Web hosting is the service that stores a website's files and makes them accessible over the internet, running on specialized, always-on computers called servers that stay connected so a site can be reached at any hour from anywhere.
Hosting comes in a few common shapes, each trading cost against performance and control differently. Shared hosting puts many sites on one server splitting its resources, the cheapest option but the one most exposed to another site's traffic spike or misconfiguration slowing things down. VPS and dedicated hosting give a site its own reserved resources or an entire server outright, scaling up in both cost and control. Cloud hosting spreads a site across a flexible pool of resources that can scale up or down with traffic rather than being fixed to one physical machine. For SEO specifically, hosting quality shows up directly in page speed and uptime, both of which affect rankings and user experience, which is why the cheapest available hosting plan isn't always the cheapest choice once lost traffic and lost conversions are counted in.
