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.
Will using a service such as Akamai impact on rankings?
-
Howdy
My client has a .com site they are looking at hosting via Akamai - they have offices in various locations, e.g UK, US, AU, RU & in some Asian countries.
If they used Akamai, would the best approach be to set up seperate sites per country:
- .co.uk
- .com
- .com.au
- .ru
- .sg etc
Although my understanding is that Googlebot is located in the US so if it crawled any of those sites it would always get a US IP address?
So is the answer perhaps to go with Akamai for the .com only which should target the US market and use different / seperate C class hosts for the others?
Thanks!
Woj
-
My understanding of how a CDN is configured is it's a back-end server change. The HTML will still appear as mysite.com/image.jpg but when a request for that image is made, your server will tell the user's browser to fetch it from cdn.chicago.akamai.com/mysite.com/image.jpg.
Your server still hosts the image and is the primary source of the image. That image is duplicated on CDN servers throughout the country and world depending on what cdn plan you purchase.
So in short, the images are hosted on mysite.com and images should not be taken out of the mix. You can confirm this by checking well known sites which use Akamai:
-
Ryan,
What about when images are handled through Akamai and the URL's to those images are "Akamaized". Since the images are not hosted on the www.mysite.com, but on www.akamai.com, how would this effect image search. Does it take my images out of the mix. Would an image sitemap help with this?
-
Thanks, makes perfect sense
-
Google effectively crawls all types of sites from around the world. As long as you offer proper navigation with your site, there shouldn't be any issue.
Your content for each region should have a landing page for that region. mysite.com/jp would be your landing page for Japan, etc. Your landing pages would be treated as your home page for Japanese speakers. You should have links from Japanese companies to the /jp page as if it was your site's home page.
-
Thanks Ryan!
I guess my main concern is to not have existing rankings penalised. For example, the head office is based in Australia with other offices around the world - if Googlebot comes in from the US and gets a US IP.. would Australian rankings drop?
Also, I believe the content being served will be identical to all regions.. for now at least.
-
Akamai offers numerous services. Are you referring to their Content Delivery Network? If so, then the CDN will provide faster page load times which is a good user experience. If your site was being penalized for slow load times (only a small percentage of sites fall into this category) then yes, by properly setting up your content on a CDN you can remove the penalty which would improve rankings. Otherwise you would not directly benefit in terms of rankings, but your users will likely find your site more usable, explore more, etc. which could benefit your rankings.
With respect to your site design, I would recommend a single .com site with folders for each country. mysite.com/ru for russia, mysite.com/au for australia, etc. This method will allow you to collect all your domain authority in a single site and can greatly reduce your software and site maintenance expenses.
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
-
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 28, 2018, 5:24 PM | AL123al0 -
How recovering the ranking after an hacking
Hello, I'm Alexia and a few months ago (end of March) my site has been hacked: hackers have created more than 30.000 links in Japanese to sell tires. I've successfully removed the hack and after 14 days of struggle even decided to change the domain to Siteground as they've been really keen to help. I still have some problems and I desperately need your tips. In search console, Google is informing about the +30.000 404 errors due to the content created by hackers which is not available anymore. I've been advised to redirect those links to 410 as they might have penalty effects in the SERP I have 50 503 server errors recognised by Google back in April but still there. What should I do to solve them? I still have a lot of traffic from Japan, even if I've removed all the content and ask Googled to disavow spamming backlinks. Do you think I have on page keywords? I don't understand how they can still find me. Those KWs are indexed in analytics, but not effective clicks, as the content is not there anymore. I also asked Google to remove links in search console with the tool removing links but not all of my requests have been accepted. My site disappeared from the organic results even if it hasn't been recognised as hacked in Google (there wasn't any manual actions on the Search Console). What can I do to gain the organic positioning once again? I've just tried to use the “Fetch as Google” option on search console for the entire website. Thank you all and I look forward to your replies. Thanks! Alessia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 3, 2017, 5:03 PM | AlessiaCamera0 -
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 22, 2017, 11:36 PM | CayenneRed890 -
How to rank if you are an aggregator or a directory of resource?
Most of the SEO suggestions (great quality content, long form content, engagement rate/time on the page, authority inbound links ) apply to content oriented site. But what should you do if you are an aggregator or a resource directory? You aim is to send the user faster to other site they are looking for or provide ranking about the resources. In fact at a very basic level you are competing for search engine traffic because they are doing same things. You may have done a hand crafted, human created resource that is better than what algorithms are showing. And your site likely to have lot more outgoing links than content. You know you are better (or getting better) since repeat visitors keep coming back. So in these days of Search engines, what a resource directory or aggregator site do to rank? Because even directories need first time visitors till they start coming back again.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 7, 2016, 3:29 PM | Maayboli0 -
Using disavow tool for 404s
Hey Community, Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp). It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question. Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more. Thanks for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 11, 2014, 10:59 AM | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Will multiple domains from the same company rank for the same keyword search?
I'm trying to convince people that we need good marketing reasons for starting multiple domains, as it will be more difficult to rank multiple sites. Does anyone know if Google actively discourages multiple domains from the same company appearing in the search results for the same keyword? We are creating a separate content website which is related to an existing company website. Would you agree that is best to have these sites on one domain with the content site on a sub-domain perhaps? I'm worried about duplication of effort and cross-keyword targeting in particular. These sites would not have duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 18, 2013, 7:33 PM | RG_SEO0 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 25, 2013, 11:40 PM | Joes_Ideas0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 14, 2012, 11:51 AM | Towelsrus1