Geographic location of hosting affect SEO
-
Can anyone confirm if its the geographic location of the web hosting or the domain hosting that can affect seo ? I have a client who has their domain hosting and Website hosting in Australia however their they have a .co.nz and their target market is in New Zealand. thank you
-
The correct answer is: yes, but it is not a major factor anymore. Please refer to the another similar post herehere http://moz.com/community/q/can-geographic-location-of-web-server-affect-in-seo
" 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.
Said that, a best practice is to follow one of these options:
- hosting the site in the country targeted;
- using an IP assigned to the targeted country and operate via proxy " - @gfiorelli1
Thanks
Rashesh
-
It would appear that it's not such a big deal. Generally the ccTLD is a good indicator of intent. But you can actually target your country of choice in Google Webmaster Tools. That would count as yet another signal that your client is targeting New Zealand.
A similar question was recently answered in the Moz forum. I would look there as well.
Some things you can do to target your location:
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Meta Data
- Contact Information
- Schema Markup
The only thing I would be concerned about is if there was a better web host in New Zealand, or if competitors were using a CDN. That would generally make their sites faster, one through geography and one through infrastructure. Either way, that's a strong ranking factor where you may lose out.
Other than that, it looks like you and your client should be alright in regard to your question.
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
-
Display ads and SEO
I have a section(no. of webpages with content) on my site with display ads. The site is mainly for UK visitors. I want to show ads to UK visitors but not US visitors. Rest of the content will be the same for UK and US. There will just be 1 page with same UrL for US and UK. Hence, no href lang tags are being used.
Technical SEO | | Kohliharleen
Is there any correlation between display ads and SEO? Would not showing ads in US cause any issues for bots or do bots consider display ads and SEO as two completey different aspects. Asking as Google bot crawls from the US.1 -
Homepage 301 and SEO Help
Hi All, Does redirecting alternate versions of my homepage with a 301 only improve reporting, or are there SEO benefits as well. We recently changed over our servers and this wasn't set-up as before and I've noticed a drop in our organic search traffic. i.e. there was no 301 sending mywebsite.com traffic to www.mywebsite.com Thanks in advance for any comments or help.
Technical SEO | | b4cab0 -
Mobile and hidden content - Any issue for SEO?
In reference to mobile - am I walking a fine SEO line when it comes to hidden content on mobile? On the responsive variations of sites we are working on some content is hidden (that displays on the desktop version of the site) so that pages on mobile can display correctly. Is this negative for SEO? Appreciate any feedback Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
Webshop migration & SEO
Hi there I am migrating all products from my current trade website http://shop.snowbusiness.com/ to another platform. Whilst both are live, would i have to worry too much about duplicate content and no-follow the pages or is this overkill? Cheers, Ben
Technical SEO | | SnowFX0 -
New Forum: SEO considerations.
We're going to add a new forum to our website. We don't anticipate very large volumes of users. I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums. I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
Does IP Changes Affect SEO Metrics?
Okay, So yesterday I asked a question about setting up custom error pages in IIS 6.0 to properly do a 24 hour 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable. With no answer, (not to the despair of the community as the question has NO simple or easy answer 🙂 So after a night of dreaming about solutions 🙂 I realized that we have the ability to just clone the site.... So basically it would just become a redundant server or mirror site for 24 hours. With all that being said the question is..... What SEO pitfalls might I encounter from this if any I suspect none as load balancing and redundancy is a fact of life in the WEB world, especially since it will be a MAX of 24 hours downtime for maint.
Technical SEO | | Jinx146780 -
Locate your Competitors Traffic Sources -SEO related sources - vs. other sources.
Is there a tool out there that will help you locate your competitors traffic sources? I would like to see how much of their traffic is coming from SEO related sources - vs. other sources. I know compete will do this - but they are ungodly expensive. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820611