How big is the effect of having your site hosted in the country you're targeting?
-
Other than having a ccTLD domain and assigning your target country in Google Webmaster Tools' "geotargeting" feature, how big is the effect of having your site hosted in the country you're targeting? Is it really necessary? or it is just a small signal?
Thanks in advance!
-
It is definitely a ranking criteria BUT if you do your homework right by focussing on other ranking factors, you do not need to consider it. To make it perfect: if you can, always use the right ccTLD.
Concentrate on keyword domains, with the right ccTLD but if you can`t use keyword domains despite their CC
Take a look at the actual list of ranking factors here
-
My understanding is that it's a factor but not a big one if you're already using a ccTLD and/or geotargeting.
I had an experience where we moved a site hosted in the UK to Amazon Web Services' data centre located in Ireland. The site was on a .com domain but used geotargeting for the UK. As far as we could tell, the server move did not have any effect on rankings on google.co.uk or google.ie.
I had another experience with a .co.uk domain - which was moved to 1&1 in Germany. This site did not use geotargeting. Again, we didn't notice any significant changes in UK rankings as a result of the move.
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
-
Which is the best way to rank a site?
Hi, I have been working on SEO for a long time, recently I started a new site where I was aiming to rank different niches but I am stuck. First I covered some keywords related to sports then I shifted the niche to hunting. My idea was to cover a niche fully then move on to the 2nd so the authority of the site can also help rank the 2nd niche but the problem is I am unable to rank my site. Should I be considering only a very specific niche site or should I continue doing all the stuff on the same site. Please checkout my site ReviewsCase.com and let me know. And if has also done the same please let me know.
Algorithm Updates | | seoasikhan20 -
Site not indexed on Google UK after 4 days?
Hello!
Algorithm Updates | | digitalsoda
Wonder if anyone can help with this one? I have an ecommerce site www.doggydazzles.co.uk which went live on Friday and was submitted to Google via webmaster tools on saturday morning, but I can't find any trace of it in a google search?
I'm a bit stuck with this as its never happened to any of my other sites.
Can anyone help please or make suggestions as to what I can do to get ranked quicker? Thanks0 -
Unable to increase the site traffic since 2 yrs
Hello friends, I am new to seomoz forum and this is my first query. Even i asked this query in many forums, i didnt get the right answer. it will be a big help if anyone answers my question. Since 2yrs i am doing seo for my site. even i am following all the white hat techniques and doing every submission manually. Still my site traffic is below 100 visits. Can any one help me to increase the site traffic? What are the techniques i need to follow to increase site visits? Also one of my sites recently got disappeared from google. I have checked all the pages listed in google for my site's major keywords. I didnt find the site anywhere. Can u hep me why this condition wll happen and what to do to overcome such issues?
Algorithm Updates | | Covantech0 -
Rankings Gone? Have I been effected by the Panda/Penguin Update(s)?
Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found. I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us. They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period. Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
Algorithm Updates | | EngagedMetrics
Josh0 -
How will SEO be impacted by Google's new Knowledge Graph?
With the recent announcement of Googles new Knowledge Graph, the SERP will be different. Will this present a new set of SEO best practices?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0 -
Re-direct domain ranking higher than main domain 6 months later
Hello, I have a question regarding a couple of our in-house domains & rankings. We have our main site which we've had for 3+ years, moderately optimised. And our separate site for another publication, this was it's own stand-alone site but now that site has been removed off our servers & the old domain a straight forward http re-direct via 1&1 to the main website. The old site was removed & forward set up before October 2011, however when searching Google for 'specification online' the old domain appears position #1. We have many other domains which are http re-directs with 1&1 and none of these have causes us this issue. What else can I do to get the old domain to stop showing up on Google? Domains in questions: Main site: http://specificationonline.co.uk Old site: http://housingspecification.com If you need any further info I'll be happy to provide as we owned both domains & hosting from day 1 so can access anything required.
Algorithm Updates | | thestudio40 -
Should I block non-informative pages from Google's index?
Our site has about 1000 pages indexed, and the vast majority of them are not useful, and/or contain little content. Some of these are: -Galleries
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept
-Pages of images with no text except for navigation
-Popup windows that contain further information about something but contain no navigation, and sometimes only a couple sentences My question is whether or not I should put a noindex in the meta tags. I think it would be good because the ratio of quality to low quality pages right now is not good at all. I am apprehensive because if I'm blocking more than half my site from Google, won't Google see that as a suspicious or bad practice?1 -
Host name per content
Hello everyone. I'm in charge of the website HispaZone.com in which apart from many other things we provide free program downloads in spanish in a similar way to softpedia, tucows, cnet, softonic and others. I'm not a great SEO but I try to do my best. Several months ago based on my most important competence (softonic.com and uptodown.com) I decided that I would give a host name under the domain hispazone.com for the landing page of each program download. For downloading Nero for example the landing page would be http://nero.hispazone.com and like this for the whole of our 800 program database. The thing is that after 5-6 months since that change and after many other improvements, the traffic coming from google to these downloads dropped dramatically. We thought it could have been related to Google Panda but we recently hired an SEO consultant and he says that it's because of not having the downloads under the same host name. That we lose the page authority and the link flow from the hostname http://www.hispazone.com. The SEO consultant seems to be great, very up to date with all new changes in google. We made many improvements thanks to him and I can say that I trust him with everything. But now comes the time for deciding if we move our program download landing pages back to the www.hispazone.com hostname. I would like some second opinion about this because the fact that the biggest ones in Spain like Softonic and Uptodown have a hostname for each program download when these companies invest really a lot in their SEO makes me be unsure of going back into having all under the same hostname. Thanks a lot.
Algorithm Updates | | HispaZone0