Best Hosting For Travel Blog
This article is more than 2 years old
So you have got your name finalized for your travel blog but now comes another decision what is the best hosting for travel blog in this decade.
Hosting for a travel blog is different from other hobbies. You need to look at certain perks that will make the user experience better for your visitors. Also, there is a need to make sure that you get the best value for the money you spend.
I can straight away recommend 4 to 5 hosting companies talk about their packages and close the question. But I will not do that because I would like to educate you on what is good hosting for travel blogs and recommend SiteGround as a host.
There are a number of reasons I recommend SiteGround. It is for technical and economical reasons. I will list all of them so you are educated about your travel blog hosting.
Technical Aspects Travel Blog Hosting
It is imperative that you set the right technical foundations of your travel blog right from the start. If you choose wrong travel hosting then you will get into the doubts later on as why traffic is not coming to your blog.
As you dig down probable reason one of them could be the hosting. I assure you 100% that you will get stuck into this problem somewhere later on with your travel blog. It is extremely important that you do not blame hosting later and get your thoughts focused on other aspects. It will save you time and fix the actual problems.
Let’s focus what are technical areas for hosting a travel blog and how SiteGround helps.
Time To Load First Block
Whenever someone enters a website name in the browser and press enter a request is sent to the server where the website is hosted. The server receives the request and then responds back by delivering the initial content block to the browser.
This is a very crucial block it will determine the performance of the remaining content provided by the server. If this time is long then your visitors will get annoyed and can leave your travel blog quickly.
If this time is lower then visitors will immediately get a look at the travel you have done and stick to read the rest of the story. This time should be no more than 300 milliseconds. Before switching to SiteGround, my previous hosting was taking 2-4 seconds to loads the first block. With SiteGround the website takes an average of 200-250 milliseconds to load.
If your blog takes longer to load it is an indication of bad user experience and Google will not allow your website to come onto even the first page.
Time To Load Remaining Content
If it takes a long time to load the initial block then remaining content will be loaded with delay as well. It is a search engine ranking killer combination.
There are techniques to load the remaining content quicker. Even if you have a good hosting like that of SiteGround you will need more help from your hosting to load the remaining content quicker.
SiteGround helps you to fix the speed of remaining content by their plugin SG Optimiser or SiteGround Optimizer. This is a free plugin which when combined with SiteGround will get immediate results for your travel blog.
I will try to explain each part in simple detail without over-complicating the details.
Image Optimisation: Yes you will share your images from your travel. Not only image optimization will load them faster but resize them to the appropriate size. An image with higher resolution is useless and will take a longer time to download at the visitor’s browser.
Lazyload: Content should load periodically. As visitor scrolls down the next chunk of content should be ready. A website that displays itself after downloading itself complete is not a good user experience.
SG optimizer will help lazy load your travel hosting blog post. It is an optimal experience for your visitor viewing the website through mobile or desktop.
Minify CSS: A typical website has multiple custom styling sheets. They are written by developers but not in an optimal format for computers. The unnecessary spaces make the browser process more time to understand the CSS.
Minify Javascript: Like CSS there is Javascript that is in a non-friendly browser format.
SG optimizer fixes both with just one click each.
Browser Caching: As you build your fan base there will be regular visitors coming to your blog. There is no need to get data downloaded every time in a new session.
Instead, your website should tell your fan browser to store some necessary information about your website locally. The next time you open the website, most of the data will be preloaded and only new content will be fetched from your hosting service.
SiteGround provides an inbuilt cacher that is compatible with the hosting. So everything happens with harmony and there is no conflict.
Defer Render Blocking: Like CSS and Javascript, you need to fix the Jquery as well. There are free plugins out there that can fix CSS and Javascript but not the render blocks. Wp Rocket and SiteGround optimizer are only a few out there that can fix this problem.
Lazy Load Videos: Because you are a traveler you might be vlogging at YouTube as well. If you upload the video at your blog then it is an unnecessary thing to load to have ready to load. Data should begin loading after a visitor clicks on the play button to load the video from YouTube. It is further optimization of the loading speed and optimal user experience.
All these optimizations will aid in loading the remaining content in a more efficient way. If you are making a travel blog this is the solid technical foundation you want to build your blog on.
A blog built-in haste without proper research will give a bad user experience owing to the wrong technical setup. The resulting bad user experience can mess up your plan later on.
What happens If You Get Optimisation From Different Source
It is worth mentioning that you can get these optimizations from separate plugins as well but that comes with a problem. All other sources will provide independent code to fix these inevitable problems of the wrong hosting travel blog.
If you use plugins made by different sources then it will create conflicts in your theme or between different files. In the worst case, it can break your theme and you can lose all of your travel stories.
In a “better worse case” your website will still load but the loading time would be higher. Because the browser will have to manage separate scripts from each developer and will take more time to understand and display the result.
With SiteGround SG Optimizer all these optimizations are happening at one platform in a coherent way. Ever since I have switched to one platform I have seen a remarkable improvement in search engine traffic because of better user experience.
Non-Tech Aspects for Travel Blog Hosting
The Degree of below aspects is so simple that I would classify them as a non-technical. Although you may disagree with the above technical parts they are certainly much easier to understand and handle.
Economical Startup Package: SiteGround lies at the sweet spot it is not too expensive and not too cheap yet you get the perks of high end hosting such as Kinsta or Wp engine.
The startup plan will help you get started with one website, install WordPress and get your web up and running.
Plenty of Space: The startup plan offers 10 Gb space, this is more than enough for a travel blog to host its data for a few years. Unless you plan is to upload a gallery section with super high-resolution pictures or videos this package would be more than enough.
If you plan to upload special videos and pictures section then I recommend you take the GrowBig section for the sake of space. You can always downgrade to lower hosting plan free of cost if you feel that you need lesser space.
Free Daily Backup: Siteground offers a daily backup for all the plans. It is actually extremely important. After you set up your travel blog you will realize how much hacking attempts your travel blog will go through.
Daily backup for travel blogs is not that common. Hosting companies charge additional fees for this feature but you get that for free at SiteGround.
Cloud Data Network: You will have plenty of images on your travel blog. You will need to show pictures to show your adventures. A CDN will help distribute the content especially images of your travel blog to be hosted around the world.
So someone in another continent who opens your travel blog will download data from near their location. This further optimizes the loading speed.
SiteGround provides free Cloudflare CDN. Other hosting service providers charge additional fees to use on their own CDN or integrate it with external sources like BunnyCDN.
Free SSL: SSL or Https you see you the domains in the browser has become a ranking factor. It is super important that you set it up as soon as you start your website.
SiteGround provides free SSL certificates. Although most of the hosting providers these days irrespective of the niche you have blog on whether travel, health, cooking, etc they provide SSL free of cost.
Customer Support: I can not stress how important this is. Sooner or later you will need assistance from hosting at any part of your travel blog. Let it be storage space, redirection, backup or any other problem.
SiteGround support is always immediate to reply back, you can even catch them up with their live chat support. Other travel hosting service providers like BlueHost or HostGator are known for their bad customer service.
All companies are excellent to potential clients but how they behave after you have become a customer is something to consider seriously. SiteGround customer support is high end. I would recommend them any day.
Final Thoughts
Invest in better service today for better results tomorrow. Do not waste your time by going back and forth by changing hosting services every other day.
Choose a hosting that you will stick with a longer period of time. SiteGround provides exactly that opportunity. If you feel that you are still not clear about any of the above explanation please get in touch with me. I will try to clear your doubts as much as I can.
