Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO?
-
I have server in Singapore. I need to target USA and Europe for my site. Whether I need to change server? Please guide me... Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO? If Yes, how it affect in SEO?
-
Thank you everyone for your help and feedback.
-
Hi
Good to see you Gianluca,
I agree with you 100% however I think the content delivery networks that are getting better and better and using a excellent DNS provider/registrar like DYN.com gives you the ability to former synergy with the CDN companies. I would strongly recommend http://dyn.com and http://www.highwinds.com/network/index.php if you do not want to have to deal with hosting in that specific area however. Companies like Peer 1 are literally everywhere with their CDN's as well. While I will agree having a server in that area of where you want to target is somewhat well let's say 7 years ago there is no choice today CDN's I think have given you that opportunity.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
This old post by Richard Baxter on SEOgadget explains this better I can do right now :):
-
Hi,
This is what I experienced for a Local business if I try my Office Computer (Washington DC) in Comparison to home Computer (Baltimore) for sure there is a little variation for Local business websites. However if you have a website that has International or Worldwide Market the effect is negligible.
S.H
-
Nice idea. How would you go about setting up the proxy would this be done on the DNS record for the site, and would there be any speed decreased going through the proxy?
-
The correct answer is: yes, but is it not a major factor.
You can find more insights here: Working with multi-regional sites, an official post published in the Google Webmaster Blog. It is dated 2010, but it is still valid (or better, even more valid about the server location):
It says this about the server location as Geotargeting factor:
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.
Said that, a best practice is to follow one of these options:
- hosting the site in the country targeted;
- using an IP assigned to the targeted country and operate via proxy
-
I believe that what Matt Cutts says is still true, that the location of your server can impact your SEO.
-
Both the thread and the link you mentioned both go to the same video Tommy, and it was first published in 2009.
After doing some more digging I think I am correct in saying location affects search results, certainly now that Google Places + Local search has been added to Google earlier this year.
I would also say that having the country code in your TLD (top level domain eg: .co.uk, .fr, .de etc) can be a big factor for SEO rankings. It may impact the search engine ranking of your site depending on the geographical location of the person doing the search.
For example, lets say you have a website called: “www.websitedeveloper.co.uk”. It’s ranking for the key term “freelance website developer” and that in part would be based on the location of the searcher and whether he or she is using different Google country-based search engines (using google.co.uk, google.fr etc)
For brand protection and geo-targeting strategies I would recommend implementing a permanent 301 redirect for your different domains. For example, I would buy “websitedeveloper.fr” and have it redirected to my main website called “websitedeveloper.co.uk”.
-
Hi!
See the answers in this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-server-location-impact-seo
See this video with Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU (What impact does server location have on rankings?)
Hope this will help you!
-
I'm not 100% sure on this myself but personally I think it would be a good idea to have your website hosted on a server in the location you're targeting.
I would suggest you write / change the content of your site to target the different audience. EG, if you're targeting France for example it might be worth mentioning "France" in the content and have it hosted on a French server.
Same with USA, make sure the content is different for each location your targeting to avoid cross site duplication of content.
FYI Matt Cutts covered this question on his youtube channel but this was back in 2009 and a lot has changed since then. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU
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
-
Question regarding international SEO
Hi there, I have a question regarding international SEO and the APAC region in particular. We currently have a website extension .com and offer our content in English. However, we notice that our website hardly ranks in Google in the APAC region, while one of the main languages in that region is also English. I figure one way would be to set up .com/sg/ (or .com/au/ or .com/nz/), but then the content would still be in English. So wouldn't that be counted as duplicate content? Does anyone have experience in improving website rankings for various English-speaking countries, without creating duplicate content? Thanks in advance for your help!
International SEO | | Billywig0 -
Getting accurate Geo Location traffic stats in Google Analytics - HELP
One of our clients services the US and the UK, but having looked at the report over an extended period of time we can still see that the vast majority of traffic is coming from the US. I.e. our last report for March indicated that there were over 3,000 users in the US but only 6 in the UK. We know that Google Analytics works out a user’s location based on where their IP is located and not their physical location, and that this means that the data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it won’t always represent what you expect. That being said, we know that the traffic figures for Europe are largely inaccurate and would like to get some more accurate stats to report on. Is there a way to do so at all within Google Analytics?
International SEO | | Wagada1 -
International SEO Sub folder Structure
Hi Could anyone offer some advice on the best way to structure sub folders on a website that we are launching worldwide. We are a UK based business and currently run a UK site on www.website.com and we are planning on launching into Europe using a sub folder structure. We will use /de, /fr, /es for the new countries that are coming on board but the question is should the UK site url be: www.website.com or www.website.com/uk As have an established web presence in the UK I'm thinking it should remain as www.wewbsite.com but are there any advantages / disadvantages to changing it to .com/uk Many Thanks
International SEO | | SmiffysUK0 -
SEO in foreign languages
Hi everyone, I currently run a website called Barquitos www.barquitos.com The site is an extension of a shop that is based here in Spain. Though because the town is particularly touristy we built the website to offer English and Spanish as language options on the site. English on Barquitos.com and Spanish through a sub domain es.barquitos.com. In an ideal world I want to rank the English version for English phrases on Google.co.uk, and the Spanish sub domain on es.barquitos.com. However, my Spanish is only at a reasonable standard, probably not good enough to look at writing quality content in Spanish. Is building up the Page Authority and Domain authority for the English main domain enough to rank the Spanish sub domain or do we need a focussed approach for both languages? Any tips or advice for helping to rank sub domains in foreign languages would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone Stu
International SEO | | Barquitos0 -
Global SEO - How quickly/aggressively should one expand into multiple countries?
SITUATION: Our client is a global company lacking the global presence, so naturally the idea is performing international/global SEO in each country. For benchmarking purposes, our plan is to focus on a select number of keywords (ie 8-15) for each country and begin link building within each respective country. All SEO effort (ie. link building) will be for sub-folders (ie. www.client.com/subfolder/) on the same top level domain. Note, each country may have multiple languages, so each language will be broken out as it's own unique SEO campaign with it's very own strategy and link building efforts. For example: Mexico has 2 languages (English & Spanish) and will be considered 2 separate campaigns. PROBLEM: The client wants to be extremely aggressive and perform SEO on 3 new countries every month. This amounts to 36 new countries/SEO campaigns per year. Assuming each country has 2 languages each, we are looking at 6 SEO campaigns per month, or 72 per year. Our concern is that since all SEO effort will be performed on the same top level domain, we may be growing too fast and the search engines may consider the addition of these new pages and links to be too 'spammy'. We'd love to hear some feedback or personal experience on what might be considered a "safe" or "healthy" expansion into different countries. Thanks!
International SEO | | ByteLaunch0 -
Can I point some rel alternate pages to a 404?
Hi everyone, I'm just setting up a series international websites and need to use rel="alternate" to make sure Google indexes the right thing and doesn't hit us with duplicate content. The problem is that rel="alternate" is page specific, and our international websites aren't exact copies of the main UK website. We've taken out the ecommerce module and a few blog categories because they aren't relevant. Can I just blanket implement rel="alternate" and let it sometimes point to a 404 on the alternate websites? Or is Google going to find that a bit weird? Thanks,
International SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
International SEO: abcJP.com OR abcJapan.com
The ccTLD .jp is not available. What URL should I use instead? MybrandJP.com or MybrandJapan.com *Mybrand is a four-letter acronym
International SEO | | FXDD0 -
Russian SEO: Do you know some good sources with tips and news about Yandex?
We are launching our site in Russia - and basically I have no experience in Russian SEO! Could you please recommend me some good English sources with news, tips and hints about Yandex? Basically I am looking the Russian SEOmoz 🙂 Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0