Changing server location for a global targetted site
-
Hi,
I am just in the process of purchasing a site from someone. The site has a global target audience (well global English speaking anyway).
The site is on a .info domain and is currently hosted in Germany.
Checking on SemRush it looks like 70% of traffic comes from English speaking countries (US, Australia, Canada, UK).
Now I need to move the hosting to one of my own when I change ownership of the site. Now does it overly matter where I choose my hosting as currently it is hosted in Germany (around 4% of visitors from Germany) but I want to do my best not to knock any rankings but I was thinking of moving it to a UK or US based host but still want to keep a general worldwide userbase. As the US accounts for the largest part of traffic (39%) would I be best choosing hosting based over in the US or does it not overly matter too much (I am in the UK so most hosting I use is UK based).
I have read a number of posts on server location but most seem to be for site which have a country specific target audience.
Thanks for your help!
-
Thanks for the reply Theo
In my mind it made sence that I should be able to move host to a different country with not too many problems. Most of my other sites are UK based with a UK target audience I just wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be rocking the boat too much with a change of country and had it been hosted in a country where there was a decent level of traffic coming from then I'd have not considered thinking of moving it, the German hosting just threw me a curve ball I wanted to make sure I didn't ruin anything.
A fast US or UK server does sound like it would be OK to switch to. With regards to a CDN solution, there are no images or such on the site and the pages are very small file sizes so I'm unsure that it would make too much different to the load times, however a very good suggestion and once I get ownership of the site I'll check that that is still the case.
With regards to the .info domain, I know it's not ideal but the site I am buying is around 6 years old so I'm just going to have to live with it for this site, had it only been a year or 2 old I'd have given it a bit more thought.
-
You should be looking at this from two different angles: (1) how would the hosting affect your rankings and (2) how will it affect the loading time of your website.
In terms of rankings, especially since you're considering to purchase a .info domain (side note: are you sure about this? Domains with .info isn't exactly considered a super premium TLD), I don't think it'll make much of a difference whether you'll be hosting in the USA or in Germany. Had it been a .de targeting Germany (much like the articles you're referencing) things had been different and I would've advised you to keep hosting the website in Germany.
Add the fact that it seems that fewer than 5% of your visitors are coming from Germany in the first place, I would say a move to an IP located in the US wouldn't hurt your number of visitors. Perhaps it might even increase your rankings in the USA marginally because Google now finds your IP hosted over there.
In terms of loading time you might want to consider CDN solutions to serve your website as quickly as possible to a global crowd.
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
-
What's the best homepage experince for an international site?
Greeting Mozzers. I have a question for the community, which I would appreciate your input on. If you have a single gTLD that services multiple countires, what do you think is the best homepage UX for the root homepage and why? So the example would be you own website www.company.org and target content to Germany, Japan and Australia with content through the folder structure eg. www.company.org/de-de If someone comes to the www.company.org from a region, would you: Redirect them based on location IP – so if from Germany they land on www.company.org/de-de Let them land on the homepage which offers location selection Let them land on a page with content and offer location selection eg. pop-up or obvious selection box Something I’ve not thought of… I'd appreciate your input. Thanks
International SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Cant find good information on webmaster tools geographic target and have some questions about it.
Going through our webmaster tools setting I noticed someone had checked Target Users and selected United States. Most of our business is in the US but we still do some internationally. If I uncheck it will I lose rankings in the US?
International SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
I have on site translated into several languages on different TLDs, .com, .de, .co.uk, .no, etc. Is this duplicate content?
Three of the sites are English (.co.uk, .com, .us) as well as foreign (.de, .no, etc.) - are these all seen as having duplicate content on every site? They're hosted under the same EpiServer backend system if this helps. But I am still copying and pasting content over each site, and translating where necessary, so I'm concerned this is indexed as being large amounts of duplicate content. Site traffic doesn't appear to be suffering but as I'm currently putting together new SEOs strategies, I want to cover this possibility. Any advice on ensuring the sites aren't penalised appreciated!
International SEO | | hurtigruten0 -
Geographical targeting and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
Let me paint you a picture, a site attempts geographical targeting by using sub-directories. However, 'targeting' is used loosely in this case. One sub-directory targets the US, the other is for everywhere else. For example: example.com/us/ <-- US example.com/en/ <--- Everywhere else The homepage is a map, they get taken to the US site if they click on US, they get the other site if they click anywhere else. The site is effectively duplicated in both folders, the only difference being one is written in US English, the other in UK English. So, while I am able to set the preferred geo in Google Webmaster tools for the US site, I can't for the everything else site. Recently I came across rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” and thought it may be useful. Does anyone know if I can specify more than one language per URL using this method? For example using multiple instances such as: Is this possible at all? Thanks in advance, and I'm open to any other suggestions! 🙂
International SEO | | David_ODonnell0 -
How do I successfully verify my site for Baidu's webmaster tools?
Instructions for verifying a website via file validation for Baidu's webmaster tools are pretty vague. Does anyone know if the process is the same as Google Webmaster Tools where the verification string must appear in the URL and in the content of the file? Also, does it truly have to be verified within 2.6 hours? Appreciate any feedback from people who have successfully verified their site.
International SEO | | sigmaaldrich0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
International SEO | | Francisco_Meza0