Physical locationof the server vs customer base vs SEO penality?
-
HI All,
We are an Australian business with our hosting currently based in Australia.
We have recently been considering moving hosts for a few reasons. In particular when we have done analysis of hosting in the US and also with Rackspace say in Hong Kong we have found that the prices can be significantly cheaper or with more bells in whistles provided in the hosting of a dedicated server offshore vs Australia for the same price.
Therefore from this point of view we would be much better off moving our hosting to the US or HK with Rackspace.
There are the issues such as latency to take on board but lets put that to the side for the moment as we are mostly interested in understanding if offshore hosting will impact us from an SEO perspective and if so how and can these impacts be mitigated.
So our first question is
a) if we move our hosting offshore, will this impact our SEO?
b) if it does impact our seo, how will it impact (ie lose rankings for organic pages due to IP address being offshore)?
c) is A is also an impact are there ways of eliminating these impacts outlined in B?
d) net - if the impacts on seo can be mitigated will the net result still be negative or could we still be seen on the same footing as a domain hosted in Australia?
Thanks
Sean
-
Hi Everyone
I am maybe going to throw a spanner in the works here, but here goes.
I have read what you are all considering. I have been in the position whereby I have been asked on occasions to look at an ecommerce website that was not performing too well. I might find it has been registered for a number of years and it sat on a .co.uk domain had a few decent backlinks yet just wasn't cutting it with Google.co.uk
Investigation on these occasions showed the site to be hosted on a server in the USA, but my .co.uk ecommerce client really wanted to see some decent traffic from the UK.
I have then gone through the process of moving the domain onto a UK based server and after a short time boomph the website improved its performance on all round. Now had I done this only once you might say that was a fluke, but I have carried out this exercise on many occasions now where in most cases i was faced with the above scenario.
I had a client site for example that had some really good links some coming from one of our top television websites that had great pagerank, but it was not along with other good links rubbing of on this clients site. I oved the site domain from Germany back into the UK and again BOOMPH the website performance improved.
And in some cases where I was then faced with having to achieve the opposite i.e. have my UK client site reach say an audience in Germany, I would then use the Google products available to me for GEO targetting and also would create a page on www.clientdomain.com/german rather than doing as some suggest which is http://german.clientdomain.com
I agree with eyepac that conten links and good old fashioned optimisation are key factors for pages to do well and I would go as far as saying that my recipe for a bit of formality in how you prioritise your header code and then your approach to on-the-page content layout is still important. And a wee visit every now and then to remind ourselves of the Google Guide Line document that is available to us is always worth revising.
Look forward to anyone's feedback
-
Hi,
Does it matter from an SEO point of view if I use domainname.com or domainname.com.au?
** Yes, there is an impact but small. If all other things are equal then Google will favor the specific country TLD but I would't focus that much on it unless you are in the stage to choose a domain. I have several samples here in Austria with domains dot com that are killing the competitors as far as rankings, competitors that use dot at and that is because they have a better site vs the competition ( content, optimisation, links etc)
But again, like you said users also might favor .co.au as far as CTR. I know for a fact in France, Germany, Austria and italy that this is a big issue as users really tend to click on country TLDs way more.
Further does the registration address (i.e. whois data) matter. For example we are Australian based but our domain registration address is in the US
** No, that's not something that Google is getting into account. A lot of companies have the whois registration private for example. You can be in us, business ca be registered from us and provide info, products that are good, info that deserved to be ranked well in Australia so the whois info is irrelevant from a user point of view.
-
Thanks guys for your feedback. Another dimension to this.
If I am an Australian business targeting Australian customers but host offshore. Does it matter from an SEO point of view if I use domainname.com or domainname.com.au? I understand it may impact what the customer thinks but I am more interested in it from an SEO perspective and if the domain extension is important.
Further does the registration address (i.e. whois data) matter. For example we are Australian based but our domain registration address is in the US.
I assume these are all subtle things but I am interested to understand if they have an impact on SEO.
Thanks
-
a) if we move our hosting offshore, will this impact our SEO?
** It dosen't matter anymore as long as quality is the same or better.
b) if it does impact our seo, how will it impact (ie lose rankings for organic pages due to IP address being offshore)?
** In the past it was a very slight influence on Geo serps. Google.com vs google.co.au differences based on GEO ip locations (you can find several tests done in the seo sector online on the subject - however there is no longer the case).
I know several companies - big and small that host with Amazon Irland and they focus on very far regions.
I also know some US based, with US focus that hosts on Amazon Irland Cloud (due to some apps also hosted there for EU markets and there are no issues from an SEO point of view.
-
I don't believe the geo location of the ip address will matter much anymore (we have a high-ranking site with an ip address in Germany). I think the larger issues may be tied in with how fast the server is and the frequency of change of the ip address tied to the site (so if the ip address changes a ton). Even if it is a seo factor today, I would not expect it to be weighed heavily.
Would be interested in hearing different opinions/experience with this though.
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
-
Multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that effect SEO
Hello, If I have multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that affect SEO for example I have the following category structure? domain/bmw/series5/2006.html domain/bmw/series5/2007.html .. etc domain/bmw/series3/2007.html domain/bmw/series3/2006.html ..etc domain/Acura/cl/2006.html domain/Acura/cl/2007.html .. etc I do use canonical url because I may have the same product in multiple categories but my question does google penalize me because I have the same (year) url key for multiple categories even though I use canonical url ? do I have any advantage in masking them filters vs sub-category from SEO point of view ? specially my goal is to have different meta title and meta description for each sub category ?
Algorithm Updates | | LKCservicesINC0 -
Fresh backlinks vs old backlinks: A solid ranking factor?
Hi Moz community, Backlinks being a major ranking factor, do they must be very recent or fresh to make a ranking difference compared to the backlinks which are years old? We know usually fresh content ranks well, but I wonder how much the fresh/recent backlinks impact in rankings. Do the years old backlinks from related and reputed website have same impact on rankings? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
SEO Friendly IFRAMES?
Hi Everyone, My company is using an iframe for an About US page because we are having coding issues with our CMS. The content is coming directly from our server. After a couple of weeks passed, I searched for the page in Google and I noticed in the search result that the meta description was using the textual content served from the iframe on the page. Does this mean the iframe we are using is SEO friendly? Thanks, Jon
Algorithm Updates | | JMSCC0 -
New feature in seo results with icon?
I have never seen it before in the search: an icon in the title. Do you guys know how to get this icon in the title? See here: http://snag.gy/e7BiI.jpg e7BiI.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | Emilija1 -
PPC vs Organic CTR
Hello, I found two studies that seem to contradict themselves about PPC vs Organic CTR:
Algorithm Updates | | Cornel_Ilea
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2200730/Organic-vs.-Paid-Search-Results-Organic-Wins-94-of-Time
http://brandongaille.com/google-organic-click-through-rate-statistics/ Which one is true? Thank you
Cornel0 -
With Google's Location Based Searches, Should I Include a City Name with My Keywords?
What I mean is when you search on Google it seems to pull information by your location so would it be helpful including the city name + keyword still for SEO or would it be just as helpful using just the keyword? For example, a client is in Alexandria, VA and has a computer repair shop so would "Alexandria computer repair" be as good or better than "computer repair"? Just a little curious. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | CodyOelker-AMICreativeStudio2 -
Singular vs plural SEO
Hi everyone, OK I've been looking at the Google adwords keyword tool and it's thrown some of my On-page SEO into question (everything said here are examples, I haven't used any real life terms or figures). Lets say my page is about "Green Apples", let's say the keyword tool shows that the singular version "Green Apple" gets more searches (as an example). Should I optimize for the singular or the plural? Also lets say my title tag for that page is "Green Apples | Apples Galore UK" would Google/SEOmoz count that as an optimisation for the singular "Green Apple" or do the search engines take the title literally and don't differenciate between singular and plurals? Thanks in advance everyone! Regards, Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshSEO20112 -
TOP 3-5 SEO Blogs
I am wondering if you can help me start with the top three to five SEO blogs. I have been really enjoying and getting into learning more about SEO and it is becoming really fun as it becomes less overwhelming. A few days ago there was a question about great SEO blogs. And everyone provided a great list. I bookmarked all of them, but in reality I won't be able to go through them all and really get what is being presented. My question is what would be the best 3-5 to start with? Eventually I will go through them all but experience can help me get on the right track. Thanks for the suggestions
Algorithm Updates | | fertilityhealth0