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.
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
-
Hi Keith,
I meant the physical bandwidth - i.e. your time. I probably should've been more clear in a technical forum!
For the architecture, there are a few common setups. What I am in the middle of doing here at my company is through Google Cloud services. Duplicating the website app or script (I.e. Wordpress, Ghost, Drupal, CMS, Python App, Rails app, etc) across the several servers and using a load balancer to determine the fastest server. In the app's configuration I am using a single Database server also set up on Google Cloud, so when one server executes a command, it is reflected for all users on all servers. If you're Cron-jobbing all the servers you have set up but no common database, you're going to have some integrity issues, with some servers having some comments or edits, and some servers not.
-
Hi,
I have quite a lot of servers dotted around UK and USA so hosting and bandwidth is no big issue. if I host soley UK the ping times is a whopping 100ms+ to USA and vice versa so this leads me to hosting at least bother countries and latency will be 10-20ms and TTFB nice and low
I like the idea of creating and maintaining one major site as all will be English based, any backlinks will always be pointed to the dot com as opposed to splitting across multiple domains. Seo wise not too bothered will be focusing on speed and entertaining people with info on what they looking for - too me this is more important then the rest
Al servers are Cpanel based, so will try and find a solution to replicate sites in real-time or cron based intervals. this will be the next challenge
If I can pull this off it will be great for other sites I have too
Regards
Keith
-
Personally, I would use the one domain. And from what you've said, you would prefer it as well.
Thankfully, rankings are on a domain basis and not an IP basis, so there would be no issue in the first scenario. If you are duplicating and synchronizing the servers, you are better off using the one domain because you aren't creating two separate websites with differing content (UK English vs US English).
Do you have the bandwidth or ability to produce separate versions (for each domain) for each area you want to target? If not you are best off generalizing your website to target all English users instead of en-US, en-GB, etc. You're going to have to evaluate your geotargeting goals and budget.
-
Hi,
Many thansk for your input
I was planning to use cloudns GeoIP to send visitors to the server of their region.
So having one web site - www.xyz.com that is duplicated across three server (location) so all people see the same site. this would maintain the backlinks and no matter if google crawls from USA or UK it will see it as one domain with exception of 3 IP's in useor have www.xyz.com and www.xyz.co.uk as duplicates and set this in google webmaster tools.
plus set the language en-US and en-UKNot sure which is the best solution. www.xyz.com has the most backlinks and DA, where www.xyz.co.uk has zero and will be new to the world
I would rather people generate backlinks for the one domain as well
Your thoughts are welcome
Regards
Keith
-
The way GeoDNS works is through one of two methods: split DNS or load balancing. The end result is the same, the user will be directed to their closest or fastest available server.
Theoretically, this helps achieves a major goal of technical SEO - great site speed.
With the new Google Web Core Vitals update of this year, site speed and user experience has been further notched up as ranking factors. To get more technical– LCP, largest contentful paint, the speed of which the largest asset on a page loads, and FCP, first contentful paint, the speed of which the first legible content is produced on the screen, are site speed signals used by Google in their ranking algorithm. By connecting a user to the closest/ fastest server available, you can bring down the time on LCP and FCP and thereby increase your rank. The rank change may not be immediately noticeable depending on the competitiveness of your keywords and industry. You can measure these and other variables here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
In short: No, your SEO won't be negatively impacted, and it will more likely be positively impacted by these optimizations.
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 robots.txt files on server
Hi! I have previously hired a developer to put up my site and noticed afterwards that he did not know much about SEO. This lead me to starting to learn myself and applying some changes step by step. One of the things I am currently doing is inserting sitemap reference in robots.txt file (which was not there before). But just now when I wanted to upload the file via FTP to my server I found multiple ones - in different sizes - and I dont know what to do with them? Can I remove them? I have downloaded and opened them and they seem to be 2 textfiles and 2 dupplicates. Names: robots.txt (original dupplicate)
Technical SEO | | mjukhud
robots.txt-Original (original)
robots.txt-NEW (other content)
robots.txt-Working (other content dupplicate) Would really appreciate help and expertise suggestions. Thanks!0 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
Does anyone use pingler and is it any good
Hi, i have joined pingler and pay per month to use it but i have not seen any difference with traffic or google rankings and i would like to know if anyone else is using the paid version of pingler.com and if they find it a good service
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Using video transcripts v captions and avoiding duplicate content?
Part 1: After editing a You Tube transcript, I typically re-upload as a caption file (with time codes)...for SEO does it matter whether you upload as a transcript v. captions? Is one better than the other? Part 2: If you upload a transcript (or caption) to YouTube, then post that video/transcript in your blog, wouldn't you get pinged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0 -
MBG Tracker...how to use it?
So I am a new blogger that has been submitting guest blog posts to a number of different blogs. It was recommended that I use the MBG Tracker so I can track the back links. The problem is that I am totally lost on how to use this tool. As I said before I am new to this whole thing and I am not really sure what constitutes a "base link" and a "back link." In the author bylines we are linking to different pages within a larger website. If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | | Stroll0 -
Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?
I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?
Technical SEO | | upick-1623910 -
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!)
Technical SEO | | zealmedia0