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Is Hosting location important for SEO?

by Oziboomer
17 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Does it make a difference where your host is located if you are trying to rank a site for a specific location?
#hosting #important #location #seo
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    It doesn't make sense to buy hosting in Siberia while targeting traffic in Miami Fl (US).

    Google has 100+ GEO country SERPs.

    At the very least I would keep the server in the same country as the traffic source & maybe a ccTLD outside the US.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndresNWD
    As long as I know, hosting placement isn't a ranking factor. That said, loading speed IS a ranking factor and it decreases in distant countries. Something easily solved with a nice hosting or a content distribution network like cloudflare.
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    For direct unlikely, but indirect ... in summary, yes, except in cache of niche, due to association and price/performance balance, in conclusion yes because Google knows everything about everything.
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  • Profile picture of the author seohelp
    Best service to get from USA reputed hosting companies and these days you can use CDN to target every country to speed up your site loading time.

    godaddy.com
    ubiquityhosting.com

    make sure they offer 24/7 phone support, because some hosting company offer sales service by phone, but when you need support than you have to open a ticket. You never know when that ticket will be answer and you don't want to wait when you site is down or server error.
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  • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
    Originally Posted by Oziboomer View Post

    Does it make a difference where your host is located if you are trying to rank a site for a specific location?
    Generally speaking, no.

    Google's John Mueller said in response to the question of SEO and server location:

    "For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant. If you use a ccTLD or a gTLD together with Webmaster Tools, then we'll mainly use the geotargeting from there, regardless of where your server is located. You definitely don't need to host your website in any specific geographic location -- use what works best for you, and give us that information via a ccTLD or Webmaster Tools."
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    Damon
    CloudFlare Community Evangelist

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    • Profile picture of the author Oziboomer
      I guess that what I was trying to dig into was whether a a ccTLD should be hosted in the country related to the domain or whether it was irrelevant in anyway in regards to ranking for more localised traffic.

      Originally Posted by damoncloudflare View Post

      Generally speaking, no.

      Google's John Mueller said in response to the question of SEO and server location:

      "For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant. If you use a ccTLD or a gTLD together with Webmaster Tools, then we'll mainly use the geotargeting from there, regardless of where your server is located. You definitely don't need to host your website in any specific geographic location -- use what works best for you, and give us that information via a ccTLD or Webmaster Tools."
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      • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
        Originally Posted by Oziboomer View Post

        I guess that what I was trying to dig into was whether a a ccTLD should be hosted in the country related to the domain or whether it was irrelevant in anyway in regards to ranking for more localised traffic.
        The hosting location is generally irrelevant as far as SEO goes - what's more important is to make sure your pages load in good time as that is a ranking factor and a massive UX factor.
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  • Profile picture of the author omarguabacontent
    Your host`s location is important in terms of speed, as a fast-to-load page will give users a better experience while visiting your website. So make sure your servers are near your target market.
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  • Profile picture of the author queldorei
    On my experience no matter where located your server. In some niches website must be hosted in NL, for example.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdevpro
    Having the hosting in the same country can have an added advantage but there may be situation when you can't find (or expensive and out of the budget) the hosting in a country you want to target for. So it is not necessary but a good approach.
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  • Profile picture of the author jacobhagberg
    I would say that if you are targeting US traffic then hosting inside the US makes the most sense. (Even if you personally are outside of the United States). However if your business is located in say Russia and you are targeting US based traffic to say travel to Russia then I would do something like mydomain.com and have text in English and set the geo location to the US. Then create a page called mydomain.com/ru and discuss local tours and use Russian characters and define that page to target traffic from Russia.
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  • Profile picture of the author kapoor297
    Matters sometimes.
    Always go with some well known names, such as bluehost and hostgator.
    Its about downtime.
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  • Profile picture of the author riyathomas306
    Hosting location is important for SEO. When searching for the same term on Google in different international locations, you may find different results. Similarly, when customers search for your company, they will find different results depending on their location.
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  • Profile picture of the author User-Name
    As you most likely know load time is a main factor in the google algorithm
    So if my targeted audience was on the west cost of the USA then I would look for hosting on the west coast.
    You could host it in the cloud and make it available to both coasts (amazon cloud or other such services)
    With amazon once a surfer on the west costs access your site then it is pulled from the cache the next time someone on the west cost access it (you can set the length of the cache)
    So if you feel the need for speed (like google does) then host it closer to home or in the cloud
    Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    The only consideration is speed, and that usually means you need to host it on the same continent as the majority target audience. So yes, indirectly, location matters. But it's not city-based, but continent based. There's zero difference between Dallas, LA and NY.

    In some cases, for example, when you target both US and EU, you can host on either (with optimal locations being NY, London or Amsterdam in that scenario).

    The TLD makes a difference. Like others mention, I would not hosts a .co.uk domain in Singapore.
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  • Profile picture of the author katty5005
    No the hosting location isnot important for seo. Many people don't find best hosting place in their own country so they host their site outside the country.
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