SEO effects? - Webhost location - Domain (ccTLD) - Dedicated IP...

[Rolliesworld]

It seems that everyone has a different opinion about the SEO effects of hosting in the country of their actual target audience vs. hosting anywhere else in the world, but I wonder if anyone can tell of their actual experience if they noticed better results in the respective SERPs (of their target region), when they were hosting offshore before and locally now.

Also:

- Has anyone found that by using the respective ccTLD (.co.uk, .com.au etc) - even when hosted outside of country of target audience - it was making a big difference with appearing on the local Google results?

- Does it matter (for SEO) which domain registrar (independent from the web host!) I am using (i.e. USA or Australia or UK for instance), at all?

- Is there any advantage of using dedicated IP addresses (perhaps even one for each domain) on a shared server environment? You can get this for a couple $ per month extra with some hosts. Is being on a shared server with hundreds of others on the same IP block a potential problem and could result in my domains being banned/slapped by Google if one of the other guys does BH or spammy stuff?

- What's this with nameservers? All I know is you update the nameserver information as provided by your web host, on your domain panel. But I have heard you can manage nameserver info (is that the same as DNS?) yourself? That sounds complex...and why would you do it?

[Groovystar]

This is actually the first time I've heard of this being an issue at all. I have never noticed that it matters.

[darcyd]

Not sure about dedicated ip. Never seen any real effect but do know for sure that sites physically hosted in Australia will appear higher in Google's aussie results. For example a new site of mine hosted in Aus ranked 1 for aus but way down on page 6 for world result. I've also experimented with the .AU extension and found little or no difference as far as SERP.

Ive found it quite easy for reasonably well optimised sites to get to the top of Google's aussie results IF hosted in Australia. My take -- If you want to target aussies host in Aus but .au extension not necessary for SERP but probably does please patriotic aussies! hope that helps. Would definitely like to hear from others on this topic.

[Rolliesworld]

Originally Posted by Groovystar

This is actually the first time I've heard of this being an issue at all. I have never noticed that it matters.

I am not saying that it is an 'issue' necessarily. But lots of opinions on the subject - I would just like to hear more people reporting their before/after experience. Plenty of articles on some of the things I raised, for instance this one and this one on SEO impact of location of webhost and using ccTLD's ('local domains').

And this one on Dedicated ip Vs. Shared ip. Hosting multiple domains on shared IP .

[Rolliesworld]

Originally Posted by darcyd

Not sure about dedicated ip. Never seen any real effect but do know for sure that sites physically hosted in Australia will appear higher in Google's aussie results. For example a new site of mine hosted in Aus ranked 1 for aus but way down on page 6 for world result. I've also experimented with the .AU extension and found little or no difference as far as SERP.

If this was generally happening like this, then it would mean that Google takes the IP address of your web host into consideration (which is reflected in one of the articles I quoted earlier). But obviously they would also be crawling your content ("are there indications that it could be aimed at the Australian market predominantly, or not"), or other indicators.

The other question with your example is: Would someone in the US or UK for instance see your site perhaps appearing even further down, i.e. page 10 or 20? This is as Google might even take the browser's IP address into consideration...

Have you actually had your site hosted outside of Australia before?
Because the real question is, if it was hosted in USA for argument's sake, would it still rank high on page one of Google Australia (due to other factors but host location, i.e. content)?