Server located in Canada but site is for local business in Pennsylvania
-
My friend's website is for a local business in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but the MOZbar shows that his server is located in Canada. Will this be detrimental to his SERP rankings? The site was just launched a week ago.
I saw various opinions in other forums and I could not find similar questions in this forum. Thanks in advance.
-Dan
-
Although web hosting location is one factor that the search engines will look at for localisation, they will also look at domain registration contact info, published contact address on your website and other signals that may provide a clue of 'where' you do business. I had a Canadian client a while ago that intended to do business primarily in the US. Despite the fact that their site was hosted on a US machine, the site was suspiciously ranking low for some key phrases despite their good optimization efforts. After further review everything about their business (domain contact info, business address) would lead you to think that they do business in Canada, not the US (They showed up page 1 for Google.ca searches). It wasn't until we went into Google Webmaster Tools and set the geotargeting to the United States that we saw their key search phrases jump up into page 1 for Google.com searches.
My opinion... although server location is a factor, I've seen other factors have a bigger weight.
-
what country you host in will rank better for that country
-
If you want to rank in the USA your site should be hosted in the USA.
I would move ASAP.
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
-
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
Mobile site not ranking
Hello, Our main site ranks well for all the keyword terms, and yet, our mobile site is buried. It is a "m." configuration, and I am wondering if it is a question of not using the correct programming language to get it there? Or if the redirects to the main site should relate differently? I have tried to read up on the topic of mobile site SEO and cannot find (or understand) the answer? Could someone please help? Thanks so much in advance!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Site not loading on Firefox
Hello guys, I can't get my website to be loaded on Firefox, why's that?
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Webmaster Tools Links To Your Site
I logged onto webmaster tools today for my site and the section 'Links to Your Site' is showing no data. Also if I search using link:babskibaby.com it only shows 1 link. My site had been showing 500+ links previously. Does anyone know why this is?
Technical SEO | | babski0 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
Frustrating Local Seo Question
I have just lost the top stop on Google Places (Pack 7) for one of my clients. The company that took it came out of nowhere to take the top stop. Now I don't mind getting out ranked when someone has worked hard to out rank me but what is frustrating is this site scores terrible across the board on just about every score that is supposed to determine on and off page ranking factors. The only place it outscores is in the link department but the site is so new there is no data available in OSE. The site has 0's and 1's for PA, MR and MT plus the keyword (kitchen remodeling) that it is taking the top spot for scores and F in the SEOMoz on page report card while the page that I optimized for this very same keyword scores an A. Plus this site has zero citations according to Bright Local Data. What Gives? Here is a little bit of data: Keyword: Kitchen Remodeling My Clients website is http://www.tandmkitchens.com Competitors website: http://www.njkitchendesigns.com I'm kicking his butt in every category except Domain Age and inbound link total, his inbound link total is 409 but it's only from 2 domains.
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Any thoughts on how this is possible would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all and Merry Christmas!
Gary1 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0
