Using a third party server to host site elements
-
Hi guys -
I have a client who are recently experiencing a great deal of more traffic to their site. As a result, their web development agency have given them a server upgrade to cope with the new demand.
One thing they have also done is put all website scripts, CSS files, images, downloadable content (such as PDFs) - onto a 3rd party server (Amazon S3). Apparently this was done so that my clients server just handles the page requests now - and all other elements are then grabbed from the Amazon s3 server. So basically, this means any HTML content and web pages are still hosted through my clients domain - but all other content is accessible through an Amazon s3 server URL.
I'm wondering what SEO implications this will have for my clients domain? While all pages and HTML content is still accessible thorugh their domain name, each page is of course now making many server calls to the Amazon s3 server through external URLs (s3.amazonaws.com).
I imagine this will mean any elements sitting on the Amazon S3 server can no longer contribute value to the clients SEO profile - because that actual content is not physically part of their domain anymore. However what I am more concerned about is whether all of these external server calls are going to have a negative effect on the web pages value overall. Should I be advising my client to ensure all site elements are hosted on their own server, and therefore all elements are accessible through their domain?
Hope this makes sense (I'm not the best at explaining things!)
-
Hello Zeal Digital,
I use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for images, CSS and javascript.
Doing that adds only about $10 to cost per month for a site that had around 800,000 pageviews per month.
You have complete control over the images. If there is a problem, you can force the CDN to flush a file and reload it from the source. You add code to your .htaccess file that tells the CDN how long to store images before fluching them and getting a new copy. It is all automated, there is generally no work for you to do. I host with softlayer.com and this is part of their service.
The change from self-sourced images, css and scripts had a massive improvement on the server.
- it is a 16-processor linux box with twin 15,000rpm SCSI drives and 12Gb RAM - it is quite fast!
Page delivery times improved by 1-2 seconds.
The server now is so lightly loaded that it could be downgraded to save more money.
It has zero effect on SEO. The CDN is accessed using a CNAME.
- static.domain.com - so don't worry about it looking like components are from other places.
The CDN has servers all over the world, so no matter where the visitors are, it is only a few hops for them to get most of the content, making it much faster for someone in Australia who would normally pull images from a server in the USA.
Your only problem with Amazon S3 is that they have crashed it a few times, but other than that, it is a good thing to do.
I wouldn't advise them to self-host, unless you want to increase their costs, server loading and page delivery times.
-
Great advice, cheers Jeffery!
-
I work with a number of high traffic sites (TB's of data each day, 10's millions page views/month). With many of these sites, we have offloaded static content to either dedicated static content servers (typically cloud based so we can scale up and down) or to content deliver networks. I've not had anyone report any SEO impact.
In contrast, they often see user engagement (page views/user), repeat visitors, and other traffic metrics improve. Users like fast sites. Also, Google apparently likes fast sites too, so while I've not seen it, you could actually get a boost in your SERPs due to faster loading pages.
If you break down a modern web page, you will find numerous elements required. Dozens of images, CSS, javascript as well as the page itself. All of these items require a request to the web server.
With some graphic intensive sites, I've seen as much as 95% of all web server requests (HTTP requests) be attributable to static content. By moving these HTTP requests to other systems, you free your primary server to handle the application. This provides a better user experience and improves scalability.
Content Delivery Networks
I do not use Amazon's Web Services so I do not know specifically what they offer. But here are two CDN's Ihave used with good success:
Internap:
http://www.internap.com/cdn-services-content-delivery-network/
Edgecast:
One method I look for is called "origin pull." With this method, you do not have to upload files to the CDN. The CDN will fetch them automatically from your site as needed. I found this is much easier to manage on sites that have frequent content updates.
-
Hosting images externally never had any impact on cases I had a chance to observe. The only problem I can think of is that you lose control over loading times or if somebody takes an image and links (credits) the image hosting domain instead of your domain.
-
Couple of notes for you
- There isn't any SEO impact on WHERE the data is loaded from. Look at any major website (especially one that ranks well) and they're openly using content delivery (like Akamai, Amazon S3/Cloudfront, etc) for static content. This is good business practice because it takes that load off your web server and often places the content closer to where the client is. Faster content delivery can help SEO if you have a slow server.
- If they're using the raw S3 buckets I would HIGHLY suggest signing up for Cloudfront. There's two benefits to doing this. First, you put the content into Amazon's cloud, where it is more readily available. Second, you can use domain aliasing to help obscure the source. For instance, let's say you have an images bucket. You could add a CNAME DNS record for images.yourdomain.com and then put that into your source code. You can still see where the DNS takes you, but it's not obvious to the general public. The cost difference between raw S3 delivery and Cloudfront is negligible.
Oh, and I use Amazon Cloudfront for my delivery. Never had any SEO issues with doing so.
-
I don't recomend to have the resources and database to other server than files, it makes some flood traffic between servers, the resources are harder to load and the site optimum speed is decreased. Also you can't compress this content so they are downloaded independently.
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
-
Site Migration from One Dev. and Server to Another Dev. and Server
Hi Mozzers! I've got a client that is in the early stages of moving the development of their site to another company and therefore, a new server. The site is very large and the migration will take place over 18 months. In the beginning, smaller chunks of the site will be moved, and as that process gets dialed in, larger portions will migrate. It was brought to our attention today that they (on either side of development) have not yet worked out the logistics of keeping the domain and URL structure consistent throughout the migration. The initial proposal was that they publish newly migrated pages to a subdomain, which we obviously want to steer away from. I'm now on a mission to find a solution that will make everyone happy; client, old dev, new dev, and us (as the SEO partner). Does anyone have experience in managing SEO through a migration such as this?
Technical SEO | | LoganRay0 -
Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading (used for emphasis)?
Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading? My clients are using heading tags for text they want to emphasize and make stand out. Does this affect search rankings for SEO?
Technical SEO | | jthompson05130 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Server Vs Authority
Deciding on whether to go for a Sub directory or CC tld structure. So the tradeoff would be one server location (which can affect local rankings if the server is outside the country) VS a better passing of link authority. What factor is more important?
Technical SEO | | Tourman0 -
Should this site start again on a new domain
Hi We have not done SEO on this site they have used another company who looks like they outsourced and the links have been built by a third party all blog networks and this company have said they cannot get the links removed. Google flagged artificial links on this web site in February and in April it lost over 10000 visitors in a month and its just free falled ever since. The categories have been recreated and no redirects created due to the amount of backlinks from the blog sites to the original category pages but the site is not recovering its down to 1500 visitors a month and used to get 14000 a month. So should my customer ditch the domain and move this site to fresh domain? http://www.kids-beds-online.com Any answers would really be appreciated. thanks Tracy
Technical SEO | | dashesndots0 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Young site trying hard, but banging head against the wall -- Site Review
Hi All New to PRO but we're seriously committed to getting this working. And firstly thank you to anyone who offers any useful thoughts and insights. We've launched a new site, unfortunately late to the market for the season and are really struggling to get search engine recognition. Site: http://www.ignitehats.co.uk/ We're continuously adding new content, slowly gathering more links and working hard to promote socially. But even on our clearest search terms like "Ignite hats" we're down on page 4. Both GWT and the Seomoz tools highlight no big problems (a few titles that are too long) but otherwise nothing. Maybe wrongly we requested that the Google spam team review our site incase it was being penalised, but got a template response saying the site was not in their spam system (phew, there wasn't a reason it should be we believe). We're wondering if this is just that our site is just too young? It's been live for 6 weeks. But worry maybe this is not the case. We've had success with another site we run much sooner than this. Any help or pointers would be really appreciated. Similar stories and what others have done, at least to give us some confidence to carry on would be great. Thanks for reading.
Technical SEO | | JHill0 -
Will 301 redirecting a site multiple times still preserve the original site value?
Hi, All! If site www.abc.com was already 301 redirected to site www.def.com, and now the site owner wants to redirect www.def.com to www.ghi.com - is there any concern that it's not going to work, and some of the original linkjuice, rank, trust, etc. is going to vanish? Or as long as the 301s are set up right, should you be able to 301 indefinitely? Does anyone have any experience with actually doing this and seeing good/bad/neutral results? Thanks in advance! -Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0