Offshore Hosting
-
Hello,
I've got a question about offshore hosting. I have an affiliate website containing information about betting . The target market is The Netherlands. Because of legal reasons (stricter policiy and possible penalties) I would like to do the hosting of this website in another country.
Does this have any SEO complications? I heard websites that are hosted in anthother coutry than the country of the target market have a lower rank. Is this true and is there anything I can do do avoid this problem?
I hope someone will be able to help me!
Thanx in advance.
-
Hosting your website overseas can have an impact on search engine optimization, as the location of your server affects your website's loading speed and search engine rankings. To resolve this issue, consider using a content delivery network (CDN).
-
The scene has changed quite a bit, and there a lot more choices for offshore hosting now. I used to use vsys, but switched around quite a bit later on.
-
Nope, That Doesn't have a big impact on your rankings. But You Better Choose Better Offshore Hosting to provide value to your website. Better Load Time, Almost No Down Time.
-
As stated by Google, it is better to have an IP of the country you are targeting.
This can be solved with one of this two options:
- Hosting your site in a local hosting company;
- Buy a local IP and using proxy from an hosting company in your country
The second option is the ideal in these cases:
- The hosting companies of your targeted country are not really advanced
- You prefer to have all your sites hosted in a unique hosting platform
- You are using a cloud based hosting
What is important to understand is that "where the server is located" is just one of the many factors of a good international SEO. That means that even if you have the site hosted in the targeted country, if you don't optimize factors like local link building, correct translation of the site in the country language (taking care also of the local slangs), localization signals (currency, address, phone numbers), that site could lost against a site hosted in a different country but targeting your same offshore market.
Said that, considering your specific issue, check out what sites like Bwin.com or Betfair.com do in your same situation.
Bwin.com, for instance, cannot use the .es ccTLD for legal issues, so it created a /es/ subcarpet in the .com site.
In that case remember what said above and start use the rel="alternate" hreflang tag.
Then ,again, your case is a little bit complicated, because you are targeting two countries (NL and BE). In this tricky situation I would create two subcarpets (or subdomains), addressing one to the NL Google and the other to BE one, use the rel="alternate" hreflang, but also add the rel="canonical", choosing one of the two as the canonical version of both.
For more infos, read these posts and the links in them:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/a... << A post by Adam Audette, of which I suggest you read also the comments;
http://searchenginewatch.com/arti... << An interesting overview done in Search Engine Watch
I hope this helps you.
-
Thanx for your support to my question!
The opinions about this issue are quite different.
It seems that it could be a ranking factor, but not such an important one. Another problem is that my is ccTLD is not .nl (Netherlands) but .net. My site is also focussed on de Dutch speaking Belgium population.
Hosting in The Nethetlands is no option, because of legal reasons (stricter auditing on betting advertisement). When I will host my site in another country nobody can see that Im the owner of the site. At least this is much harder.
What do you advise me to do? When I will host my site in England, does this really affect the speed of my site?
Does someone knows a good hosting operator that can help me?
Hope someone can help me!
-
Once again that's incorrect information. I read the same Google information you read and it states:
"Google generally uses the following elements to determine the geotargeting of a website (or a part of a website):"
2. 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.
Did you notice that they say "try not to rely on the server location alone"?
They don't say that the server location is irrelevant!
It's clearly point 2 under geotargeting factors
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
-
Personally, I would always try and host the server in the country you are trying to target for a number of reasons - mainly performance (and chances are it's going to be cheaper for me, I live in the UK).
However the video "SEO Executive" posted above is from 2009, since then Google have released the following: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html stating that the server location is irrelevant if you own the ccTLD e.g .fr
Martijn you might also want to check out the following whiteboard Friday video about international SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
-
Actually hosting in another country does affect your rankings. If we look at a video that Matt Cutts of Google posted a while back, he clearly states that since 2001 they started looking at hosting IP addresses. He goes on to say that "where your server is located can determine rankings". Take a look for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU
-
The location of the server should not matter, obviously latency will be reduced if you host the site in the country your targeting.
You can assign the target country in Google web master tools also.
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
-
What's the world's best hosting?
Hello folks, I'm looking at hosting options. In your opinion, what's the best provider out there and why? Cheers, Gill.
Web Design | | Cannetastic0 -
Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider
My website - www.isacleanse.co.nz has dropped from being top10 rankings for all of my keywords to not even being in top 50 after just checking now. It used to be hosted on: www.1stdomains.nz
Web Design | | IsaCleanse
It got migrated to Sitground servers about a month ago See attached screenshot - would moving hosting provider cause such a huge drop? Or would there be anything else I should be looking at ? J2ahi0 -
Intuit Website Hosting - Stand-Alone Webite?
Hi all! My name is Yehuda and I'm new to this community. There's an issue i'm having trouble with: My site is hosted by Intuit Websites, and I use their Website Builder. Though it has its own domain name, it seems my "site" may just be a subdomain of their intuitwebsites.com website. I'm trying to figure out if my site is actually a stand-alone website, and what ramifications/issues there be in terms of bot crawling & SEO. Does anyone have a thought on this?
Web Design | | Jorge1110 -
New site - same host domain?
Building a new site for my business (different URL) For SEO purposes...Is it ok to host the site on the same account as my existing site (GoDaddy) or should I purchase a seperate hosting account? Thanks
Web Design | | Tustep0 -
How many sites on one hosting account?
How many sites is safe to house on one hosting provider? I use BlueHost and they advertise unlimited domains, but I'm not sure what the negative side effects might be from hosting too many on one hosting service. If it matter at all, I'm using WordPress to build my sites. Pros and Cons?
Web Design | | leafndrop0 -
Best hosting solution for linkbait videos
I'm creating a series of link bait videos. I want people to link to the pages on my site hosting the videos. What's the best site to host them on, if my primary concern is to get do-followed links? I'm worried about putting them on YouTube, as I imagine most of the links will be to the page on youtube.com, or worse, just directly embedded.
Web Design | | menachemp0 -
Can anyone rcommend a UK Hosting company
As some of you may have seen in an earlier post, i have had problems with the speed of my site. After good advice i got an expert on board who done tests and found that my server (hosting company) was taking a long time to answer, on some occasions it was taking seven seconds. I have tried to get the hosting company to listen and sort the problem out but they are not interested and keep trying to sell me other things to get the site faster, i am already on a dedicated server. So now I am looking for a UK hosting company who offer good service and would be grateful if anyone could recommend some on here so i can speak to them, as i want to get my sites moves a.s.a.p many thanks
Web Design | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
I need to signon with a hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
Web Design | | christinarule0