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Server location and SEO
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Server location and SEO

nfnnfn Veteran
edited February 2013 in General

Hi,

I know that there aren't magic answers when we talk about seo, but as a owner of a site where my visitors are mainly from my country, do I have advantages hosting my site localy instead of a foreigner location.

Is this difference mesurable?

I ask this becase there is a tradeoff between faster loading pages (local) vs cheaper vps (foreigner provider).

Thanks

Comments

  • JyleeJylee Member, Host Rep

    If your visitors accept the speed, that's OK.

  • Search engines doesn't care about where hosting server is located. Only the site language matters.
    But for the visitors faster page loading matters. You won't like something hosted in the US where main visitors are coming from the EU and vice versa. But hosting in geo close other country is fine as long as you have a decent pings and speed.

  • nfnnfn Veteran
    edited February 2013

    The site isn't slow, but will be faster if I move the vps to my country.
    For instance, now I have pings with 40/50 ms and if I move to my country I have pings of 8/10ms

  • You've asked if it matters for SEO - no.
    As for the visitors&ping I doubt they really notice the difference between 50 and 10 ms as long as there is no packet loss and throughput are the same. Unless you have something realtime related on your site.
    If you webpages loads in less than 2-3 seconds currently, I doubt you have to change your location. I'm not saying that the page speed are based on server location only, of course there are many factors involved.

  • If it goes offline, is unreachable or times out it will hurt SEO.

  • ztecztec Member
    edited February 2013

    @nfn said: For instance, now I have pings with 40/50 ms and if I move to my country I have pings of 8/10ms

    Nobody will notice this on a webserver.
    For SEO it matters if the site is constructed well, you can use Google pagespeed insight to test how well your site scores.

    80+ is a good score.

    @concerto49 said: If it goes offline, is unreachable or times out it will hurt SEO.

    Cloudflare with almost all settings off will fix this for you.

    As far as I'm concerned, if the ping is under the 200ms I'm not bothered with it.

    If you really want to be sure, you can test the loading speed of your pages from different locations, your site should open within 3 seconds. Under 1 second should be easy as well unless you're hosting massive databases. Google Chrome has something like this build in.

  • @nfn said: For instance, now I have pings with 40/50 ms and if I move to my country I have pings of 8/10ms

    That's pretty much unnoticeable.
    Your main concern should really be how fast the page is generated and shown for visitors.

    A slow loading website means that people tend to 'give up' and try a different website.
    There's a study somewhere by Amazon which proves this phenomenon.

  • The location of your server does impact SEO.

    Not only because of the speeds but Google judges which of their sites is it appropriate for you to rank on. So if your server is in the U.K. you will more thank likely be placed on google.co.uk (Google assume you are a U.K. company/service). Of course this assumption isn't a rule and so you will also be on their .com or other variants.

    Just my input - some may not agree but this is based on my previous research into SEO.

    Phil

    I think it is best to have a look at servers closer to you and your target audience.

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