Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should we use Cloudflare
-
Hi all, we want to speed up our website (hosted in Wordpress, traffic around 450,000 page views monthly), we use lots of images. And we're wondering about setting up on Cloudflare, however after searching a bit in Google I have seen some people say the change in IP, or possible sharing of Its with bad neighbourhoods, can really hit search rankings.
So, I was wondering what the latest thinking is on this subject, would the increased speed and local server locations be a boost for SEO, moreso than a potential loss of rankings for changing IP?
Thanks!
-
Hi
Great question.
Google stopped looking at IP address about two years ago.
I am sure that there IP wasn’t that factor for SEO unless they where on a PBN or it was over two years ago.Many very large sites use CloudFlare or something else like it
I personally would recommend Fastly if you want something that with shrink images & work like CloudFlare but do the things that only CloudFlare Enterprise a $5,000 a month offering can do.
I don’t know you’re server config but I know time after time Fastly has been much faster then CloudFlare
Lastly I do want to CloudFlare has gotten a bad name because they do not regulate who or what content is allowed on there platform booters use them to attack & to prevent DDOS attacks. With a platform that this has lead to there IPs being listed as spam so I have seen a case when I used.
9.9.9.9 or IBMQuad9 as reclusive DNS where I could not see a CloudFlare site because one ip was listed as spam & 9.9.9.9 just shows a 500 error it was fixed when I changed my local DNS to a dns system that didn’t block spam IPs. this also only happened once so it is very unlikely to happen to you.
Change in IP, or possible sharing of Its with PBNs / bad Neighborhood’s, can really hit search rankings but it is very unlikely that google will think that is your domain if the IP is dynamic like CloudFlare . it not going to hurt you because google looks at domains not IPs now.
but this is not something I would worry about from CloudFlare it cleans IPs so if you get one you will have a new one sooner if you tell them also the business & Enterprise plans are much cleaner the the free plan
this is just one more reason https://www.fastly.com/
But the short answer is yes it’s safe to use.
do you mind telling me what you’re hosting setup is now & who you host with?
Hope I have been of help,
Tom
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
-
Using 2 cache plugin good or not?
Hi, Can anyone tell me - whether using 2 cache plugin helps or it cause any issue? Besides, when i used w3 cache plugin in WordPress its found like inline CSS issue to get cleared. So, i tried auto optimized but my website Soc prollect gone crashed in between while using the some. Is there any solution and can anyone tell me which plugin advantages to speed the site by removing java script and inline css at a time.
Technical SEO | | nazfazy0 -
Using GeoDNS across 3 server locations
Hi, I have multiple servers across UK and USA. I have a web site that serves both areas and was looking at cloning my sites and using GeoDNS to route visitors to the closest server to improve speed and experience So UK visitors would connect to UK dedicated server, North America - New York server and so on Is this a good way or would this effect SEO negatively. Cheers Keith
Technical SEO | | Keith-0071 -
Correct use of schema for online store and physical stores
I have been getting conflicting advice on the best way to implement schema for the following scenario. There is a central e-commerce store that is registered to it's own unique address which is "head office". There are a few physical shops each of which has their own location and address. Each shop has its own landing page within /our-stores/. So each page on the website has the Organisation schema for the central 'organisation', something like: Then on each physical store landing page is something like the following as well as the Organisation schema: Is this correct? If it is should I extend LocalBusiness with store URL and sameAs for GMB listing and maybe Companies House registration? It's also been suggested that we should use LocalBusiness for the head office of the company, then Departmentwith the typeStore. But i'm not sure on that?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.
I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice. Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also. What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it. It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain. Thanks
Technical SEO | | jarydcat10 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?
Hi all I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it. The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me! Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing? Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site? Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated. Kris
Technical SEO | | yousayjump0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0
