Does Server Speed Effect SEO Rankings?
-
I was told by a website developer that Google ranks sites higher if they are hosted on faster servers. Is this true? For example my site is currently limited because it is a Quick Shopping Cart site hosted by Godaddy. He said that if I hosted my research chemical site with a different company with faster servers I could get better ranking immediately. I linked to my site. I think it loads ok. However Godaddy probably isn't the fastest service around.
-
Godaddy is touting their new 4gh servers and also a premium dns that guarantees 99.9 percent up time. Have you tested these?
-
Thanks for that site link... It says I have a B for page load speed but a D for Yslow grade? I am not sure what the difference between Yslow and page load are?
-
is this thread spam?
-
slow websites are rubbish.. even if it's not a ranking factor its pretty boring waiting for stuff to load!
without moving server you can still improve the code to make it faster:
http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.buy-research-chemicals.com/sOqqeQx0
-
Thank you for the smushit site... I am using it right now...
-
Hi Chronicle,
You might also investigate other ways to speed up your site, such as making sure your images are optimized. Your home page images are all identical, and the file size could easily be cut in half with http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/.
Honestly, I would worry less about your server at this point, and more about other things that might send off some spammy signals to Google. The text of your website claims that it is just for research purposes, but the links coming to the site that show in Open Site Explorer have a lot of "buy viagra" anchor text coming from .edu pages that have been heavily spammed. The image that's often repeated on the home page has the filename of buy-sildenafil-citrate_00.jpg. The alt text for the free shipping image is "buy research chemicals", etc.
-
I think the key with having a quick running site is more a usability one, if the site runs slow especially e-commerce users will bounce to other websites and competitors.
Site speed has been noted as a small factor to ranking yet their are 100s of ranking factors.
Godaddy servers are not the best at all from my experience, I have tested a few servers their a while ago, depends on what type of server you are after too - dedicated server, shared host ect.
Also up time of the server is another important factor, geo location of the sever i.e is it close to your main user base is also important with e-commerce.
-
Hi Chronicle,
I would say your first statement is false to some extent. Although website and hosting speeds play a role in ranking as stated in a blog post by Google, it is very minor... less then 1%, so I highly doubt that moving to a "faster" server will yield "higher rankings immediately".
As long as your code is written correctly, images are optimized for web and you maybe even have compression on the server side for your site, you should be in pretty good condition.
Hope this helps!
Here is another Google Post on this topic.
-
See this article:
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking-factor-39708
Key takeaway: speed is a ranking factor, but it's a very, very minor one. Definitely does not carry enough weight to justify moving servers.
Hope this helps!
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
-
What is a good forum or resource to contact fellow SEO professionals for SEO partnership opportunities i.e. link trades?
While Moz is an excellent resource, i get the impression that it is for community-based SEO questions that can serve as a knowledge database. I am looking for a forum or resource where I can contact other SEO workers to explore link exchange opportunities. For example, i want to reach out to those who do SEO for audio/visual, technology, and event-planning companies so i can offer them links in exchange for some recommended links to my site. Before anyone dogs on link trading as being spammy and not best practice, it would only be done in a useful, relevant, and non-spammy fashion with other high authority sites. Thanks! Ryan
SEO Learn Center | | RyanMeighan1 -
Index Page Dropped From Rankings
On average my site was getting ranked 3rd for "Tucson DUI Lawyer", Best Tucson DUI Lawyer, Tucson DUI attorney and etc. Recently my website fell for all of these keywords and I thought it is the best time to launch the new website. The problem is that my internal pages show up for some of the keywords on the third or fourth page but my index page doesn't show for any of them. Does it have anything to do with the site structure ? I have a lot of news excerpts on the homepage with links to the main posts. Here is the link: http://www.michaelharwinlaw.com/ Any help is sincerely appreciated.
SEO Learn Center | | yasinyaqoobi0 -
Best X-Cart SEO Solutions / Modules?
We recently acquired an e-commerce client that uses X-Cart. We have no previous experience with this platform and it's hard to find any good / helpful info regarding SEO functionality online. Right now I need to figure out how to handle mass redirects of 404 errors, friendlier URLs, resolving duplicate content, XML sitemap generation, robots.txt generation. The functionality built into the platform so far is terrible and all of the modules are pricey. Any recommendations, general or specific, would be insanely helpful if anybody out there has experience with this particular platform. Thanks!
SEO Learn Center | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Local SEO Practice: Creating a Fictitious Business?
Has anyone tried fabricating a fake, brick-and-mortar store as an SEO experiment? Sort of along the lines of what Starwood is doing (check out this Wikipedia experiment with the Test Galaxy Sheraton), but with a legitimate physical address and all? Was it useful? And are there any potential legal troubles that could arise from borrowing a vacant address? I'm thinking this could be helpful for my Intern to gain practical experience in local SEO, without the politics of working for a client But I wouldn't want to blight that address for future occupants if the experiment went horribly awry. We could instead offer pro bono services to a small business with a limited web presence – that would be useful to her, and constructive. But I'd like to have a better understanding of what signals Google looks for when deciding whether to index a website in local search, and see whether possible to dupe those algos. What are your thoughts, Mozzers? .
SEO Learn Center | | sweetfancymoses0 -
Other Good SEO Forums Besides SEOMoz
I spend a lot of time on SEOMoz and would like to get some other perspectives on SEO. Do you have any recommendations of other good SEO forums? Thanks!
SEO Learn Center | | Charlessipe0 -
Does hreflang help international SEO?
I have a very large US based website and series of European sites which are very new and therefore have very limited inherent equity. my US collegues have suggested using alternate language headers: In my opinion this should significantly help the SEO of the new European sites. Does anyone have any experience with this tag? Thanks for your help in advance 🙂
SEO Learn Center | | TWDCEMEASEO0 -
Suggestions For Our New Weekly SEO Podcast
We are getting ready to launch our new SEO weekly podcast in the next few weeks and thought I would get your opinion and suggestions on what you would want to hear. This is going to be a free weekly podcast all about the SEO news of the week, tips, what's working and what's not, and things like that.We will mainly be talking about the latest news in the SEO space on a weekly basis. Might even need a co-host from time to time. I thought I would check and see if you guys have any suggestions or recommendations based on what YOU would like to hear in an SEO podcast? I want this to be something valuable that people will enjoy and benefit from so let me know if you have any suggestions for topics we should cover, show format, etc. Thanks in advance!
SEO Learn Center | | N5c0 -
Sale-a-day websites massive unused seo power, where's their marketing?
How do these companies market themselves so well? Is it 90% social media? www.gilt.com http://www.hautelook.com/ http://www.ozsale.com.au/ I'm curious to how they initially got off the ground and it seems like I need to be exploring these marketing techniques as well.
SEO Learn Center | | seoninja200