Does server location (IP) help with international SEO?
-
If I have a .com.br domain with all my content in Portuguese, will it make a difference if I host in the US or if I host on a server in Brazil?
I thought I had the answer to this from Rand in one of his Whiteboard Fridays a while back where he said hosting in the target country would help, but the lady who did the international SEO presentation in MozCon 2011 said any SEO who says this helps doesn't know international SEO. Can anybody point me to a case study on this?
I have US and Brazilian dedicated servers but I'd prefer to get rid of the Brazil server expense.
-
From the link:
"Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone."
-
Google say "server location is irrelevant" if you have the top level domain: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html - this link is newer than the Matt Cutts video. You can also geotarget to Brazil in Google Webmaster Tools.
-
Yes it does, more info from Rand: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
-
Yes it does! Matt Cutts from Google has a great video explaining it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keIzr3eWK8I
(I'm not sure the link policy on this forum but assume since it's Matt Cutts, it should be okay!)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Badges & SEO
Hello, Moz Community! We're working on creating an affiliate badge for events that make our best-of list and we're wondering: if every event website embedded the badge (could be as many as 70), would having the same image hosting URL for each one raise concerns with Google? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EveryActionHQ0 -
Images on Website for SEO
Good Morning, We have a magento website with hundreds of different products that have slight size variations. The image for each of these products looks the same (the only difference between the products is some of the dimensions) .... Would you recommend using the same image for each of these products and just use a generic file name that describes the overall product or would you give each product its own image with it's specific product name as the file name? Should I use 1 image for 500 different sku's or should i rename the file the name of each individual sku and load an individual image? The end user will not know the difference since all of the images will appear identical, simply asking from an SEO perspective. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Help with strange 404 Errors.
For the most part I have never had trouble tracking down 404's. Usually it's simply a broken link, but lately I have been getting these strange errors http://gridironexperts.com/http%3A/www.nfl.com/gamecenter?game_id=29528&season=2008&displayPage=tab_gamecenter/ What does; %C2%94 repersent? The error always points to NFL.com, but we don't link to them...like ever? Can I just 404: http://gridironexperts.com// to fix the problem, as all 404's start with this weird %C2%94 error. Is this error even on my site? Is in the backend...virus? thanks -Mike
Technical SEO | | MikePatch0 -
Hosting sitemap on another server
I was looking into XML sitemap generators and one that seems to be recommended quite a bit on the forums is the xml-sitemaps.com They have a few versions though. I'll need more than 500 pages indexed, so it is just a case of whether I go for their paid for version and install on our server or go for their pro-sitemaps.com offering. For the pro-sitemaps.com they say: "We host your sitemap files on our server and ping search engines automatically" My question is will this be less effective than my installing it on our server from an SEO perspective because it is no longer on our root domain?
Technical SEO | | design_man0 -
Local SEO best practices for multiple locations
When dealing with local search for a business with multiple locations, I've always created an individual page for each location. Aside from the address and business name being in there, I also like to make sure the title tag and other important markup features the state/city/suburb, or, in the case of hyper-local, hyper-competitive markets, information more specific than that. It's worked very well so far. But, the one thing you can always count on with Local is that the game keeps changing. So I'd like to hear what you think... How do you deal with multiple locations these days? Has Google (and others, of course) advanced far enough to not mess things up if you put multiple locations on the same page? (Do I hear snickers? Be nice now) How does Schema.org fit in to your tactics in this area, if at all? Cheers (Edit: dear SEOmoz, stop eating my line breaks)
Technical SEO | | BedeFahey0 -
Help with SEO
Hello, I am brand new to SEO and I'm learning on the go everyday. I am having issues with Google and getting any sort of ranking or analysis or even just traffic reports. I understand the site has never really been optimized so it might really not have any reports. So basically my real question is what helpful tricks or hints do you guys have that I can implement? Anything and everything helps. So far I have run the crawl diagnostics and I'm working on fixing the errors. Thanks fr your help.
Technical SEO | | Future130
