Geographic location of hosting affect SEO
-
Can anyone confirm if its the geographic location of the web hosting or the domain hosting that can affect seo ? I have a client who has their domain hosting and Website hosting in Australia however their they have a .co.nz and their target market is in New Zealand. thank you
-
The correct answer is: yes, but it is not a major factor anymore. Please refer to the another similar post herehere http://moz.com/community/q/can-geographic-location-of-web-server-affect-in-seo
" Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone.
Said that, a best practice is to follow one of these options:
- hosting the site in the country targeted;
- using an IP assigned to the targeted country and operate via proxy " - @gfiorelli1
Thanks
Rashesh
-
It would appear that it's not such a big deal. Generally the ccTLD is a good indicator of intent. But you can actually target your country of choice in Google Webmaster Tools. That would count as yet another signal that your client is targeting New Zealand.
A similar question was recently answered in the Moz forum. I would look there as well.
Some things you can do to target your location:
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Meta Data
- Contact Information
- Schema Markup
The only thing I would be concerned about is if there was a better web host in New Zealand, or if competitors were using a CDN. That would generally make their sites faster, one through geography and one through infrastructure. Either way, that's a strong ranking factor where you may lose out.
Other than that, it looks like you and your client should be alright in regard to your question.
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
-
Trailing Slashes and SEO
Hi, We're currently using a third party blog platform (Blog Engine) on our site and we have a trailing slash issue. I can add as many trailing slashes as I want to the blog's homepage URL, but they don't redirect and our dev guys say this cannot be done with Blog Engine. We're in the process of building our own blog but, in the meantime, I just wanted to know if this will cause an issue? Individual blog posts with trailing slashes are redirected, it's just the homepage where it can't be done. I haven't noticed any traffic going to a blog URL with trailing slashes, and I don't believe any URLs with trailing slashes are being indexed, so should this be OK? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
SEO implications of network outage
Hi, Our bandwidth provider has informed us of a forthcoming network outage this weekend, the net result being that around 20 websites will be unreachable for a total of about 1 hour inside a predetermined 3 hour window.In an ideal world we would like to provide a holding page or be able to respond with a "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" HTTP code, however the complete absence of connectivity means we'll be unable to do this.Does anyone have any ideas about the SEO implications of this kind of downtime? It would be useful to know if there are any actions we can take prior to the outage that could mitigate the impact. We've considered repointing the DNS to other servers, but it's only something we'll do if the negative impact of not doing it is too great.Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Dave3920 -
When Should You Start SEO?
I am launching a new website (related to IT services) on Monday 6th May 2013. What should be my SEO/SMO/PPC strategy for a brand new website with new domain ? I have a blog within the website as well. Is it better to promote internal blog or should i focus on external bogs like wordpress ?
Technical SEO | | afycon0 -
Changing Web Hosting
We're about to change web hosting providers and I'm wondering whether there's an "optimal" way to do this without losing any SEO value. Is it as simple as changing hosts without SEO in mind - point the domain to the new host?
Technical SEO | | b40040400 -
Host sitemaps on S3?
Hey guys, I run a dynamic web service and I will start building static sitemaps for it pretty soon. The fact that my app lives in a multitude of servers doesn't make it easy to distribute frequently updated static files throughout the servers. My idea was to host the files in AWS S3 and point my robots.txt sitemap directive there. I'll use a sitemap index so, every other sitemap will be hosted on S3 as well. I could dynamically mirror the content from the files in S3 through my app, but that would be a little more resource intensive than just serving the static files from a common place. Any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tanlup0 -
Expressionengine SEO
One of my clients is using expressionengine CMS, and even the simplest things like creating unique page titles seem to be a nightmare. When I try to change page title via cms it also changes navigation menu. Any help will be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Thommas0 -
Dedicated ip helpful for seo
I read somewhere a while back that having a dedicated ip address was helpful for seo if this true or just another rumor? Also I read you should purchase your domain name for multiple yrs, what do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | TinaGammon0 -
How does the FSS jQuery plugin affect SEO?
Looking to create a full screen sliding site for optimum use on tablets. Found this: http://codecanyon.net/item/fss-full-screen-sliding-website-plugin/full_screen_preview/159103 What is the general feeling on using FSS in terms of SEO? Should it be avoided? What's the alternative? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 9xbmarketing0