Local hosts for sites in foreign countries?
-
Hi everyone. I'm going to be launching localized websites in 5 different european countries (.de, .it. etc).
Must I have a local host with servers in those countries or can I use a U.S. based host? WOuld having a U.S. based host hurt SEO?
-
Hey Steve...your answer completely supports my research today.
From Google:
Geotargeting factors
Google generally uses the following elements to determine the geotargeting of a website (or a part of a website):
- Use of a ccTLD is generally a strong signal for users since it explicitly specifies a single country in an unmistakable way.
or
Webmaster Tools' manual geotargeting for gTLDs (this can be on a domain, subdomain or subdirectory level); more information on this can be found in our blog post and in the Help Center. With region tags from geotargeting being shown in search results, this method is also very clear to users. Please keep in mind that it generally does not make sense to set a geographic target if the same pages on your site target more than a single country (say, all German-speaking countries) — just write in that language and do not use the geotargeting setting (more on writing in other languages will follow soon!). - 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.
- Other signals can give us hints. This could be from local addresses & phone numbers on the pages, use of local language and currency, links from other local sites, and/or the use of Google's Local Business Center (where available).
- Use of a ccTLD is generally a strong signal for users since it explicitly specifies a single country in an unmistakable way.
-
This is one of those debates that goes backwards and forwards. Personally I can only go from experience, and to date SEO hasn't been a factor in our server location. We used to host our UK directory in the UK, but the service and technical support from big players was awful, and we had ongoing repeated outages. Reputation and uptime was more important than geographic location, so after a few reccomendations, we moved our hosting to EV1 who were in Texas, they then became Planet, and are now Softlayer. But as much as it pains me to say it, the service in the US has been outstanding, uptime perfect.
3 years later, with Google now considering response times as a signal, we decided our transaction times were too slow. So after 3 wonderful outage free years, moved our UK sites back to the UK. Within 2 weeks, our first outage, 2 months later another very costly outage
We have now bitten the bullet and are migrating again to Rackspace and hope their fanatical support lives up to its name. Time will tell...
Between moving backwards and forwards, UK, USA, UK we saw no direct correlation in traffic or rankings.
For Europe, personally I'd find the best European Data Centre you can and host everything out of their for Europe. Theres no need to have a server in France, one in Belgium, one in Germany, UK etc. Our US sites are still based in Texas, but transaction times and SEO is unaffected in North Dakota. If it ever does slow down, then I'd consider another box somewhere in the top half of the US. In Europe, I'd consider the same strategy, let transaction and response times dictate locations.
Agree totally about cultural differences, factor that in and present your content in the local style of the target audience.
-
Thanks so much everyone for the responses so far! Hmm, sounds like it might be what I thought.
However an interesting thing came up yesterday which prompted me to ask the question. One of our partners in Mexico uses a US based host for their website. They said their local host was unreliable.
So I'm thinking either they aren't focusing on SEO or the fact that their site isn't hosted in Mexico doesn't matter.
Thoughts?
-
I agree completely, this will improve both credibility and speed.
From an SEO standpoint, I think each site needs to be written in the native language of the country that your targeting.
I would also suggest doing a little research on the cultures of your target countries.
example: China
Top search engine is not Google, it's Baidu
Facebook isn't accessible from China, they use QQ (600+ million subscribers)
Youtube isn't accessible from China, not sure what they use.
Adult sites are completely illegal in China
Don't comment about political issues, no such thing as free speech.I'm sure other countries aren't as drastic as China, but the local cultures, trends, and laws will all differ from yours.
-
Perhaps its superstition, but most site owners that I know prefer to host sites in the region of their TLD. It seems that this could be a trust factor from Google.
-
We are a US based company, but also do a lot of business in many other countries. Though most of our customers are in the states, many of our vendors are abroad. Our vendors need access to our website too. During a trip a few months ago, one of our vendors commented that our website took over 5 minutes to load.
I did some searching and found that putting our site on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) would solve this problem. We ended up using www.cloudflare.com for this. Basically, they put your content on different servers around the world and serve it up from the server that's closest to your visitor.
I tested our website during my last visit and the difference was AMAZING! Cloud flare also speeds up your website, but that's a different conversation. There was a little technical learning involved and a glitch here and there. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Cloudflare. BTW, you will still need to host your sites somewhere, Cloudflare is not a host.
Their basic service is free and they have a Pro version for $20.00 per month. I have the pro service, but could get by with the basic service if we were on a tight budget. I find the pro version is worth the extra 20 bucks.
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Hosting and SEO
Hi all, Does the hosting of an website affect your SEO? We have a dynamic hosting currently, taking in account your knowledge and expertise, do you believe that this can affect SEO in any way? Thank you for your time. Good day. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa2 -
What do I do about sites that copy my content?
I've noticed that there are a number of websites that are copying my content. They are putting the full article on their site, mentioning that it was reposted from my site, but contains no links to me. How should I approach this? What are my rights and should I ask them to remove it or add a link? Will the duplicate content affect me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
It appears that Googlebot Mobile will look for mobile redirects from the desktop site, but still use the SEO from the desktop site.
Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices. I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank. If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site? Thanks so much for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Code to change country in URL for locale results
How do I change the code in my URL to search in Google by specific location?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Doubt of multi country/language site
Hi ! We are building a site that is going to be available in some countrys with the same language (spanish), and we have some doubts about whih is the best way to do it. Option 1) Subdomains: Example; españa.mydomain.com , mexico.mydomain.com (the problem here is that there are some problems with linkbuilding with subdomains) Option 2) Language folders: Example; mydomain.com/es/es mydomain.com/es/mx (the problem here is that the prestige of the category in the url is going to be in 3rd position, example: mydomain.com/es/es/category and is not recommended for SEO) Option 3) Country domains Example; mydomain.es<a></a> mydomain.mx (the link building is going to be much more, cause we have to multipliate the links that we need ffor being in a good position with the diferent domains of each country) I am not sure of which one is the best option, what do you think? The only thing I am sure is to use te TAG: rel="alternate" hreflang="x" for not having duplicate content, because index and categories are going to be the same, the only thing that is going to change is the products of each country. Looking forward to your suggestions! Thanks, Regards Exequiel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoExpertos0 -
Why do SERP Results ( Rankings ) differ from country to country ?
Hi, I have been doing seo for this client based in Sri lanka for almost 8 months now. Since we started SEO we had set up geographic target setting to UK through google webmaster tools. At the moment Site is completely ranking higher on google uk & other countries except Sri Lanka . On Google.lk site doesn't even come within 1st 5 pages for keywords which are ranked on1st page in other countries ? What do you think about this ? How does it happen ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pyxle0 -
Press Release Sites
Ok, I am getting a lot of conflicting information about press release sites. i have been doing press release's for a while (mostly manually), I have also tried a few companies that claim to do it well (never do). After the Panda update the PR sites I have been using are just not as effective. Does anyone else have this problem or are there better PR sites that can be recommended.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBarker820