IP Address of Server an SEO Factor??
-
Hello all,
Interested to hear your thoughts on this.
-
What's best practice re server IP location. Is it OK for that to be in the US if your company is in Europe?
-
Any potential issues?
John Mueller says server location is irrelevant, but some developer I work with thinks IP address of the server is a factor. I can't see how it would be in this day and age.
https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-geo-location-server-google-17468.html
Many thanks,
Gill.
-
-
Thank you both very much for your comments. Very useful! Cheers.
-
This section, from the post you shared, really does sum it up nicely:
"
Is the server location important for geotargeting?
A: If you can use one of the other means to set geotargeting (ccTLD or Webmaster Tools’ geotargeting tool), you don’t need worry about the server’s location. We do, however, recommend making sure that your website is hosted in a way that will give your users fast access to it (which is often done by choosing hosting near your users).But overall, it is nice to see such a strong word used by John, as "many cases it's irrelevant."
So if you are not using a ccTLD and you didn't set your geo-details in Webmaster Tools and the language and content on the site don't strongly suggest country bias, then server location is important but you'd have to think, how important..."
If you follow best practice for delivering content to a specific geographic audience, you're really not going to need to worry about server location (providing it meets all of the other requirements).
-
As you say, a very small role (if other factors are not taken into account). If you take what John Mueller says in "many cases it's irrelevant." It really is such a small factor it can be safely ignore - assuming you've got the rest of your site in order.
-
The CDN will cover that. This isn't a bad article to read through: http://wplang.org/hosting-location-geotargeting-seo-cdn/
-
Hi Gill,
The server's location plays a very small role.You definitely don't need to host your website in any specific geographic location.
I'm sharing a similar old thread @ https://moz.com/community/q/does-the-location-of-my-server-effect-my-seo
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Thanks for the info.
So if your audience is a global one - how would you handle where to have the server?
Is there such a thing of using more than one server to have good response speed in more than one location?
-
Server location alone isn't going to be a factor in itself, but the closer the proximity to the target audience, the faster the server's response will be - generally speaking, assuming server specs are the same. So, while server location isn't going to be a factor (in isolation), server response times and the speed of the site is.
Test your site speed using Google's Page Speed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ or GTMetrix: https://gtmetrix.com/
There are a number of methods to speed up the responsiveness of your site, which will be highlighted in the results, from the tests, above.
Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to deliver your page content rapidly, while reducing the load on your server, is one method to improve your page load times. There's also a number of caching and data compression tools available, depending on your website's infrastructure.
As a rule, I generally try to locate a server as near to my target audience as possible, on AWS servers, using a lightweight framework.
I hope that 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
-
Looking for SEO advice on Negative SEO attack. Technical SEO
please see this link https://www.dropbox.com/s/thgy57zmmwzodcp/Screenshot 2016-05-31 13.25.23.png?dl=0 you can see my domain is getting tons of chinese spam. I have 410'd the page but it still keeps coming.. 7tnawRV
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattguitar990 -
Mirrors Hosting SEO
Hello, I notice that some sites do provide hosting for mirroring file downloading for cpanel, apache and other big developers. I assume that benefits of it is link building but look at this site: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ Hoobly provide mirrors for most developers but none of them are indexed by google for ex: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ So can someone explain why would be that or what is going on ? is that something hidden here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eriklogo50 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Top SEO Influencers 2015
Hello! I'm doing a little bit of research into key SEO players and thought I would get some opinions from the Moz community. Who's your go-to SEO guru? Who's up-and-coming in the world of SEO? Who are your favourite SEO influencers on Twitter? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Where Does Blogging Fit Into SEO
I read an article yesterday that said blogging comes under the heading of social media, which is at the top of the so called SEO pyramid. I have taken this to mean less time should be spent in social media compared to other areas of SEO. Yet content creation was at the bottom of the pyramid (more time allocation here). Isn't blogging part of content creation? I would have thought there is a limit to what can be done for service/product & landing pages. Whereas blogs are a great way to produce more unique content for a website. Any clarification would be appreciated. Thanks - Christina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Hosting Providers and SEO
I have been wondering for a while which web host provider is the best for SEO purposes? Things to consider. Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Server Location of the Host Provider Site Up Time One question that I have been thinking about is what impact would changing a host provider have on a websites serps ranking? Is there a possible negative impact and if so how can it be avoided? Name the top 3 Web Hosts for SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?
About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors... Can a server migration change rankings? Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Thos0030 -
Does font size affect SEO?
In the eyes of Google, would the font text size of say a news article affect SEO? For example, a slightly larger font being easier to read by those with bad eyes? Accessibility? If so, what size would be ideal? 10, 12, 14? Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640