requirements, such as ecommerce or healthcare businesses.

Bluehost Cloud provides scalable infrastructure and tools that enable agencies to customize hosting solutions to fit their clients’ unique requirements. Our cloud hosting solution’s elastic architecture ensures that websites can handle sudden traffic spikes without compromising speed or reliability.

Additionally, our intuitive management dashboard allows agencies to easily monitor and allocate resources across their client portfolio, making it simple to implement tailored solutions for varying workloads.

By adopting multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies, agencies can offer their clients enhanced performance, improved redundancy, and greater control over their hosting environments.

With our scalable solutions and robust toolset, agencies can confidently deliver hosting that grows with their clients’ businesses while maintaining consistent quality and reliability. This flexibility not only meets today’s hosting demands but also helps position your agency for long-term success in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Trend 3: Edge Computing & CDNs Replace AMP For Improving Website Speed

As online audiences grow, the demand for faster, more responsive websites has never been higher. Edge computing and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are at the forefront of this evolution, enabling websites to reduce latency significantly. For agencies managing clients with diverse and international audiences, these technologies are crucial for improving user experience and ensuring website performance remains competitive.

Edge computing brings data processing closer to the end user by leveraging servers located at the “edge” of a network, reducing the time it takes for information to travel.

Combined with CDNs that cache website content on servers worldwide, these technologies ensure faster load times, smoother navigation, and better performance metrics.

These features are especially beneficial for media-heavy or high-traffic websites, where even a slight delay can impact engagement and conversions.

Bluehost integrates with leading CDN solutions to deliver content quickly and efficiently to users across the globe. By leveraging a CDN, Bluehost ensures that websites load faster regardless of a visitor’s location, enhancing user experience and SEO performance.

This integration simplifies the optimization of site speed for agencies with multiple clients. By adopting edge computing and CDN technology, you can help your clients achieve faster load times, improved site stability, and higher customer satisfaction.

Bluehost’s seamless CDN integration enables you to deliver a hosting solution that meets the expectations of a modern, global audience while building trust and loyalty with your clients.

Trend 4: Core Web Vitals & SEO Hosting Features Make Or Break Websites

Core Web Vitals play an important role in today’s SEO, as Google is increasingly emphasizing website performance and user experience in its ranking algorithms. Today, loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability impact a site’s ability to rank well in search results and keep visitors engaged.

That means optimizing Core Web Vitals isn’t just an SEO task for agencies managing client websites. Fast load times and responsive design are critical parts of delivering a high-quality digital experience. For example, metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how quickly a page’s main content loads, depend heavily on hosting infrastructure.

Agencies need hosting solutions optimized for these metrics to ensure their clients’ sites stay competitive in the SERPs.

Bluehost offers a WordPress-optimized hosting environment with features specifically designed to improve load times and server response speeds. From advanced caching technology to robust server architecture, Bluehost ensures that sites meet Core Web Vitals standards with ease.

Additionally, our hosting solutions include tools for monitoring site performance, allowing agencies to proactively address any issues that could impact rankings or user experience.

By prioritizing Core Web Vitals and leveraging SEO-focused hosting features, agencies can enhance their clients’ visibility, engagement, and overall online success. With Bluehost’s optimized hosting solutions, you’ll have the tools and infrastructure needed to deliver fast, stable, and high-performing websites that delight users and search engines.

Trend 5: Sustainable Hosting Practices Help Reduce Energy Consumption

Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword. It’s a key consideration for businesses and agencies alike. As 2025 progresses, more clients will prioritize environmentally conscious practices, and hosting providers will step up to offer greener solutions, such as energy-efficient data centers and carbon offset programs.

Migrating to a sustainable hosting provider not only supports client values but also demonstrates a commitment to responsible business practices, which will resonate more with consumers in 2025 than ever before.

Efficient hosting practices reduce energy consumption and create a more sustainable digital ecosystem. It will also allow you to help clients meet their environmental goals without compromising on performance.

These benefits are especially valuable for clients with higher energy and performance demands, such as those in ecommerce, media-heavy, or high-traffic industries.

Bluehost has long been recognized as a trusted hosting provider that operates with efficiency in mind.

Our robust, energy-efficient infrastructure already aligns with the sustainability goals of environmentally conscious clients.

In addition, our long-standing reputation, proven history with WordPress, and demonstrable reliability enhance your clients’ sustainability objectives, ensuring they can operate responsibly and confidently.

By choosing sustainable hosting practices and partners like Bluehost, you can contribute to a greener digital future while reinforcing your clients’ environmental commitments and strengthening client relationships by aligning with their values.

Trend 6: Security Must Be A Core Offering

Security is a non-negotiable priority for any website. Cyber threats like data breaches, malware, and DDoS attacks are on the rise, and the consequences of a breach, including lost revenue, damaged reputations, and potential legal issues, can devastate clients. As a result, offering secure hosting solutions with proactive security measures is essential to safeguarding clients’ businesses and building trust.

These key features include SSL certificates, which protect sensitive data while boosting SEO rankings and user trust, and regular malware scans to prevent vulnerabilities.

They should also include automated backups that enable quick restoration in the event of a crash or attack and provide comprehensive protection and peace of mind. Essential security features are standard in Bluehost hosting plans, including SSL certificates, daily automated backups, and proactive malware scanning.

These built-in tools eliminate the need for additional solutions, added complexity, or costs. For agencies, our security features reduce risks for your clients and provide peace of mind.

By choosing a hosting provider like Bluehost, you can prioritize client security, reinforce client trust, and minimize emergencies, allowing you to avoid spending time and resources addressing threats or repairing damage.

In short, by partnering with Bluehost, security becomes a core part of your agency’s value proposition.

Trend 7: Hosting Optimized For AI & Machine Learning Is Key To High Visibility On SERPs

As artificial intelligence and machine learning become increasingly integrated with websites and applications in 2025, hosting providers must keep pace with the increasing demands these technologies place on infrastructure.

AI-driven tools like chatbots, recommendation engines, and predictive analytics require significant computational power and seamless data processing.

AI and machine learning applications often involve handling large datasets, running resource-intensive algorithms, and maintaining real-time responsiveness. Hosting optimized for these needs ensures that websites can perform reliably under heavy workloads, reducing latency and downtime and delivering consistent performance.

If you plan to be successful, you’ll also require scalable scalable hosting solutions. These solutions allow resources to expand dynamically with demand, accommodate growth, and handle traffic surges.

Bluehost’s scalable hosting is built to support advanced tools and applications, making it an ideal choice for agencies working on AI-driven projects. Our robust infrastructure delivers consistent performance, and flexibility allows you to scale easily as your client’s needs evolve. By leveraging Bluehost, agencies can confidently deliver AI-integrated websites that meet modern performance demands.

Trend 8: Managed Hosting Helps You Focus More On Profits

In 2025, websites will become increasingly complex. Businesses will require higher performance and reliability, and everyone will be looking to operate as lean and efficiently as possible. These trends mean managed hosting will become the go-to solution for agencies and their clients.

Managed hosting shifts time-intensive technical maintenance away from agencies and business owners by including features such as automatic updates, performance monitoring, and enhanced security. In short, managed hosting enables you to simplify workflows, save time, and deliver consistent quality to your clients.

These hosting services are particularly valuable for WordPress websites, where regular updates, plugin compatibility checks, and security enhancements occur frequently but are essential to maintaining optimal performance.

Managed hosting also typically includes tools like staging environments, which allow agencies to test changes and updates without risking disruptions to live sites and ensure you can deliver a seamless experience to clients.

Bluehost offers managed WordPress hosting that includes automatic updates, staging environments, and 24/7 expert support. These features allow you to handle technical details efficiently while focusing on delivering results for your clients without added stress or time.

Trend 9: The Shift Toward Decentralized Hosting Boosts Your Brand’s Longevity

In 2025, expect to see decentralized hosting gain attention as a futuristic approach to web hosting. Like Bitcoin and similar advancements, the technology leverages blockchain technology and peer-to-peer networks to create hosting environments that prioritize privacy, resilience, and independence from centralized control.

While this model appears to provide exciting new opportunities, it’s still in the early stages. It faces challenges in scalability, user-friendliness, and widespread adoption, which agencies can’t typically rely on for client sites.

Decentralized hosting may become a viable option for specific use cases, such as privacy-focused projects or highly distributed systems. However, centralized hosting providers still offer the best balance of reliability, scalability, and accessibility for most businesses and agencies today.

For these reasons, agencies managing client websites will continue to focus on proven, reliable hosting solutions that deliver consistent performance and robust support.

So, while decentralized hosting may gain traction this year, Bluehost will continue to provide a trustworthy hosting environment designed to meet the needs of modern websites. With a strong emphasis on reliability, scalability, and user-friendly management tools, we offer a proven solution agencies can depend on to deliver exceptional client results.

Trend 10: Scalable Hosting For High-Growth Websites Is Key For Growth

As businesses grow, their websites will experience increasing traffic and resource demands. High-growth websites, such as e-commerce platforms, content-heavy blogs, or viral marketing campaigns, require hosting solutions that can scale instantly. And scalable hosting is critical to delivering consistent user experiences and avoiding downtime during peak periods.

Scalable hosting like Bluehost ensures your clients’ websites can easily adjust resources like bandwidth, storage, and processing power to meet fluctuating demands. Our scalable hosting solutions are designed for high-growth websites. Our unmetered bandwidth and infrastructure were built to handle traffic surges, ensuring websites remain fast and accessible.

These features make us the ideal choice for agencies looking to future-proof their clients’ hosting needs.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve in 2025, keeping up with the latest trends in hosting is essential for agencies to provide top-tier service, drive client satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge. From AI and automation to scalability and security, the future of hosting demands flexible, efficient solutions tailored to modern needs.

By understanding and leveraging these trends, you can position your agency as a trusted partner and deliver exceptional results to your clients, whether by adopting managed hosting or integrating CDNs.

Bluehost hosting will meet today’s demands while helping to prepare agencies like yours for tomorrow. With features like 100% uptime guaranteed through our Service Level Agreement (SLA), 24/7 priority support, and built-in tools like SSL certificates, automated backups, and advanced caching, Bluehost offers a robust and reliable hosting environment.

Additionally, Bluehost Cloud makes switching easy and cost-effective with $0 migration costs and credit for remaining contracts, giving you the flexibility to transition seamlessly without the high cost.

Take your agency’s hosting strategy to the next level with Bluehost. Discover how our comprehensive hosting solutions can support your growth, enhance client satisfaction, and keep your business ahead of the curve.

GET STARTED TODAY

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluehost. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 3 2024
Maximize SEO Efforts: How To Fix Website Issues That Drain Time, Money & Performance

This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Your website’s hosting is more than a technical decision.

It’s a cornerstone of your business’s online success that impacts everything from site speed and uptime to customer trust and overall branding.

Yet, many businesses stick with subpar hosting providers, often unaware of how much it’s costing them in time, money, and lost opportunities.

The reality is that bad hosting doesn’t just frustrate you. It frustrates your customers, hurts conversions, and can even damage your brand reputation.

The good news?

Choosing the right host can turn hosting into an investment that works for you, not against you.

Let’s explore how hosting affects your bottom line, identify common problems, and discuss what features you should look for to maximize your return on investment.

1. Start By Auditing Your Website’s Hosting Provider

The wrong hosting provider can quickly eat away at your time & efficiency.

In fact, time is the biggest cost of an insufficient hosting provider.

To start out, ask yourself:

  • Is Your Bounce Rate High?
  • Are Customers Not Converting?
  • Is Revenue Down?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, and no amount of on-page optimization seems to make a difference, it may be time to audit your website host.

Why Audit Your Web Host?

Frequent downtime, poor support, and slow server response times can disrupt workflows and create frustration for both your team and your visitors.

From an SEO & marketing perspective, a sluggish website often leads to:

  • Increased bounce rates.
  • Missed customer opportunities.
  • Wasted time troubleshooting technical issues.

Could you find workarounds for some of these problems? Sure. But they take time and money, too.

The more dashboards and tools you use, the more time you spend managing it all, and the more opportunities you’ll miss out on.

For example, hosts offering integrated domain and hosting management make overseeing your website easier and reduce administrative hassles.

Bluehost’s integrated domain services simplify website management by bringing all your hosting and domain tools into one intuitive platform.

2. Check If Your Hosting Provider Is Causing Slow Site Load Speeds

Your website is often the first interaction a customer has with your brand.

A fast, reliable website reflects professionalism and trustworthiness.

Customers associate smooth experiences with strong brands, while frequent glitches or outages send a message that you’re not dependable.

Your hosting provider should enhance your brand’s reputation, not detract from it.

How To Identify & Measure Slow Page Load Speeds

Identifying and measuring slow site and page loading speeds starts with using tools designed to analyze performance, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Lighthouse.

These tools provide metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which help you see how quickly key elements of your page load.

Pay attention to your site’s Time to First Byte (TTFB), a critical indicator of how fast your server responds to requests.

Regularly test your site’s performance across different devices, browsers, and internet connections to identify bottlenecks. High bounce rates or short average session durations in analytics reports can also hint at speed issues.

Bandwidth limitations can create bottlenecks for growing websites, especially during traffic spikes.

How To Find A Fast Hosting Provider

Opt for hosting providers that offer unmetered or scalable bandwidth to ensure seamless performance even during periods of high demand.

Cloud hosting is designed to deliver exceptional site and page load speeds, ensuring a seamless experience for your visitors and boosting your site’s SEO.

With advanced caching technology and optimized server configurations, Bluehost Cloud accelerates content delivery to provide fast, reliable performance even during high-traffic periods.

Its scalable infrastructure ensures your website maintains consistent speeds as your business grows, while a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) helps reduce latency for users around the world.

With Bluehost Cloud, you can trust that your site will load quickly and keep your audience engaged.

3. Check If Your Site Has Frequent Or Prolonged Downtime

Measuring and identifying downtime starts with having the right tools and a clear understanding of your site’s performance.

Tools like uptime monitoring services can track when your site is accessible and alert you to outages in real time.

You should also look at patterns.

Frequent interruptions or prolonged periods of unavailability are red flags. Check your server logs for error codes and timestamps that indicate when the site was down.

Tracking how quickly your hosting provider responds and resolves issues is also helpful, as slow resolutions can compound the problem.

Remember, even a few minutes of downtime during peak traffic hours can lead to lost revenue and customer trust, so understanding and monitoring downtime is critical for keeping your site reliable.

No matter how feature-packed your hosting provider is, unreliable uptime or poor support can undermine its value. These two factors are critical for ensuring a high-performing, efficient website.

What Your Hosting Server Should Have For Guaranteed Uptime

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees uptime, response time, and resolution time, ensuring that your site remains online and functional. Look for hosting providers that back their promises with a 100% uptime SLA.

Bluehost Cloud offers a 100% uptime SLA and 24/7 priority support, giving you peace of mind that your website will remain operational and any issues will be addressed promptly.

Our team of WordPress experts ensures quick resolutions to technical challenges, reducing downtime and optimizing your hosting ROI.

4. Check Your Host For Security Efficacy

Strong security measures protect your customers and show them you value their privacy and trust.

A single security breach can ruin your brand’s image, especially if customer data is compromised.

Hosts that lack built-in security features like SSL certificates, malware scanning, and regular backups leave your site vulnerable.

How Hosting Impacts Security

Security breaches don’t just affect your website. They affect your customers.

Whether it’s stolen data, phishing attacks, or malware, these breaches can erode trust and cause long-term damage to your business.

Recovering from a security breach is expensive and time-consuming. It often involves hiring specialists, paying fines, and repairing the damage to your reputation.

Is Your Hosting Provider Lacking Proactive Security Measures?

Assessing and measuring security vulnerabilities or a lack of proactive protection measures begins with a thorough evaluation of your hosting provider’s features and practices.

  1. Review Included Security Tools

Start by reviewing whether your provider includes essential security tools such as SSL certificates, malware scanning, firewalls, and automated backups in their standard offerings.

If these are missing or come as costly add-ons, your site may already be at risk.

  1. Leverage Brute Force Tools To Check For Vulnerabilities

Next, use website vulnerability scanning tools like Sucuri, Qualys SSL Labs, or SiteLock to identify potential weaknesses, such as outdated software, unpatched plugins, or misconfigured settings.

These tools can flag issues like weak encryption, exposed directories, or malware infections.

Monitor your site for unusual activity, such as unexpected traffic spikes or changes to critical files, which could signal a breach.

  1. Make Sure The Host Also Routinely Scans For & Eliminates Threats

It’s also crucial to evaluate how your hosting provider handles updates and threat prevention.

  • Do they offer automatic updates to patch vulnerabilities?
  • Do they monitor for emerging threats and take steps to block them proactively?

A good hosting provider takes a proactive approach to security, offering built-in protections that reduce your risks.

Look for hosting providers that include automatic SSL encryption, regular malware scans, and daily backups. These features not only protect your site but also give you peace of mind.

Bluehost offers robust security tools as part of its standard WordPress hosting package, ensuring your site stays protected without extra costs. With built-in SSL certificates and daily backups, Bluehost Cloud keeps your site secure and your customers’ trust intact.

5. Audit Your WordPress Hosting Provider’s Customer Support

Is your host delivering limited or inconsistent customer support?

Limited or inconsistent customer support can turn minor issues into major roadblocks. When hosting providers fail to offer timely, knowledgeable assistance, you’re left scrambling to resolve problems that could have been easily fixed.

Delayed responses or unhelpful support can lead to prolonged downtime, slower page speeds, and unresolved security concerns, all of which impact your business and reputation.

Reliable hosting providers should offer 24/7 priority support through multiple channels, such as chat and phone, so you can get expert help whenever you need it.

Consistent, high-quality support is essential for keeping your website running smoothly and minimizing disruptions.

Bluehost takes customer service to the next level with 24/7 priority support available via phone, chat, and email. Our team of knowledgeable experts specializes in WordPress, providing quick and effective solutions to keep your site running smoothly.

Whether you’re troubleshooting an issue, setting up your site, or optimizing performance, Bluehost’s dedicated support ensures you’re never left navigating challenges alone.

Bonus: Check Your Host For Hidden Costs For Essential Hosting Features

Hidden costs for essential hosting features like:

  • Backups.
  • SSL certificates.
  • Additional bandwidth can quickly erode the value of a seemingly affordable hosting plan.

What Does This Look Like?

For example, daily backups, which are vital for recovery after data loss or cyberattacks, may come with an unexpected monthly fee.

Similarly, SSL certificates, which are essential for encrypting data and maintaining trust with visitors, are often sold as expensive add-ons.

If your site experiences traffic spikes, additional bandwidth charges can catch you off guard, adding to your monthly costs.

Many providers, as you likely have seen, lure customers in with low entry prices, only to charge extra for services that are critical to your website’s functionality and security.

These hidden expenses not only strain your budget but also create unnecessary complexity in managing your site.

A reliable hosting provider includes these features as part of their standard offering, ensuring you have the tools you need without the surprise bills.

Which Hosting Provider Does Not Charge For Essential Features?

Bluehost is a great option, as their pricing is upfront.

Bluehost includes crucial tools like daily automated backups, SSL certificates, and unmetered bandwidth in their standard plans.

This means you won’t face surprise fees for the basic functionalities your website needs to operate securely and effectively.

Whether you’re safeguarding your site from potential data loss or ensuring encrypted, trustworthy connections for your visitors, or need unmetered bandwidth to ensure your site can handle traffic surges without penalty, you’ll gain the flexibility to scale without worrying about extra charges.

We even give WordPress users the option to bundle premium plugins together to help you save even more.

By including these features upfront, Bluehost simplifies your WordPress hosting experience and helps you maintain a predictable budget, freeing you to focus on growing your business instead of worrying about unexpected hosting costs.

Transitioning To A Better Hosting Solution: What To Consider

Switching hosting providers might seem daunting, but the right provider can make the process simple and cost-effective. Here are key considerations for transitioning to a better hosting solution:

Migration Challenges

Migrating your site to a new host can involve technical hurdles, including transferring content, preserving configurations, and minimizing downtime. A hosting provider with dedicated migration support can make this process seamless.

Cost of Switching Providers

Many businesses hesitate to switch hosts due to the cost of ending a contract early. To offset these expenses, search for hosting providers that offer migration incentives, such as contract buyouts or credit for remaining fees.

Why Bluehost Cloud Stands Out

Bluehost Cloud provides comprehensive migration support, handling every detail of the transfer to ensure a smooth transition.

Plus, our migration promotion includes $0 switching costs and credit for remaining contracts, making the move to Bluehost not only hassle-free but also financially advantageous.

Your hosting provider plays a pivotal role in the success of your WordPress site. By addressing performance issues, integrating essential features, and offering reliable support, you can maximize your hosting ROI and create a foundation for long-term success.

If your current hosting provider is falling short, it’s time to evaluate your options. Bluehost Cloud delivers performance-focused features, 100% uptime, premium support, and cost-effective migration services, ensuring your WordPress site runs smoothly and efficiently.

In addition, Bluehost has been a trusted partner of WordPress since 2005, working closely to create a hosting platform tailored to the unique needs of WordPress websites.

Beyond hosting, Bluehost empowers users through education, offering webinars, masterclasses, and resources like the WordPress Academy to help you maximize your WordPress experience and build successful websites.

Take control of your website’s performance and ROI. Visit the Bluehost Migration Page to learn how Bluehost Cloud can elevate your hosting experience.

This article has been sponsored by Bluehost, and the views presented herein represent the sponsor’s perspective.

Learn more about Bluehost’s latest migration promotion

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluehost. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 19 2024
7 Things To Look For In An SEO-Friendly WordPress Host

This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

When trying to improve your WordPress site’s search rankings, hosting might not be the first thing on your mind.

But your choice of hosting provider can significantly impact your SEO efforts.

A poor hosting setup can slow down your site, compromise its stability and security, and drain valuable time and resources.

The answer? Choosing the right WordPress hosting provider.

Here are seven essential features to look for in an SEO-friendly WordPress host that will help you:

1. Reliable Uptime & Speed for Consistent Performance

A website’s uptime and speed can significantly influence your site’s rankings and the success of your SEO strategies.

Users don’t like sites that suffer from significant downtime or sluggish load speeds. Not only are these sites inconvenient, but they also reflect negatively on the brand and their products and services, making them appear less trustworthy and of lower quality.

For these reasons, Google values websites that load quickly and reliably. So, if your site suffers from significant downtime or sluggish load times, it can negatively affect your site’s position in search results as well as frustrate users.

Reliable hosting with minimal downtime and fast server response times helps ensure that both users and search engines can access your content seamlessly.

Performance-focused infrastructure, optimized for fast server responses, is essential for delivering a smooth and engaging user experience.

When evaluating hosting providers, look for high uptime guarantees through a robust Service Level Agreement (SLA), which assures site availability and speed.

Bluehost Cloud, for instance, offers a 100% SLA for uptime, response time, and resolution time.

Built specifically with WordPress users in mind, Bluehost Cloud leverages an infrastructure optimized to deliver the speed and reliability that WordPress sites require, enhancing both SEO performance and user satisfaction. This guarantee provides you with peace of mind.

Your site will remain accessible and perform optimally around the clock, and you’ll spend less time troubleshooting and dealing with your host’s support team trying to get your site back online.

2. Data Center Locations & CDN Options For Global Reach

Fast load times are crucial not only for providing a better user experience but also for reducing bounce rates and boosting SEO rankings.

Since Google prioritizes websites that load quickly for users everywhere, having data centers in multiple locations and Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration is essential for WordPress sites with a global audience.

To ensure your site loads quickly for all users, no matter where they are, choose a WordPress host with a distributed network of data centers and CDN support. Consider whether it offers CDN options and data center locations that align with your audience’s geographic distribution

This setup allows your content to reach users swiftly across different regions, enhancing both user satisfaction and search engine performance.

Bluehost Cloud integrates with a CDN to accelerate content delivery across the globe. This means that whether your visitors are in North America, Europe, or Asia, they’ll experience faster load times.

By leveraging global data centers and a CDN, Bluehost Cloud ensures your site’s SEO remains strong, delivering a consistent experience for users around the world.

3. Built-In Security Features To Protect From SEO-Damaging Attacks

Security is essential for your brand, your SEO, and overall site health.

Websites that experience security breaches, malware, or frequent hacking attempts can be penalized by search engines, potentially suffering from ranking drops or even removal from search indexes.

Therefore, it’s critical to select a host that offers strong built-in security features to safeguard your website and its SEO performance.

When evaluating hosting providers, look for options that include additional security features.

Bluehost Cloud, for example, offers comprehensive security features designed to protect WordPress sites, including free SSL certificates to encrypt data, automated daily backups, and regular malware scans.

These features help maintain a secure environment, preventing security issues from impacting your potential customers, your site’s SEO, and ultimately, your bottom line.

With Bluehost Cloud, your site’s visitors, data, and search engine rankings remain secure, providing you with peace of mind and a safe foundation for SEO success.

4. Optimized Database & File Management For Fast Site Performance

A poorly managed database can slow down site performance, which affects load times and visitor experience. Therefore, efficient data handling and optimized file management are essential for fast site performance.

Choose a host with advanced database and file management tools, as well as caching solutions that enhance site speed. Bluehost Cloud supports WordPress sites with advanced database optimization, ensuring quick, efficient data handling even as your site grows.

With features like server-level caching and optimized databases, Bluehost Cloud is built to handle WordPress’ unique requirements, enabling your site to perform smoothly without additional plugins or manual adjustments.

Bluehost Cloud contributes to a better user experience and a stronger SEO foundation by keeping your WordPress site fast and efficient.

5. SEO-Friendly, Scalable Bandwidth For Growing Sites

As your site’s popularity grows, so does its bandwidth requirements. Scalable or unmetered bandwidth is vital to handle traffic spikes without slowing down your site and impacting your SERP performance.

High-growth websites, in particular, benefit from hosting providers that offer flexible bandwidth options, ensuring consistent speed and availability even during peak traffic.

To avoid disaster, select a hosting provider that offers scalable or unmetered bandwidth as part of their package. Bluehost Cloud’s unmetered bandwidth, for instance, is designed to accommodate high-traffic sites without affecting load times or user experience.

This ensures that your site remains responsive and accessible during high-traffic periods, supporting your growth and helping you maintain your SEO rankings.

For websites anticipating growth, unmetered bandwidth with Bluehost Cloud provides a reliable, flexible solution to ensure long-term performance.

6. WordPress-Specific Support & SEO Optimization Tools

WordPress has unique needs when it comes to SEO, making specialized hosting support essential.

Hosts that cater specifically to WordPress provide an added advantage by offering tools and configurations such as staging environments and one-click installations specifically for WordPress.

WordPress-specific hosting providers also have an entire team of knowledgeable support and technical experts who can help you significantly improve your WordPress site’s performance.

Bluehost Cloud is a WordPress-focused hosting solution that offers priority, 24/7 support from WordPress experts, ensuring any issue you encounter is dealt with effectively.

Additionally, Bluehost’s staging environments enable you to test changes and updates before going live, reducing the risk of SEO-impacting errors.

Switching to Bluehost is easy, affordable, and stress-free, too.

Bluehost offers a seamless migration service designed to make switching hosts simple and stress-free. Our dedicated migration support team handles the entire transfer process, ensuring your WordPress site’s content, settings, and configurations are moved safely and accurately.

Currently, Bluehost also covers all migration costs, so you can make the switch with zero out-of-pocket expenses. We’ll credit the remaining cost of your existing contract, making the transition financially advantageous.

You can actually save money or even gain credit by switching

7. Integrated Domain & Site Management For Simplified SEO Administration

SEO often involves managing domain settings, redirects, DNS configurations, and SSL updates, which can become complicated without centralized management.

An integrated hosting provider that allows you to manage your domain and hosting in one place simplifies these SEO tasks and makes it easier to maintain a strong SEO foundation.

When selecting a host, look for providers that integrate domain management with hosting. Bluehost offers a streamlined experience, allowing you to manage both domains and hosting from a single dashboard.

SEO-related site administration becomes more manageable, and you can focus on the things you do best: growth and optimization.

Find A SEO-Friendly WordPress Host

Choosing an SEO-friendly WordPress host can have a significant impact on your website’s search engine performance, user experience, and long-term growth.

By focusing on uptime, global data distribution, robust security, optimized database management, scalable bandwidth, WordPress-specific support, and integrated domain management, you create a solid foundation that supports both SEO and usability.

Ready to make the switch?

As a trusted WordPress partner with over 20 years of experience, Bluehost offers a hosting solution designed to meet the unique demands of WordPress sites big and small.

Our dedicated migration support team handles every detail of your transfer, ensuring your site’s content, settings, and configurations are moved accurately and securely.

Plus, we offer eligible customers a credit toward their remaining contracts, making the transition to Bluehost not only seamless but also cost-effective.

Learn how Bluehost Cloud can elevate your WordPress site. Visit us today to get started.

LEARN MORE

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluehost. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by Bluehost. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 12 2024
4 New Techniques To Speed Up Your Website & Fix Core Web Vitals via @sejournal, @DebugBear

This post was sponsored by DebugBear. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Want to make your website fast?

Luckily, many techniques and guides exist to help you speed up your website.

In fact, just in the last year, several new browser features have been released that offer:

  • New ways to optimize your website.
  • New ways to identify causes of slow performance.

All within your browser.

So, this article looks at these new browser SEO features and how you can use them to pass Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment.

Why Website Performance Is Key For User Experience & SEO

Having a fast website will make your users happier and increase conversion rates.

But performance is also a Google ranking factor.

Google has defined three user experience metrics, called the Core Web Vitals:

  • Largest Contentful Paint: how quickly does page content appear?
  • Cumulative Layout Shift: does content move around after loading?
  • Interaction to Next Paint: how responsive is the page to user input?

For each of these metrics there’s a maximum threshold that shouldn’t be exceeded to pass the web vitals assessment.

Metric thresholds for Google Core Web Vitals, October 2024

1. Add Instant Navigation With “Speculation Rules”

New Key Definitions:

When websites are slow to load that’s usually because various resources have to be loaded from the website server. But what if there was a way to achieve instant navigations, where visitors don’t have to wait?

This year Chrome launched a new feature called speculation rules, which can achieve just that. After loading the initial page on a website, other pages can be preloaded in the background. Then, when the visitor clicks on a link, the new page appears instantly.

Best of all, this feature is easy to implement just by adding a

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 30 2024
The SEO Agency Guide To Efficient WordPress Hosting & Management via @sejournal, @kinsta

This post was sponsored by Kinsta. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Managing client sites can quickly become costly in terms of time, money, and expertise, especially as your agency grows.

You’re constantly busy fixing slow WordPress performance, handling downtime, or regularly updating and backing up ecommerce sites and small blogs.

The solution to these challenges might lie in fully managed hosting for WordPress sites.

Opting for a fully managed hosting provider that specializes in WordPress and understands agency needs can save you both time and money. By making the switch, you can focus on what truly matters: serving your current clients and driving new business into your sales funnel.

WordPress Worries & How To Keep Clients Happy

For SEO agencies managing multiple client sites, ensuring consistently fast performance across the board is essential. Websites with poor performance metrics are more likely to see a dip in traffic, increased bounce rates, and lost conversion opportunities.

Managed hosting, especially hosting that specializes and is optimized for WordPress, offers agencies a way to deliver high-speed, well-performing sites without constantly battling technical issues.

Clients expect seamless performance, but handling these technical requirements for numerous websites can be a time-consuming process. While WordPress is versatile and user-friendly, it does come with performance challenges.

SEO agencies must deal with frequent updates, plugin management, security vulnerabilities, and optimization issues.

Challenges like bloated themes, inefficient plugins, and poor hosting infrastructure can lead to slow load times. You also need to ensure that client WordPress sites are secured against malware and hackers, which requires regular monitoring and updates.

With managed hosting, many of these tasks are automated, significantly reducing the workload on your team.

Managed hosting for WordPress simplifies the process by providing a full suite of performance, security, and maintenance services.

Instead of spending valuable time on manual updates, backups, and troubleshooting, you can rely on your hosting provider to handle these tasks automatically, resulting in reduced downtime, improved site performance, and a more efficient use of resources.

Ultimately, you can focus your energy on SEO strategies that drive results for your clients.

Basics Of Managed Hosting For WordPress

Managed hosting providers like Kinsta take care of all the technical aspects of running WordPress websites, including performance optimization, security, updates, backups, and server management.

We take over the responsibilities ensure the platform runs smoothly and securely without the constant need for manual intervention.

Kinsta also eliminates common performance bottlenecks in WordPress include slow-loading themes, outdated plugins, inefficient database queries, and suboptimal server configurations.

Key Benefits Of Efficient Managed Hosting For SEO

1. Performance & Speed

Core Web Vitals, Google’s user experience metrics, play a significant role in determining search rankings. Managed hosting improves metrics like LCP, FID, and CLS by offering high-performance servers and built-in caching solutions.

CDNs reduce latency by serving your website’s static files from servers closest to the user, significantly improving load times.

Kinsta, for example, uses Google Cloud’s premium tier network and C2 virtual machines, ensuring the fastest possible load times for WordPress sites. We also provide integrated CDN services, along with advanced caching configurations, which ensure that even resource-heavy WordPress sites load quickly.

And the benefits are instantly noticeable.

Before the switch, Torro Media faced performance issues, frequent downtimes, and difficulties scaling their websites to handle traffic growth. These issues negatively affected their clients’ user experience and SEO results.

After migrating to Kinsta, Torro Media saw noteable improvements:

  • Faster website performance – Site load times significantly improved, contributing to better SEO rankings and overall user experience.
  • Reduced downtime – Kinsta’s reliable infrastructure ensured that Torro Media’s websites experienced minimal downtime, keeping client websites accessible.
  • Expert support – Our support team helped Torro Media resolve technical issues efficiently, allowing the agency to focus on growth rather than troubleshooting.

As a result, Torro was able to scale its operations and deliver better results for its clients.

2. WP-Specific Security

Security is a critical component of managed hosting. Platforms like Kinsta offer automatic security patches, malware scanning, and firewalls tailored specifically for WordPress.

These features are vital to protecting your clients’ sites from cyber threats, which, if left unchecked, can lead to ranking drops due to blacklisting by search engines.

Downtime and security breaches negatively impact SEO. Google devalues sites that experience frequent downtime or security vulnerabilities.

Managed hosting providers minimize these risks by maintaining secure, stable environments with 24/7 monitoring, helping ensure that your clients’ sites remain online and safe from attacks.

3. Automatic Backups & Recovery

Automatic daily backups are a standard feature of managed hosting, protecting against data loss due to server crashes or website errors. For agencies, this means peace of mind, knowing that they can restore their clients’ sites quickly in case of a problem. The ability to quickly recover from an issue helps maintain SEO rankings, as prolonged downtime can hurt search performance.

Managed hosting providers often include advanced tools such as one-click restore points and robust disaster recovery systems. Additionally, having specialized support means that you have access to experts who understand WordPress and can help troubleshoot complex issues that affect performance and SEO.

Importance Of An Agency-Focused Managed WordPress Hosting Provider

For SEO agencies, uptime guarantees are essential to maintaining site availability. Managed hosting providers, like Kinsta, who specialize in serving agencies, offer a 99.9% uptime SLA and multiple data center locations, ensuring that websites remain accessible to users across the globe.

Scalability and flexibility matter, too. As your agency grows, your clients’ hosting needs may evolve. Managed hosting platforms designed for agencies offer scalability, allowing you to easily add resources as your client portfolio expands.

With scalable solutions, you can handle traffic surges without worrying about site downtime or slowdowns.

Agency Dashboard - Managed Hosting for WordPress

1. The Right Dashboards

A user-friendly dashboard is crucial for managing multiple client sites efficiently. Kinsta’s MyKinsta dashboard, for example, allows agencies to monitor performance, uptime, and traffic across all sites in one centralized location, providing full visibility into each client’s website performance.

Hosting dashboards like Kinsta’s MyKinsta provide real-time insights into key performance metrics such as server response times, resource usage, and traffic spikes. These metrics are essential for ensuring that sites remain optimized for SEO.

2. Balance Costs With Performance Benefits

For agencies, managing hosting costs is always a consideration. While managed hosting may come with a higher price tag than traditional shared hosting, the benefits, such as faster performance, reduced downtime, and enhanced security, translate into better client results and long-term cost savings.

Kinsta offers flexible pricing based on traffic, resources, and features, making it easier for agencies to align their hosting solutions with client budgets.

By automating tasks like backups, updates, and security management, managed hosting allows agencies to significantly reduce the time and resources spent on day-to-day maintenance. This frees up your team to focus on delivering SEO results, ultimately improving efficiency and client satisfaction.

Don’t think it makes that big of a difference? Think again.

After migrating to Kinsta, 5Tales experienced:

  • Improved site speed – Load times dropped by over 50%, which enhanced user experience and SEO performance.
  • Better support – Kinsta’s specialized support team helped troubleshoot issues quickly and provided expert-level advice.
  • Streamlined management – With our user-friendly dashboard and automated features, 5Tales reduced the time spent on maintenance and troubleshooting.

Overall, 5Tales saw an increase in both client satisfaction and SEO rankings after moving to Kinsta.

3. Managed Hosting & Page Speed Optimization

Tools like Kinsta’s Application Performance Monitoring (APM) provide detailed insights into website performance, helping agencies identify slow-loading elements and optimize them. This level of transparency enables faster troubleshooting and more precise optimization efforts, which are critical for maintaining fast page speeds.

It’s also easy to integrate managed hosting platforms with your existing tech stack. Kinsta works seamlessly with SEO tools like Google Analytics, DebugBear, and others, allowing agencies to track site performance, analyze traffic patterns, and ensure sites are running at peak efficiency.

Conclusion

Managed hosting is not just a convenience. It’s a critical component of success for SEO agencies managing WordPress sites.

By leveraging the performance, security, and time-saving benefits of a managed hosting provider like Kinsta, agencies can improve client results, enhance their relationships, and streamline their operations.

When it comes to SEO, every second counts. A fast, secure, and well-maintained website will always perform better in search rankings. For agencies looking to deliver maximum value to their clients, investing in managed hosting is a smart, long-term decision.

Ready to make the switch?

Kinsta offers a guarantee of no-shared hosting, 99.99% uptime guarantee, and 24/7/365 support, so we’re here when you need us. Plus, we makes it easy, effortless, and free to move to Kinsta.

Our team of migration experts have experience switching from all web hosts. And when you make the switch to Kinsta, we’ll give you up to $10,000 in free hosting to ensure you avoid paying double hosting bills.

LEARN MORE

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Kinsta. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by Kinsta. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 24 2024
Google On Diagnosing Multi-Domain Crawling Issues via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, shared insights on diagnosing widespread crawling issues.

This guidance was shared in response to a disruption reported by Adrian Schmidt on LinkedIn. Google’s crawler stopped accessing several of his domains at the same time.

Despite the interruption, Schmidt noted that live tests via Search Console continued to function without error messages.

Investigations indicated no increase in 5xx errors or issues with robots.txt requests.

What could the problem be?

Mueller’s Response

Addressing the situation, Mueller pointed to shared infrastructure as the likely cause:

“If it shared across a bunch of domains and focuses on something like crawling, it’s probably an issue with a shared piece of infrastructure. If it’s already recovering, at least it’s not urgent anymore and you have a bit of time to poke at recent changes / infrastructure logs.”

Infrastructure Investigation

All affected sites used Cloudflare as their CDN, which raised some eyebrows.

When asked about debugging, Mueller recommended checking Search Console data to determine whether DNS or failed requests were causing the problem.

Mueller stated:

“The crawl stats in Search Console will also show a bit more, perhaps help decide between say DNS vs requests failing.”

He also pointed out that the timing was a key clue:

“If it’s all at exactly the same time, it wouldn’t be robots.txt, and probably not DNS.”

Impact on Search Results

Regarding search visibility concerns, Mueller reassured this type of disruption wouldn’t cause any problems:

“If this is from today, and it just lasted a few hours, I wouldn’t expect any visible issues in search.”

Why This Matters

When Googlebot suddenly stops crawling across numerous sites simultaneously, it can be challenging to identify the root cause.

While temporary crawling pauses might not immediately impact search rankings, they can disrupt Google’s ability to discover and index new content.

The incident highlights a vulnerability organizations might face without realizing it, especially those relying on shared infrastructure.

How This Can Help You

If time Googlebot stops crawling your sites:

  • Check if the problem hits multiple sites at once
  • Look at your shared infrastructure first
  • Use Search Console data to narrow down the cause
  • Don’t rule out DNS just because regular traffic looks fine
  • Keep an eye on your logs

For anyone running multiple sites behind a CDN, make sure you:

  • Have good logging set up
  • Watch your crawl rates
  • Know who to call when things go sideways
  • Keep tabs on your infrastructure provider

Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 22 2024
How Page Performance Hurts UX & How You Can Fix It via @sejournal, @DebugBear

This post was sponsored by DebugBear. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

From a user’s perspective, a slow website can be incredibly frustrating, creating a poor experience. But the impact of sluggish load times goes deeper than just user frustration.

Poor page performance affects search rankings, overall site engagement, E-E-A-T, and conversion rates that results in abandoned sessions, lost sales, and damaged trust.

Even if Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) Report is all green.

Sure, Chrome UX (CrUX) and Google’s CWV reports can indicate there’s an issue, but that’s it. They don’t provide you with enough details to identify, troubleshoot, and fix the issue.

And fixing these issues are vital to your digital success.

Core Web Vitals - DebugBear Page Performance ToolImage from DebugBear, October 2024

This article explores why slow websites are bad for user experience (UX), the challenges that cause them, and how advanced page performance tools can help fix these issues in ways that basic tools can’t.

UX, Brand Perception & Beyond

While often at the bottom of a technical SEO checklist, site speed is critical for UX. Sites that load in once second convert 2.5 to 3 times more than sites that require five seconds to load.

And yet, today, an estimated 14% of B2C ecommerce websites require five seconds or more to load.

These numbers become even more pronounced for mobile users, for whom pages load 70.9% slower. Mobile users have 31% fewer pageviews and an average of 4.8% higher bounce rate per session.

According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile users will abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds to load.

Poor page experience can negatively other aspects of your site, too:

  • Search Rankings – Google includes page experience, of which CWV and page performance is a factor, when ranking web pages.
  • User Trust – Poor performing pages fail to meet a potential customer’s expectations. They are often perceived by users as the brand inconveniencing them, introducing stress, negative emotions, and a loss of a sense of control to the buying process. Slower pages can also cause users to forget information gained from previous pages, reducing the effectiveness of advertising, copy, and branding campaigns between clicks.
  • User Retention – Site visitors who experience slow load times may never return, reducing retention rates and customer loyalty.

Why Basic Page Performance Tools Don’t Fully Solve The Problem

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse give valuable insights into how your website performs, but they can often be limited. They tell you that there’s an issue but often fall short of explaining what caused it or how to fix it.

Google’s Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) and Core Web Vitals have become essential in tracking website performance and user experience.

These metrics—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—offer valuable insights into how users perceive a website’s speed and stability.

However, CrUX and Core Web Vitals only tell part of the story. They indicate that a problem exists but don’t show the root cause or offer an immediate path for improvement.

For instance, your LCP might be poor, but without deeper page speed analysis, you wouldn’t know whether it’s due to an unoptimized image, a slow server response, or third-party scripts.

Page Performance Broken Down By Geolocation - DebugBearImage from DebugBear, October 2024

Here’s where DebugBear stands out. DebugBear digs deeper, offering more granular data and unique features that basic tools don’t provide.

Continuous Monitoring and Historical Data – Many speed testing tools only offer snapshots of performance data. DebugBear, on the other hand, allows for continuous monitoring over time, providing an ongoing view of your site’s performance. This is crucial for detecting issues that crop up unexpectedly or tracking the effectiveness of your optimizations.

Granular Breakdown by Device, Location, and Browser – Basic tools often provide aggregated data, which hides the differences between user experiences across various devices, countries, and network conditions. DebugBear lets you drill down to see how performance varies, allowing you to optimize for specific user segments.

Pinpointing Content Elements Causing Delays – One of DebugBear’s standout features is its ability to show exactly which content elements—images, scripts, or third-party code—are slowing down your website. Rather than wasting hours digging through code and experimenting with trial and error, DebugBear highlights the specific elements causing delays, allowing for targeted, efficient fixes.

Why You Need Continuous Page Speed Testing

One of the biggest pitfalls in web performance optimization is relying on single-point speed tests.

Page Performance Breakdown - Content Elements in DebugBearImage from DebugBear, October 2024

Running a one-time test may give you a snapshot of performance at that moment, but it doesn’t account for fluctuations caused by different factors, such as traffic spikes, varying user devices, or changes to site content.

Without continuous testing, you risk spending hours (or even days) trying to identify the root cause of performance issues.

DebugBear solves this problem by continuously tracking page speed across different devices and geographies, offering detailed reports that can be easily shared with team members or stakeholders.

If a performance dip occurs, DebugBear provides the data necessary to quickly identify and rectify the issue, saving you from the endless trial-and-error process of manual debugging.

Without tools like DebugBear, you’re left with only a high-level view of your website’s performance.

This means hours of trying to guess the underlying issues based on broad metrics, with no real insight into what’s dragging a site down.

Different Users Experience Performance Differently

Not all users experience your website’s performance in the same way.

Device type, geographic location, and network speed can significantly affect load times and interaction delays.

For example, a user on a fast fiberoptic connection in the U.S. may have a completely different experience than someone on a slower mobile network in India.

This variance in user experience can be hidden in aggregate data, leading you to believe your site is performing well when a significant portion of your audience is actually struggling with slow speeds.

Here’s why breaking down performance data by device, country, and browser matters:

  • Device-Specific Optimizations – Some elements, like large images or animations, may perform well on desktop but drag down speeds on mobile.
  • Geographic Performance Variations – International users may experience slower speeds due to server location or network conditions. DebugBear can highlight these differences and help you optimize your content delivery network (CDN) strategy.
  • Browser Differences – Different browsers may handle elements like JavaScript and CSS in different ways, impacting performance. DebugBear’s breakdown by browser ensures you’re not overlooking these subtleties.

Without this granular insight, you risk alienating segments of your audience and overlooking key areas for optimization.

And troubleshooting these issues becomes and expensive nightmare.

Just ask SiteCare.

WordPress web development and optimization service provider SiteCare uses DebugBear to quickly troubleshoot a full range of WordPress sites, solve performance issues faster, and monitor them for changes, providing high quality service to its clients, saving thousands of hours and dollars every year.

DebugBear offers these breakdowns, providing a clear view of how your website performs for all users, not just a select few.

Real User Monitoring: The Key To Accurate Performance Insights

In addition to synthetic testing (which mimics user interactions), real user monitoring (RUM) is another powerful feature technical SEOs and marketing teams will find valuable.

While synthetic tests offer valuable controlled insights, they don’t always reflect the real-world experiences of your users.

RUM captures data from actual users as they interact with your site, providing real-time, accurate insights into what’s working and what isn’t.

For instance, real user monitoring can help you:

  • Identify performance issues unique to specific user segments.
  • Detect trends that may not be visible in synthetic tests, such as network issues or slow third-party scripts.
  • Measure the actual experience users are having on your website, not just the theoretical one.

Without real user monitoring, you might miss critical issues that only surface under specific conditions, like a heavy user load or slow mobile networks.

If you’re not using continuous page speed testing and in-depth reports, you’re flying blind.

You may see an overall decline in performance without understanding why, or you could miss opportunities for optimization that only reveal themselves under specific conditions.

The result?

Wasted time, frustrated users, lost conversions, and a website that doesn’t perform up to its potential.

DebugBear solves this by offering both continuous monitoring and granular breakdowns, making it easier to troubleshoot issues quickly and accurately.

With detailed reports, you’ll know exactly what to fix and where to focus your optimization efforts, significantly cutting down on the time spent searching for problems.

Explore DebugBear’s innovative page performance solutions

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Shutterstock. Used with permission.

In-Post Images: Images by DebugBear. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 4 2024
The 10 Best Headless CMS Platforms To Consider via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Headless CMSs are becoming more popular as companies want more flexible content management tools.

These systems separate the content creation from how it’s displayed, giving more options for publishing content across different platforms.

In this article, we’re reviewing ten top headless CMS options. We’re examining them based on the following criteria:

  • How well they work with other tools.
  • How easy they are for developers to use.
  • How flexible they are for organizing content.

We’ve included enterprise-level systems and free, open-source ones to cover different needs and technical skill levels. This comparison should help teams understand their options and figure out which platforms might work best for their specific projects.

Here are the best headless CMS platforms to consider.

Why Should You Use A Headless CMS Platform?

Headless CMS platforms have become increasingly popular for good reasons.

They offer several advantages over traditional content management systems, including:

  • Flexibility: Publish once, display anywhere – from websites to apps to smart devices.
  • Developer-Friendly: Devs can use their favorite tools, speeding up project timelines.
  • Performance: API-driven content delivery often means quicker load times.
  • Future-Proof: Easily adapt to new tech without overhauling your whole system.
  • Security: Backend separation reduces exposure to potential threats.
  • Scaling: Grow your content or expand to new markets without hitting technical roadblocks.
  • Teamwork: Features like real-time editing streamline the content creation process.

While not a one-size-fits-all solution, a headless CMS is worth considering if you need a flexible, scalable content system that can keep up with changing tech.

10 Best Headless CMS Platforms

1. Sanity

Screenshot from: sanity.io, July 2024.

Sanity is a good fit for small to medium-sized teams prioritizing real-time collaboration and a customizable content studio.

In practice, Sanity works well for structuring and managing content, such as product information, for e-commerce sites. Its GROQ query language allows for flexible content retrieval and filtering.

Why It’s Good:

  • Real-time collaboration with live multi-user editing.
  • Flexible, schema-driven content modeling for structured content.
  • Customizable Content Studio for intuitive editorial experience.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing is suitable for scaling projects.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Steeper learning curve for non-technical users compared to traditional CMSs.
  • Requires development resources for initial setup and ongoing maintenance.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use GROQ queries for flexible content retrieval and filtering.
  • Leverage Portable Text for rich text content with embedded objects.
  • Customize input components in Content Studio for optimal editorial UX.

Best Hack:

  • Set up a real-time preview using Next.js and Sanity’s Listener. Changes in the Content Studio will instantly update the front end, providing a true WYSIWYG editing experience for content teams.

2. Storyblok

Screenshot from: storyblok.com, July 2024.

Storyblok’s key selling point is its visual editor, which empowers marketers to create and manage content independently.

It’s been successfully used for multilingual corporate sites. The visual editor simplifies content updates, while features like field-level translations streamline localization.

Why It’s Good:

  • Visual editor for drag-and-drop page building.
  • Reusable block system for modular content creation.
  • Field-level translations for multi-language content.
  • Roles and permissions for content governance.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Some technical setup is required to fully leverage the visual editor.
  • Pricing can add up for larger-scale projects with higher content needs.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize nested components for flexible, reusable page sections.
  • Set up Language Fallbacks to gracefully handle missing translations.
  • Integrate with Sketch/Figma for a design-to-CMS workflow.

Best Hack:

  • With Storyblok’s Visual Composer within Content Stages, you can build and preview pages in a draft stage before pushing them live.

3. Hygraph

Screenshot from: hygraph.com, July 2024.

Formerly GraphCMS, Hygraph stands out for its GraphQL-native approach and Content Federation capabilities for unifying data from disparate sources.

Hygraph has been used to power blogs with user-generated content. Authors can submit posts via forms, which are managed in Hygraph. Content Federation allows merging this with e-commerce data to create shoppable posts.

Why It’s Good:

  • Intuitive GraphQL API for efficient content querying.
  • Visual schema builder for modeling content without code.
  • Content Federation is used to unify data from multiple sources.
  • Webhooks and API extensions for custom integrations.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Content preview capabilities are limited compared to some other headless CMSs.
  • GraphQL learning curve for teams new to this query language.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Leverage remote fields to enrich content with external API data.
  • Use Scheduled Publishing to automate content releases.
  • Set up Webhooks to trigger external actions based on content changes.

Best Hack:

  • Combine Hygraph’s Content Stages with Vercel’s Preview Deployments. Configure a webhook to trigger a new preview deployment whenever content is updated in a draft stage. This allows stakeholders to review changes in a live environment before publishing.

4. Contentful

Screenshot from: contentful.com, July 2024.

Contentful is an API-first headless CMS geared towards large organizations with complex content requirements.

It’s well-suited for global, multi-site content platforms. Content types and relationships allow for well-structured, multi-locale content. The app framework enables customizing the editorial experience.

Why It’s Good:

  • Flexible content modeling with validations and relationships.
  • App framework for extending functionality.
  • Localization features for multi-language content.
  • Multiple API options (REST, GraphQL, Content Delivery API).

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Higher learning curve due to extensive features and concepts.
  • Pricing can be prohibitive for smaller projects.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Link Fields to model content relationships and references.
  • Leverage Environment Aliases to streamline content promotion across spaces.
  • Extend editorial capabilities with app framework and UI extensions.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Contentful with Gatsby Cloud for a powerful JAMstack setup. Contentful’s webhook triggers a new build in Gatsby whenever content changes, ensuring the static front end displays the latest published content.

5. Contentstack

Screenshot from: contentstack.com, July 2024.

Contentstack is another enterprise-focused headless CMS, with strengths in content localization and publishing workflows.

It’s been successfully used to build global product catalogs. Content types mirror hierarchical product data, varying by locale. Workflows enable synchronized multi-region releases, with granular roles and permissions ensuring proper governance.

Why It’s Good:

  • Roles & permissions for fine-grained access control.
  • Localization features for managing global, multi-language content.
  • Content scheduling and versioning capabilities.
  • Stackable per-locale publishing for phasing releases across regions.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • UI can feel complex for content teams used to simpler traditional CMSs.
  • There are some limitations around content relationships compared to other enterprise CMSs.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize the pre-built Field Editor extensions to customize the editorial interface.
  • Leverage webhooks to trigger external processes or rebuild content changes.
  • Use the CDN-powered Content Delivery APIs for optimal performance.

Best Hack:

  • Combine Contentstack’s Release Workflows with Netlify’s Deploy Previews. Create a workflow automatically generating a deploy preview whenever content is moved to a new workflow stage.

6. Strapi

Screenshot from: strapi.co, July 2024.

Strapi is a popular open-source headless CMS that prioritizes developer experience and customization.

It’s been used as a backend for developer-focused SaaS applications. Custom content types mirror application data structures, while the plugin system allows application-specific features to be added to the admin panel.

Why It’s Good:

  • Fully customizable API with the ability to define endpoints and logic.
  • Extensive plugin library for extending functionality.
  • Open-source, self-hosted option for maximum control.
  • GraphQL support is available in addition to REST and JSON:API.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • It requires more technical setup and maintenance than hosted solutions.
  • Less built-in functionality out-of-the-box compared to paid options.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize Community and Custom Plugins to add project-specific features.
  • Leverage Strapi’s JWT authentication to secure API access.
  • Use Strapi’s Draft System for content staging and approval workflows.

Best Hack:

  • Deploy Strapi on Heroku with PostgreSQL database. Set up GitHub integration in Heroku to automatically deploy from a repository branch. Any custom plugin code changes pushed to GitHub will trigger a rebuild of the Strapi backend on Heroku.

7. Directus

Screenshot from: directus.io, July 2024.

Directus is a unique headless CMS that sits on top of new or existing SQL databases, instantly providing RESTful API and GraphQL endpoints.

It’s proven helpful for projects with existing SQL databases. Installing Directus on top provides an instant content management layer and API without data migration. The platform allows for tailoring the admin panel to project needs.

Why It’s Good:

  • Instantly generates APIs from new and existing SQL databases.
  • Supports various SQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, Oracle).
  • Extensible platform with custom endpoints, webhooks, and event hooks.
  • Open Data Platform for powering data-driven projects beyond typical CMS use cases.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Requires SQL database skills for initial setup and data modeling.
  • Less content-focused out-of-the-box compared to other headless options.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Directus Fields to shape how your database data is presented in the admin.
  • Leverage Flows for automating data processing tasks on backend events.
  • Enable Data Accountability for granular activity tracking and versioning.

Best Hack:

  • Connect Directus to Metabase for powerful data visualization. By leveraging Directus’ SQL mirroring, Metabase can query and chart your content data directly, enabling advanced content analytics and reporting dashboards.

8. Umbraco Heartcore

Screenshot from: umbraco.com/products/umbraco-heartcore/, July 2024.

Umbraco Heartcore is the headless offering from the team behind the popular open-source Umbraco CMS.

It’s a natural fit for existing Umbraco users looking to adopt a headless architecture.

Document Types and Templates from the standard Umbraco CMS can be reused in Heartcore, easing the transition for content editors and .NET developers.

Why It’s Good:

  • Smooth transition path for existing Umbraco users.
  • .NET-based for integrating with Microsoft stack.
  • Umbraco Cloud for managed hosting and deployment.
  • Familiar, feature-rich editor experience.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Less adoption compared to some other headless options.
  • Requires .NET development skills for implementation.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Umbraco’s Compositions for reusable content structures.
  • Leverage Umbraco Deploy for moving content and configuration between environments.
  • Explore the Umbraco Marketplace for editor and developer tools.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Umbraco Heartcore with Azure Cognitive Services for AI-powered content features. By calling Azure’s APIs from an Umbraco Controller, you can add capabilities like automated tagging, sentiment analysis, and image recognition to your editorial workflow.

9. Kontent.ai

Screenshot from: kontent.ai, July 2024.

Kontent.ai differentiates itself with features geared towards content operations and planning. It’s been successfully used for large-scale content marketing initiatives.

The content calendar provides a high-level overview of content across channels while ‘Assignments’ and ‘Tasks’ keep teams in sync.

Why It’s Good:

  • Structured, reusable content models and components.
  • Collaboration features like suggestions and comments.
  • AI-powered content insights for optimizing content performance.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Relatively higher pricing compared to some other options.
  • Less developer-focused compared to highly extensible options like Strapi.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Linked Items to connect related content across your project.
  • Set up Webhooks to trigger builds or notifications on content changes.
  • Customize the Web Spotlight interface for a tailored, inline preview experience.

Best Hack:

  • Sync Kontent with Airtable for a versatile content planning setup. Use the Kontent webhooks to send content data to Airtable. Then, leverage Airtable’s views, filters, and fields to plan and track your content production pipeline.

10. Prismic

Screenshot from: prismic.io, July 2024.

Prismic is a developer-friendly headless CMS focusing on sliced-based content modeling and multi-language support.

It’s been used for multilingual documentation sites with modern frameworks like Nuxt.

Prismic’s slices allow for componentizing common elements like code snippets and callouts, while the localization features enable translation management.

Why It’s Good:

  • Content Slices for modular, reusable page components.
  • Strong multi-language features with built-in translation management.
  • API browsers and development kits for popular frameworks.
  • Simple, clean UI for content editors.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Fewer collaboration and workflow features compared to some enterprise options.
  • Slice-based model can take some getting used to for traditional CMS users.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize Slice Machine for local Slice development and testing.
  • Set up preview URLs to preview on-page content before publishing.
  • Use Prismic’s Integration Fields with tools like Shopify and Magento for e-commerce projects.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Prismic with Cloudinary for advanced media management. Using a webhook to send Prismic image data to Cloudinary, you can leverage Cloudinary’s transformation and optimization capabilities while managing images within your CMS.

Choosing The Right Headless CMS For Your Needs

To select the ideal headless CMS, consider these factors:

  • Content Complexity: Match your content structure needs with platform capabilities (e.g., Contentful for complex hierarchies, Strapi for customizable architecture).
  • Team Skills: Align with your team’s tech expertise (e.g., Hygraph for GraphQL users, Directus for SQL pros).
  • Localization: For multilingual content, prioritize platforms with strong localization features, such as Contentstack or Contentful.
  • Integration: Ensure compatibility with your existing tech stack through APIs, SDKs, or plugins.
  • Collaboration: For large teams, consider platforms with advanced workflow management (e.g., Kontent.ai) or real-time collaboration (e.g., Sanity).
  • Pricing and Scalability: Balance cost with features and growth potential. Open-source options like Strapi offer savings, while enterprise solutions like Contentful provide high-end features.

Explore options, run proof of concepts (POCs), and gather team feedback before deciding.

A well-chosen headless CMS and ongoing optimization will equip you to handle current and future content challenges.

More resources: 

Featured Image: A9 STUDIO/Shutterstock

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