Is a Dedicated Server a Worthwhile Investment?
-
Greeting MOZ Community:
Our site is hosted on a virtual private server. Apparently there are dozens of other web sites hosted on the same server. The performance is usually pretty fast, with the site downloading in 1-3 seconds. However, a few times per month, the performance slows down, to say 5-6 seconds. Please see the attached image.
I suspect this may have something to do with the other web sites on the server.
Currently we pay about $60/month. A dedicated server would cost about $120/month. Would site performance be more consistent on a dedicated server? Could we enjoy potential SEO benefits by having our own server, i.e. could we rank slightly higher if the speed was more consistent and the performance slightly faster?
Thanks, Alan
-
I don't think that can be had for the price. I pay around $260 for a single xeon with a ssd and 8 gig.
-
The answer will depend to a degree on the load that your traffic places on the server and the quality of the equipment in your server.
If you get one with a nice amount of memory, fast processor and solid state harddrive then the speed increase could be so pronounced that you will be able to tell when it goes into service without being told... at the same time that could be overkill if your traffic is modest.
Getting efficient images and caching working could have a greater impact on speed than the equipment.
If you do both then you will have the best situation.
-
You cut-off load sample size on your screenshot. If the sample size is low, the data is not that accurate and more measurement may be needed.
You are right though, one of the key factors in migration to a dedicated server is your page load times.
-
If you can give a bit more info about the site that would help.
Cost Benefit and load time can be subjective depending on the industry and also what load time is for the normal user and how much "Load Time" is the next issue to tackle on your SEO list of things to do. You might get far more gains in authority by focusing on core weaknesses such as content, social, and link building that you will gain from the cost spend on a dedicated server
Hope that that is useful.
Bruce
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
-
Homepage organization schema question: logo lives on amazon server, can I call that out on the structured data?
Basically, the homepage organization schema has called out the logo, but it lives on the amazon server. We're having issues with Google rendering the correct logo on the knowledge graph. The URL for the amazon asset looks something like this: <brandname>-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<logo>.png</logo></brandname> Calling that out on the organization structured data for the logo is okay right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Best server-side xml sitemap generator?
I have tried xml-sitemaps which tends to crash when spidering my site(s) and requires multiple manual resumes which aren't practical for our businesses. Please let me know if any other server-side generators that could be used on multiple enterprise-sized websites exist that could be a good fit. Image sitemaps would also be helpfu.l +++One with multiple starting URLs would help spidering/indexing the most important sections of our sites. Also, has anyone heard of or used Dyno Mapper? This also looks like a good solution for us, but was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this product.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
Invest in a Image Sitemap - Yes or No?
Hey Mozers, 2 part question I'm reaching out to see if you all think Image Sitemaps are totally worth it for a big company. I can totally understand its value for a smaller mom & pop company. With a larger company they would have way more products so is it worth it having an image site map? I cant find examples of image sitemaps online. Would you be able to provide a website that is doing it? I can only find video sitemaps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva0 -
B2B site targeting 20,000 companies with 20,000 dedicated "target company pages" on own website.
An energy company I'm working with has decided to target 20,000 odd companies on their own b2b website, by producing a new dedicated page per target company on their website - each page including unique copy and a sales proposition (20,000 odd new pages to optimize! Yikes!). I've never come across such an approach before... what might be the SEO pitfalls (other than that's a helluva number of pages to optimize!). Any thoughts would be very welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
When is the right time to invest in a Trusted SEO firm
My website www.dealwithautism.com is a 3 month old website. It currently has 50+ quality pages that are KW targeted and on page optimized (usually grade A on Moz page grader). Over the next 12 to 15 months, I plan add a total of 300 to 400 kw targeted pages to strive for topical authority. I am launching my first product (an ebook in the next couple of months) and would eventually move into a membership subscription model in next 15 month. I want to invest in a long term SEO strategy with a reputed and trusted SEO firm. Being just a 1 person show at he moment, my budget is small (about $250 a month) but over time, as I acquire more revenue I will increase my SEO budget accordingly. I believe, if I get traffic, my content has the guts to absorb engagement. From analytics, any page that is not bounced and has received organic traffic (only less than 10 per day though) has an average time spent > 12 mins. So my content seems to be doing its bit now. My question: Is now a good time to invest in SEO for my budget? I need a long term and natural seo strategy, no quick wins - happy to play by the CPC model for my money pages till I see an organic growth. Or should I wait for 5-6 more months to let my site age a bit and also y that time I should have 150+ quality pages, so the authority should be more.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DealWithAutism0 -
How concerning is a message from Google about an increase in server errors?
In the past few weeks I have started getting messages from Google webmasters about an increase in server errors. According to our r&d team these messages come at times our site has been down and Google is not an accurate measure of the site health. 1 - are they correct and is there a better tool to be using? 2 - could be harmed that Google is occasionally running into this problem..that is then fixed within a few hours? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?
About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors... Can a server migration change rankings? Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Thos0030 -
Changing Servers + Effect on SEO
Hi, I am currently with a very slow server. Our website takes quite a while to load, FTP is very slow and content changes with Wordpress are slow because even the database connection takes a lot of time. However, my website ranks very well. Traffic has doubled in the last year. Our domain has been registered with this company for over 10 years. I am wondering if changing to a different hosting provider would have an effect on my rankings due to the change in IP.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMan160