Credit: DepositPhotos.com

Blogs need traffic to survive. Traffic can bring advertising revenue, new leads, sales, and a host of other benefits. That’s why so many bloggers work hard to come up with excellent, appealing blog content and to promote it aggressively to get as many hits as possible.

We all strive to publish those posts that go viral. These are the posts that catch fire and earn thousands of ReTweets and Facebook shares and hit the front page of a site like ReddIt. Granted, having a post go viral is something like catching lightning in a bottle, but if you keep trying and keep doing the right things, it can happen for you.

Of course, when it does happen, you want to be prepared. When blog posts go viral, the traffic tends to come in surges. Your viral post might get thousands of hits in a matter of minutes, and that puts a heavy strain on your web host. If you don’t have the right hosting in place, your website will crash, and your viral post will die before it has a chance to reach its full potential.

Why Your Hosting Matters

If you plan on aggressively promoting your blog and you want to get as much traffic as possible, you’d better make sure you have a good web host. Your hosting is absolutely an integral element to your viral marketing success.

Here’s why:

• Viral success is hard to come by—Like I said earlier, having a post go viral is like catching lightning in a bottle. It might not happen often, and you can never be totally sure when it will happen. So, you have to make the most of these opportunities whenever they arise. Having a solid web host will help.
• If your site is down, most visitors won’t come back—If you have a post suddenly spread like wildfire but then your website crashes, it will be one big FAIL. If a visitor arrives to a site that’s down, the chances of him or her returning are very, very slim.
• If your site crashes, you need a host that offers fast service—In the event that your site does crash, your choice of hosting provider will really matter. You have to make sure you have a hosting service that will be available to give you customer support to help you get your site back up as quickly as possible.

Choosing the Right Web Host for Blog Marketing

So, with all that in mind, how can you make sure you choose the right web host to support your viral marketing efforts? Here are some tips to help you out.

• Avoid free hosting services—With free hosting, you get what you pay for, which means your hosting will be very limited. The simple truth is that most free hosting services are not setup to accommodate large spikes in traffic.
• Find a hosting company with excellent customer service—Make sure you choose a hosting company with a sterling reputation for providing excellent customer service. 24/7 customer support and fast response times are absolutely essential.
• Consider dedicated hosting—With the typical shared hosting plan, your website is sharing a server with hundreds of other websites. So if your site sees a big bump in traffic, the already-taxed server may not be able to handle it. With dedicated hosting, you get your own dedicated server, which better positions your website for traffic spikes.

Are you confident that your website would stay up if you had a blog post go viral? Share your thoughts by commenting below.