Is a Dedicated Server a Worthwhile Investment?
-
Greeting MOZ Community:
Our site is hosted on a virtual private server. Apparently there are dozens of other web sites hosted on the same server. The performance is usually pretty fast, with the site downloading in 1-3 seconds. However, a few times per month, the performance slows down, to say 5-6 seconds. Please see the attached image.
I suspect this may have something to do with the other web sites on the server.
Currently we pay about $60/month. A dedicated server would cost about $120/month. Would site performance be more consistent on a dedicated server? Could we enjoy potential SEO benefits by having our own server, i.e. could we rank slightly higher if the speed was more consistent and the performance slightly faster?
Thanks, Alan
-
I don't think that can be had for the price. I pay around $260 for a single xeon with a ssd and 8 gig.
-
The answer will depend to a degree on the load that your traffic places on the server and the quality of the equipment in your server.
If you get one with a nice amount of memory, fast processor and solid state harddrive then the speed increase could be so pronounced that you will be able to tell when it goes into service without being told... at the same time that could be overkill if your traffic is modest.
Getting efficient images and caching working could have a greater impact on speed than the equipment.
If you do both then you will have the best situation.
-
You cut-off load sample size on your screenshot. If the sample size is low, the data is not that accurate and more measurement may be needed.
You are right though, one of the key factors in migration to a dedicated server is your page load times.
-
If you can give a bit more info about the site that would help.
Cost Benefit and load time can be subjective depending on the industry and also what load time is for the normal user and how much "Load Time" is the next issue to tackle on your SEO list of things to do. You might get far more gains in authority by focusing on core weaknesses such as content, social, and link building that you will gain from the cost spend on a dedicated server
Hope that that is useful.
Bruce
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
-
One domain - Multiple servers
Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
When is the right time to invest in a Trusted SEO firm
My website www.dealwithautism.com is a 3 month old website. It currently has 50+ quality pages that are KW targeted and on page optimized (usually grade A on Moz page grader). Over the next 12 to 15 months, I plan add a total of 300 to 400 kw targeted pages to strive for topical authority. I am launching my first product (an ebook in the next couple of months) and would eventually move into a membership subscription model in next 15 month. I want to invest in a long term SEO strategy with a reputed and trusted SEO firm. Being just a 1 person show at he moment, my budget is small (about $250 a month) but over time, as I acquire more revenue I will increase my SEO budget accordingly. I believe, if I get traffic, my content has the guts to absorb engagement. From analytics, any page that is not bounced and has received organic traffic (only less than 10 per day though) has an average time spent > 12 mins. So my content seems to be doing its bit now. My question: Is now a good time to invest in SEO for my budget? I need a long term and natural seo strategy, no quick wins - happy to play by the CPC model for my money pages till I see an organic growth. Or should I wait for 5-6 more months to let my site age a bit and also y that time I should have 150+ quality pages, so the authority should be more.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DealWithAutism0 -
Server responds with 302 but the pages doesn't appear to redirect?
I'm working on a site and am running some basic audits, including a campaign within Moz. When I put the domain into any of these tools, including response header checkers, the response is a 302 that says there is a redirect to an Error Page. However, the page itself doesn't redirect, and resolves fine in the browser. But all of the audit tools cant seem to get any information from any of the pages. What is the best way to troubleshoot what is going on here? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
International SEO and Server Hosting
I am quite new to international SEO. I have a customer who wants to use the same website content on various domains targeting different countries. Such as; xxxx.hk - same content targeting Hong Kong xxxx.co.uk - same content targeting UK xxxx.de - same content targeting Germany I found that it could be possible with the Google suggested hreflang without any duplicate content problem. Is that true? Could someone explain this for me. Another question; if above is true do we need to make other adjustments as well. Such as; Any adjustments in Google Webmaster Tools (for each domain) Server location, does that really make a difference? Can we host each of the domains on the same server or should we seperate them and host each one on the country it is targeting ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stradiji0 -
Should I let Google crawl my production server if the site is still under development?
I am building out a brand new site. It's built on Wordpress so I've been tinkering with the themes and plug-ins on the production server. To my surprise, less than a week after installing Wordpress, I have pages in the index. I've seen advice in this forum about blocking search bots from dev servers to prevent duplicate content, but this is my production server so it seems like a bad idea. Any advice on the best way to proceed? Block or no block? Or something else? (I know how to block, so I'm not looking for instructions). We're around 3 months from officially launching (possibly less). We'll start to have real content on the site some time in June, even though we aren't planning to launch. We should have a development environment ready in the next couple of weeks. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoItHappy0 -
Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?
About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors... Can a server migration change rankings? Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Thos0030 -
Server cache and SEO
I have a question about server cache and seo. For example. www.chanel.com.cn , the server is in US, and uses China Cache to improve local Chinese users access speed, so what do you think this way will work for search engines spiders too? when a spider is crawlling the website, does the content it crawl on US server or China cache? what's best practice for those kind of SEO on server side? thanks Boson
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | topchinaseo0 -
Seo Site Analytics - Server Logs Vs Real Time Visitor Tracking
Seo Site Analytics - Server Logs Vs Real Time Visitor Tracking I host with hostgator & they provide a tool Awstats to provide statistical data on site activity How does this AWSTATS type data fall short for lets for people more advanced in seo practices like seo companies ? What is the difference between real time visitor tracking and hosting companies servel logs data being provided by Awstats ? How thorough is Google Analytics so what data does google anlaytics provide that Awstats does not provide and how does it differ from google webmaster tools ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | helpwanted0