What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
-
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe?
I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal?
I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it?
I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans).
I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankingsI do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above?
Many thanks!
Mark -
Well good luck with 100/100 but you should be good to get a 90-ish score.
-Andy
-
Hey thanks Andy,
I have learned a few things regarding the Page Speed Insights and was able to make a few changes regarding expiry times on cache, which increased the score.
I will tweak the suggestions some more to try to get the score to 100/100 for Mobile and Desktop, if that's possible to get 100/100.
Thanks for letting me know about that.
Regards,
Mark -
Hi Mark,
Have you run the site through Page Speed Insights? What does Google suggest? It might be that you can get some good speed increases just by making .htaccss changes.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy, sorry I just noticed the settings button where you can pick the international locations, it wasn't obvious to me before.
Whichever page I choose, http://theatrebuddies.us it is taking between 2 and 4 seconds to load, which doesn't seem great?
I am not sure if this is a hosting issue or something to do with javascript on the page which affects load time, it's very hard to say.
I wonder if anyone can recommend a Web host with the fastest possible shared hosting, if that has anything to do with it and I could set up a plan and load one page and do a comparison.
Many thanks again.
- Mark
-
With most of these you can't Mark. You can set a different country on Pingdom, but that is about as much flexibility that you get.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
How can I test page load speed if when using the tool above, it does not recognise where I am? It seem to think I am in a different location globally each time I try.
Thanks so much,
Mark
-
P.S. All 148 of my sites are hosted in the US. I guess the reason I am asking is that it has been hideously time-consuming setting up all these sites that to break them up into all sorts of locally-based hosting plans would take me weeks of fiddling, down-time etc. which I've already gone though earlier this year. I moved things via CloudFlare because some sites were hacked so it sent me down a wormhole of trying to learn Web security and put best practices in place. So it's not like I have one site to move somewhere ... any answer may have huge implications in terms of the effort required to put best practices in place for all my sites. Many thanks again!
-
Hi Josh,
Thank you very much for your kind assistance! Makes sense.
I posted a reply to another response above, where I guess I fleshed out my concerns perhaps a bit better (sorry it's a very confusing thing for me to sort out here). I would be very interested and grateful to hear your comments on it.
Have a great day.
Mark -
Hi Andy,
Thanks so much for that.It is really hard for me to tell what the user's experience is since I am in Australia and users are in 7 other countries and I am not sure how to determine the UX of a person in another city.
To me it seems the sites are serving fast enough even for me here; but since the Web is so hyper-competitive, I am just trying to fine tune in every conceivable area as much as possible, with the belief that lots of little things added up is a good thing, even if they are not the top 3 determining factors of ranking but still important.
In some cases, certain sites only allow users to join if they are within a particular city so the site is totally city-specific. In this case it may make sense to not use CloudFlare but just buy hosting within that city with that city's IP address. Would that be true? It seems to me that a site for people in a certain city only would get better rankings if it's server's IP address was within the same city?
CloudFlare does have a server in this city as well.I have experienced seeing some subdomains serving so slowly through CloudFare that a warning page comes up that it could not be served (page fail) ... yet with CF suppressed, the pages serve fine, so this is a concern, but maybe it was a random instance I'm not really sure.
Thing is, because of the protection of CloudFlare it feels better to have it in place(?)
My main concern is also centred around the idea that if content is cached and distributed over dozens of servers on a CDN ... and we do a "Who's hosting" the domain and it says 'CloudFlare' then for SEO purposes in terms of serving the most relevant content to people in their local area, then how does the IP address of the hosting affect ranking within a local area? In other words, if some content is cached (e.g. images) and served via CF and the rest of the content is HTML and not cached and served from the origin server ... in effect, 'where is the home of the site' i.e. if the site is hosted in the UK because most of its customer base is in the UK (but also in other countries) then how do rankings for keywords work in the UK compared to other countries? I would think without CF the site would appear more UK-specific and UK-centric; but with CF in place ... the context of the hosting is totally lost / confused?
Many thanks for your assistance.
Best regards,
Mark -
Hi Mark,
First of all, have you tested your sites to see how they are in terms of speed? I would suggest checking with...
My own personal experience is that it can cause real issues in terms of page load times - to the point I have had clients drop it altogether. Out side of that, I can't advise on the best way to utilise it.
Are you finding that your experience is a good or bad one so far?
-Andy
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
-
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
Novice SEO Question - UK & COM Results
Would someone please explain to me why when doing this search https://www.google.co.uk/search?pws=0&q=online+texas+hold+em there are uk and com pages ranking in the results for pokerstars & how do I fix it? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | charliegirlcontent1 -
Research on industries that are most competitive for SEO?
I am trying to see if there is a reputable / research-backed source that can show which industries are most competitive for search engine optimization. In particularly, I'd be interested in reports / research related to the residential real estate industry, which I believe based on anecdotal experience to be extremely competitive.
Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P3 -
Best practices or tools for an SEO audit?
I would like to have an SEO audit of my site, and I'm looking for something beyond the basics. Prices for an audit seem to vary between free (for DIY tools) to over $3,000. That seems like an awfully big spread. What are the best practices I should be looking for or best tools to be looking at for a comprehensive SEO audit?
Local Website Optimization | | micromano0 -
How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago. We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
What is the best way for a UK company to source SEO Support to boost SERPS in USA Google?
We are a niche web retailer with a world leading product and as such are probably the best option for USA customers (even though we are based in the UK) up to 18 months ago google agreed and placed us high for USA searches and we had good business as a result however since penguin (or around that time anyways) google increased our SERPS for more local markets (UK and EUROPE) and decreased our ranks for USA with a consequent reduction in our USA sales We want to improve rank again in USA (and Canada and Australia and Russia) but need specialist help What's the best way to source that? (short of someone saying they know exactly how to do that) ant recommendation most gratefully received Tom
Local Website Optimization | | tomnivore0 -
Different page for each service at each location? Where does it end!
If we have 15 different locations and 10 different services, do we need to make keyword targeted landing pages for each combination? Is that actually the best method or is there some alternative? For example, if we are a law office specializing in slip and falls and car accidents, do we need a page for EACH location for each service (ie. Miami Car Accident Lawyer, Miami Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Car Accident Lawyer) etc. to maximize our ranking potential in each location? Is there a better way or are we left with this until Google gets "smarter"?
Local Website Optimization | | RickyShockley0