Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
-
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic.
Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes?
Thanks
Sam
-
Hi, We have the same question and we noticed that ahrefs is blocked. Would you mind looking at our site to see if you see any issues>. www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk thanks
-
Thank you for your answers. yes the sit speed has been affected just a hair - so that TTFB has gone down from 0.45 seconds to about 0.6 seconds - oscillates between A and B (mostly B) in one of the testing sites.
-
Site speed impact is where I see this becoming a real problem, unless the setup is done correctly
-
Hi Sam. A correctly setup firewall or CDN should not have implications for SEO. If you can share the URL / domain then I can take a look at the specifics, but in principle, you should be fine.
Things to watch out for:
- Site speed impacts - in theory a CDN should generally be good for site speed, but if you didn't select one primarily for this reason, it's something to check
- HTTPS - ensure that you keep this consistent through the change
- Avoid changing URLs in the process (if you have to, make sure you have redirects set up and treat it like a migration with associated risks)
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
-
Company name ranking
Hi all, I hope somebody can share their thoughts on the below. A web designer launched my client's new website and I have been tasked with the SEO. I was approached with an immediate problem, www.clientswebsite.co.uk was ranking 9th for their company name after being indexed by Google. The search results above www.clientswebsite.co.uk were related to my client but not all, for example a direct competitor was also ranking. I have been working on the SEO for 2-3 weeks and I just managed to get to 3rd position for the company name, and then www.clientswebsite.co.uk disappeared from page 1! And now instead, an irelevant sub page is now ranking for the company name on page 2 (a contact page). I have checked and the home page is still indexed (did a site: check). The only problem software picks up is a redirect chain (http://homepage -> http://www.homepage -> https://homepage) the web developers said it wouldn't impact rankings (when I asked them to edit the htaccess file to fix it) I've listed below the SEO tasks I completed whilst attempting to rank the company name: I set up analytics and webmaster tools, in which I set up preferred domain (www) Added a sitemap Edited meta data making sure company name was included I contacted the websites above www.clientswebsite.co.uk that were relevant and asked them to place a link linking to their new website, I was successful with a couple of these. I placed www.clientswebsite.co.uk on all of their social media profiles I reformatted headers on their home page, making sure the H1 included my client's company name I found 2 extra versions of my client's home page (not exact copies, but very similar content) that had been published, so I decided to 301 redirect these to the correct home page Activated SSL and forced to HTTPS I would really appreciate it if anyone could share their thoughts here, whether it be explanations or possible solutions Adam
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
How long does it take to rank easy keywords?
I have an established site with low keyword ranking and the keyword I am wanting to rank for it rated below 10 on Moz. It has been a few days since I published the article.
Technical SEO | | Begbie20060 -
Will a CSS Overflow Scroll for content affect SEO rankings?
If I use a CSS overflow scroll for copy, will my SEO rankings be affected? Will Google still be able to index my copy accurately and will keywords used in the copy that are covered by the scroll be recognized by Google?
Technical SEO | | moliver10220 -
Sudden drop in Rankings after 301 redirect
Greetings to Moz Community. Couple of months back, I have redirected my old blog to a new URL with 301 redirect because of spammy links pointed to my old blog. I have transfer all the posts manually, changed the permalink structure and 301 redirected every individual URL. All the ranking were boosted within couple of weeks and regained the traffic. After a month I have observed, the links pointed to old site are showing up in Webmaster Tools for the new domain. I was shocked (no previous experience) and again Disavowed all links. Today, all the positions went down for new domain. My questions are: 1. Did the Disavow tool worked this time with new domain? All the links pointed to old domain were devaluated? Is this the reason for ranking drop? Or 2. 301 Old domain with Unnatural links causes the issue? 3. Removing 301 will help to regain few keyword positions? I'm taking this as a case study. Already removed the 301 redirect. Looking for solid discussion.Thanks.
Technical SEO | | praveen4390 -
Google ranking my site abroad, how to stop?
Hi Mozzers, I have a UK based ecommerce site, that sells only to the UK. Over the last month Google has started ranking my site on foreign flavours of Google, so I keep getting traffic coming to my site from Europe, America and the far east that we could never sell to, and as a result bounce is going up and engagement is going down. They are definitely coming to the site from google searches that relate to my product type, but in regions I do not service. Is there a way to stop google doing this? I have the target set to UK in WMT, but is there anything else I can do? I worried about my UK ranking being damaged by an increasing overall bounce rate. Thanks
Technical SEO | | FDFPres0 -
Can too many pages hurt crawling and ranking?
Hi, I work for local yellow pages in Belgium, over the last months we introduced a succesfull technique to boost SEO traffic: we have created over 150k of new pages, all targeting specific keywords and all containing unique content, a site architecture to enable google to find these pages through crawling, xml sitemaps, .... All signs (traffic, indexation of xml sitemaps, rankings, ...) are positive. So far so good. We are able to quickly build more unique pages, and I wonder how google will react to this type of "large scale operation": can it hurt crawling and ranking if google notices big volumes of content (unique content)? Please advice
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories0 -
Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher. Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit. Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results. What can I do?
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?
Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword? Fox ex: Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA). Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)? Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?
Technical SEO | | BPIAnalytics2