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Does Server Location affect SEO activities?

Today’s web hosting provider companies have become ultra-active to facilitate the endless demands of websites to rank top on the search engines. With excess demand, an excess supply of web hosting providers has also made their way which has created a great differentiation between the quality of services and the prices offered. Therefore, picking the most probable and right web host among the herd is the skill your website and your company need.

While choosing the best host, one question might arise, does server location play a major role in any web hosting provider’s activities and performance? Do server locations also have their effects on any website’s page ranking?

Today, in the below discussion we will breakdown how a server’s physical location is important and how can it have major impacts on your SEO performance.

What is Server Location?

A server location refers to the data center where the server that hosts your website is located. This location can be in any part of the world regardless of wherever you are located. 

For Example – You reside in India and your host Ideastack also resides in India. Now it is not necessary that the server that is hosted for your website is based in India itself. It can be located and preserved in any of the US or UK server data centers of Ideastack. Also, the distance between you and your server location might or might not be a basis for any website speed determination.

data center location

How do Search Engines see Server location?

It seems that Google is making a lot of changes to its algorithms for taking into consideration a more global kind of setting. The Google webmaster tools allow the website owners to set a country as their target. Whenever your website uses TLDs like .com or .org, then you get a chance to choose a target country. If you do not select your country targets, then search engines use their own selection based on other criteria. These criteria are – 


• Backlinks are attached to the page.

• Other information related to local SEO.

• The IP address of the server.

• Location-related content available on the website like the content information, data, or other snippets.

 

Well, when it comes to server locations, it doesn’t really matter much as it is not mandatory to host your server only where your target audience is high. You can set your international targeting properly with the webmaster tools and there you go. Also, if your website targets an audience spread all over the world, then it doesn’t really matter to check the hosting location

Even Google quotes that server locations are usually near to their users. Though some websites make use of distributed content delivery networks (CDN) to host their servers in the locations fulfilled with the highest quality of server infrastructure. So they don’t rely much on their server location finder nowadays as a factor to rank any website higher.  

Is the server location important for Geotargeting?

If you are well versed with how to set and manage geo targeting IP with webmaster tools for IP geolocation SEO, you don’t really need to think much about the server location. Though it is always recommended to check and make sure that your website is hosted at the best server location that offers fast access to your users.

Does Hosting Location affect SEO?

Well honestly Yes! Hosting server location affects SEO. The domain name with which your server is associated is linked with a certain server IP address that identifies your FTP hosting server’s location.

For example, your server is located in a different country, say Austria. Your server hosting different countries might lead Google to think that you hosted your server in Austria because your website complements and caters to the audience in Austria. But the Google website rankings also judge the language you use on your website. This can have an impact on how Google ranks online search results based on the locations as well.

Also, Google ranking factor assumes that websites ending with a co.uk are more focused on the audience in the United Kingdom, and for websites .com focused on the audience in the United States. So, to get under the lights of Google search quality experts and to make sure your website load speed is at the top, your website hosting matters should be carried on at a server location that is closest to your business area or your targeted geographical area.

Impact of localized web hosting on SEO

The server location of your website hosting server might have direct effects on the speed and uptime of your website. The closer your audience is to your server’s data center; the higher will be the speed of your SEO website.

But Google quotes that when it comes to geo-targeting, the server’s data center location hardly makes any difference. If you make effective use of the webmaster tools with ccTLD and gTLD, then your website will experience geotargeting regardless of wherever your server is based.

Google can place geotargeting, so you don’t have to set your server’s location in any particular or specified location only. Websites can use the best hosting country or location as per their suitability. The only thing that Google needs is information in the form of ccTLD or webmaster tools.

Does Shared Hosting affect SEO?

Shared hosting services allow thousands of domain names to be hosted under one IP address which also includes shared services of the same storage and bandwidth. Under shared hosting, multiple websites are hosted under one server and a few spammer websites can have massive effects on your own website hosted on a shared server.

The Search engine and the ethics of SEO will not even consider you in the competition if you have even a few spammer websites traits in your website.

Always do away from the cheap hosting providers offering shared services as they will surely harm your website’s ranking. Instead, look for a web host that offers quality web hosting server services that will help you to avoid all the shared storage, bandwidth, and spammer traits as your dedicated server will be dedicated to only you and your website. Dedicated servers bring massive improvements in webpage loading speeds, uptime, and security.

How does the location of your web server affect your website speed?

Whenever a browser browses through your website, the browsing request is passed through from the data center of its host and then to the user in a passage of interconnected networks which we call as the internet. The data is transferred to the browser at the most efficient and fastest route.

As in today’s generation, a lot of networks make the use of fiber-optic cables, the website speed has significantly improved. So even if the server location is far away, the webserver internet speed will be lively with a massive speed and minimal delays.

data speed

Impact of Localized Web Hosting on speed

The location of your website data center might have some impacts on your website speed. It is believed that the closer your website is to your audience, the faster will be the page load time along with minimal latency.

If the location of your website datacenter is far, then there are chances of servers taking and processing a request which might lead to increased latency and page load times.

Some facts about website speed you must know:

• As per Amazon’s calculations, a page slowdown of just 1 second can cost up to $1.6 billion each year in sales.

• If your website delays by 3 seconds, 40% of your visitors will leave your website.

• The Firefox research showed that a 2.2 second improvement in page load speed can lead to a 15% uptick in conversions and can improve website ranking by a mile.

• A 1 second delay in page load time can cause up to a 7% decrease in conversions for eCommerce websites. Being the reason why everyone is concerned about the importance of page load time. 

• As per Google, when they tested by slowing their search results by just four-tenths, they lost close to 8 million searches per day. This also means there would be minimal ads shown that would have directly affected Google’s ad revenue. 

How website speed affects your website SEO?

• The speed at which your website pages load also plays a major role in your website ranking. Being the reason, it is always reckoned to go for the best website hosting company that avails you all the resources to optimize your page load speed and SEO goals

• Even Google quotes that they take website speed as one of the biggest factors in determining any website’s rankings. By speed, it means how a website responds quickly to the requests received. 

Search engines are always on the look, crawling through your sites. If a slow website comes their way on accessing any website pages, they then degrade your keyword rankings to a major extent. 

• There can also be other factors that can lead you to slow website loading speed like for instance – Your website’s coding, unoptimized images, and animations, excessive and fancy flashes, spam, shared server downtimes, etc.

So yes, hosting location might have some impacts. But it is really important to have the backing of a certified website IP SEO hosting service that will work with quality and performance to attain your SEO goals. 

Using Content Delivery Network to influence Page Load.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) service helps your visitors to be availed with multiple substitute server points to access resources from your website. These CDN points can be deployed worldwide in different locations. CDN services offer a great speed and fast response time for your website.

If you understand that your website audience is spread across different parts and locations, your CDN will help your server to have none of its effects. This turns out to be more beneficial in place of a quality web hosting server as well. CDN will make sure that your website is fulfilled with great website page loading speed regardless from wherever your audience visits your website.

To make sure that you achieve your SEO success, it is important to find a web host who does not overburden their servers. You yourself can also work on improving your page load time by reducing HTTPS requests, removing useless plugins, reducing image size and animations, etc.

Consideration of downtime for SEO

Wanna know how you can degrade your website’s speed, choose a website hosting service that runs multiple businesses on a server and loves offering downtime!

Well, web server downtime is the worst thing you would ever wish for your SERP and SEO goals. If your server remains on downtime for repeated and regular intervals, it could lead to major negative impacts on your online search engine ranks right away. The Google bots and other search engine bots will never keep you in their good books.

This would ultimately lead you to go down immensely on search engines and ultimately lose a lot of conversion opportunities. Sometimes, there can also be instances that the search engine displays your website’s meta description as unavailable.

How do you overcome the effect of server location on SEO?

To overcome the effect of server location on SEO, you can either choose a web hosting provider offering CDN (Content Delivery Network) or a server location that is closest to your audience and user base.

• Choosing a web hosting provider with CDN – As discussed before, CDN will offer multiple substitute server points at different locations that will facilitate the requests and responses well and would ensure that the website loading speed creates a decent SEO impact. 

• Choosing a server location closer to your audience – As discussed before, a server location based at the same location where a huge amount of traffic also resides creates a huge impact on the website’s uptime and response. 

Set up Geo-Targeting in Search Console Tool 

The Google search console tool offers some great features of geo-targeting. This tool helps websites to target a specific set of the audience regardless of wherever your server location is.

If your website surrounds a local domain like for instance .in, .au, .uk, then your targets are already set to those local country bases. But if your domain is global like .com, you can make the best use of a search console tool to target a specific set of audience or country.

Even if you don’t set your targets, Google will itself track your IP address and set your website’s country as your target country.

website domain

Conclusion:

A website data center’s physical location might play a major role in your website’s speed directly. A website’s speed deterioration seen in web page load time can have major impacts on SEO rankings. The closer your hosting server location to your audience base, the better responses your websites will offer to them.

Therefore, it becomes very essential to host your server nearby your customer base or use the efficient tools of geo-targeting offered by Google. Also, it is of utmost importance to choose the best hosting service that is reliable and offers the utmost quality for promoting SEO friendly websites.

Ideastack is one of those top-of-the-line web hosting and SEO services companies that will ensure that your website receives utmost power and speed to rank highest on the SEO rankings.

FAQ

1. Why‌ ‌should‌ ‌one‌ ‌choose‌ ‌a Local‌ ‌Host‌ ‌To‌ ‌Target‌ ‌Local‌ ‌Audience?‌ 

Server‌ ‌location‌‌ ‌plays‌ ‌a‌ ‌very‌ ‌essential‌ ‌part‌ ‌in‌ ‌offering‌ ‌the‌ ‌‌web‌ ‌audience‌ ‌‌a‌ ‌smooth‌ ‌browsing‌ ‌experience.‌ ‌More‌ ‌relevant‌ ‌and‌ ‌good‌ ‌‌SEO‌ ‌rankings‌ ‌‌can‌ ‌be‌ ‌fetched‌ ‌through‌ ‌local‌ ‌hosting.‌ ‌The‌ ‌reason‌ ‌behind‌ ‌this‌ ‌is‌ ‌your‌ ‌IP‌ ‌address‌ ‌is‌ ‌directly‌ ‌connected‌ ‌to‌ ‌your‌ ‌‌geographical‌ ‌location‌.‌ ‌Choosing‌ ‌a‌ ‌local‌ ‌host‌ ‌will‌ ‌help‌ ‌you‌ ‌target‌ ‌your‌ ‌audience‌ ‌easily‌ ‌as‌ ‌well‌ ‌as increase‌ ‌your‌ ‌search‌ ‌engine‌ ‌optimization‌ ‌rankings‌. ‌

2. How‌ ‌HTTPS‌ ‌benefits‌ ‌in‌ ‌improving‌ ‌your‌ ‌SEO?

HTTPS‌‌ ‌is‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌best‌ ‌options‌ ‌when‌ ‌it‌ ‌comes‌ ‌to‌ ‌the‌ ‌rules‌ ‌and‌ ‌regulations‌ ‌for‌ ‌the‌ ‌use‌ ‌of‌ ‌data‌ ‌between‌ ‌the‌ ‌site‌ ‌you‌ ‌are‌ ‌connected‌ ‌to‌ ‌and‌ ‌your‌ ‌‌web‌ ‌browser‌.‌ ‌It‌ ‌simply‌ ‌offers‌ ‌a‌ ‌‌secure‌ ‌website‌‌ ‌than‌ ‌that‌ ‌of‌ ‌HTTP.‌ ‌It‌ ‌encrypts‌ ‌URLs‌ ‌for each‌ ‌and‌ ‌every‌ ‌communication‌ ‌between‌ ‌your‌ ‌website‌ ‌and‌ ‌the‌ ‌browser.‌ ‌HTTPS‌ ‌will‌ ‌‌improve‌ ‌SEO‌‌ ‌rankings‌ ‌as‌ ‌it‌ ‌enables‌ ‌secure‌ ‌visitors‌ ‌and‌ ‌avoids‌ ‌destructive‌ ‌third-party‌ ‌tampering.‌ ‌

3. Why‌ ‌is‌ ‌Ideastack‌ ‌different‌ ‌from‌ ‌other‌ ‌Providers?‌ ‌

Ideastack‌ ‌provides‌ ‌extremely‌ ‌reliable‌ ‌connectivity‌ ‌along‌ ‌with‌ ‌‌24/7‌ ‌active‌ ‌support‌‌ ‌with‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌best‌ ‌teams‌ ‌of‌ ‌technical‌ ‌experts.‌ ‌The‌ ‌datacenters‌ ‌of‌ ‌Ideastack‌ ‌have located‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌cities‌ ‌with‌ ‌‌tier‌ ‌1‌ ‌bandwidths‌.‌ ‌To‌ ‌provide‌ ‌you‌ ‌with‌ ‌the‌ ‌best‌ ‌infrastructure‌ ‌Ideastack‌ ‌uses‌ ‌‌a tier‌ ‌4‌ ‌datacenter‌.‌ ‌Besides‌ ‌that,‌ ‌they‌ ‌also‌ ‌provide‌ ‌instant‌ ‌scalability‌ ‌where‌ ‌you‌ ‌can‌ ‌easily‌ ‌upgrade‌ ‌or‌ ‌downgrade‌ ‌your‌ ‌plans.‌ ‌ ‌

4. ‌‌What‌ ‌are‌ ‌the‌ ‌various‌ ‌Web‌ ‌Hosting‌ ‌Features‌ ‌offered‌ ‌by‌ ‌Ideastack?

Ideastack‌ ‌offers‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌‌best‌ ‌hosting‌‌ ‌‌solution‌‌ ‌features‌ ‌concerning‌ ‌your‌ ‌business‌ ‌stability,‌ ‌performance,‌ ‌flexibility‌‌, and‌ ‌various‌ ‌other‌ ‌aspects.‌ ‌Your‌ ‌hosting‌ ‌service‌ ‌will‌ ‌be‌ ‌powered‌ ‌by‌ ‌the latest‌ ‌generation‌ ‌Intel‌ ‌Xeon‌ ‌processors‌ ‌for‌ ‌swift‌ ‌hosting‌ ‌experiences.‌ ‌They‌ ‌provide‌ ‌an‌ ‌‌affordable‌ ‌service‌‌ ‌along‌ ‌with‌ ‌comprehensive‌ ‌technical‌ ‌support.‌ ‌ ‌

5. What‌ ‌are‌ ‌some‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌best‌ ‌online‌ ‌tools‌ ‌to‌ ‌measure‌ ‌page‌ ‌load‌ ‌time?

Its‌ ‌fact‌ ‌that‌ ‌if‌ ‌your‌ ‌‌page‌ ‌load‌ ‌time‌ ‌‌is‌ ‌more‌ ‌than‌ ‌two‌ ‌seconds‌ ‌most‌ ‌likely‌ ‌the‌ ‌visitors‌ ‌will‌ ‌choose‌ ‌the‌ ‌next‌ ‌options.‌ ‌Decreased‌ ‌web‌ ‌time‌ ‌enables‌ ‌more‌ ‌views.‌ ‌Google‌ ‌page‌ ‌speed‌ ‌tool,‌ ‌GTmetrix,‌ ‌and‌ ‌Pingdom‌ ‌are‌ ‌some‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌‌best‌ ‌online‌ ‌tools‌‌ ‌to‌ ‌measure‌ ‌page‌ ‌load‌ ‌time.‌ ‌

What is AMP in SEO & its Benefits

What is an AMP in SEO?

Many people think that what is the AMP. AMP is a google-backed project designed for publishers to load the pages from mobile devices. AMP full form is Accelerated Mobile Pages. The AMP meaning is that they are lightweight pages designed for engaging mobile users. They intend to upgrade mobile web performance. The amp is an open-source framework of HTML that provides a way to create webpages straightforwardly. 

Benefits of AMP

AMP is known for two benefits that are page ranking and speed. Benefits of google amp offer speed that helps people to increase their page ranking in SEO. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an accessible framework used for creating fast-loading webpages by mobile. AMP SEO benefits to increase the speed and reduce the size of the website. 

The benefits of using google amp help in generating revenue. It reduces the loading time and provides a compelling user experience by giving similar content to the users. Therefore, the AMP pages are necessary for SEO rankings.

Who will benefit the most from AMP?

The AMP SEO benefits the sites that produce content. The sites that will benefit from AMP are publishing sites. People can transition the blog section of their clients or updates or news section in AMP.

Why is AMP important?

It gives the best experience to the users of mobile. The websites are loading faster with the amp on mobile. So, optimizing the experience of mobile browsing is best for users. They can standardize the mobile version of the website with an AMP SEO effect on their mobile devices. 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of AMP?

There are various advantages of AMP. The AMP advantage depends on the website. It involves the higher viewability of as with free CDN. But the two benefits of the AMP are:

The pages of AMP enhance the appearances in the SERPs of Google on their mobile. 

How to optimize AMP?

The AMP implementation is not simple as plugin and play. Use AMP friendly URLs that are flexible. It must have a user interface with full functionality.

How AMP hinders SEO?

AMP denotes that the digital publishers recognize the AMP pages. The biggest obstacle to the AMP pages and SEO is the drain on resources and money.

Difference between AMP and Non-AMP mobile browsing

The major difference in AMP vs non-AMP is the pages do not have a lot of stuff for user experience. The AMP does not allow Javascript. They force the users to use the Javascript library that they provide.

What changes should be made to the HTML code in order to implement AMP?

Various features need to be for an HTML website to run the AMP. The media AMP content should be marked with special tags like amp-img, amp-audio, amp-iframe, amp-video.

How to measure the impact?

People must measure the impact of user experience and site visibility. People must follow these steps to measure the AMP SEO impact

  1. Confirm the validates of the AMP code.
  2. People must verify the structured data parses.
  3. They must understand the visibility of the AMP drivers on Google.
  4. They must understand the performance and drivers of AMP sessions.

Who supports AMP?

Although Google has backed up the AMP project, the search giant does not own it. It offers this while loading WordPress amp pages on the website. 

Google AMP plugin for WordPress builts the amp functionality in them. AMP project links to other search engines suggesting that It is also beneficial to other search engines. 

What was AMP designed for?

The purpose of the AMP is to improve the performance on the internet on mobile. It focuses on optimizing the webpages and offers content through lightweight AMP pages on mobile devices.

How AMP helps SEO?

The main AMP SEO effect is its speed. The server performance improves by using an amp so. If an individual receives a lot of traffic on the website, the AMP and SEO servers reduce the servers’ stain. People get access to the search features of AMP-only. The AMP SEO impact engages the users. The AMP SEO assists the GDPR compliance.

How does the AMP plugin work?

The google amp plugin for WordPress quickly renders the mobile page by cutting on the HTML code tag. The WordPress AMP pages improve the mobile pages with more readability and speed.

Why should you care about AMP?

People must care about AMP for the following reasons:

• The AMP testing tools help people to optimize their mobile. The capability of loading pages faster increases the conversion rate and gives a boost to the rankings.

• Google announced the mobile-first index. It means that the desktop website will not lead in the market for determining the ranking of the webpage. 

How to implement AMP?

The AMP implementation requires the users to make the pages available in the alternative format. It should be according to the AMP standards. It means that the version of the AMP pages will exist with the regular pages.

What are the best practices for AMP?

The best practices of AMP is it makes a clear relationship between the non-AMP and AMP version. It provides the logical location of the AMP pages. They make sure to track the accelerated mobile page’s ecommerce with the google analytics property.

What are the limitations of AMP?

AMP provides limited functionality websites. The AMP does not provide functionality as it gives more control to Google rather than the AMP for ecommerce for displaying ads. 

Conclusion

The AMP is a powerful upgrade to mobile-friendly pages. It helps people to meet the expectations of Google and optimize the speed of the website. The AMP pages influence a lot of mobile interactions on social media. That is how people can generate mobile customers and grow their business on the website. The AMP SEO increases the loading speed of the webpage. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. AMP sounds interesting, should I implement it?

The AMP offers the best mobile experience to the users. The responsive web designs help to provide the experience. Optimizing the images and source code helps to serve fast-loading AMP pages to the users. The AMP SEO gives full control over the content and functionality to the users.

Q. Can I add pages of my AMP to my XML Sitemap?

The user does not need to add the AMP pages to the XML sitemap if they use the non-AMP and AMP pages. The AMP SEO recommends the user include the AMP pages in the XML sitemap if they are using the amp’s standalone pages.

Q. Why do I see more traffic and less engagement after implementing AMP?

The tracking of visitors on AMP pages is still not perfect. It can count the returning visitors twice. The visitors interacting with the news carousel at AMP SEO can skip through the article without interacting. The AMP content offers less functionality to interact and brings down the engagement with the content.

How does SEO hosting work? Behind the scenes

SEO hosting uses traditional and non-traditional methods to improve the optimization of a website, increasing traffic and sales. Some SEO hosting companies provide content creation services, multiple C-Class IPs, and other SEO friendly services.

SEO hosting is important because it takes a lot to optimize a website for search engines. Building an aesthetically pleasing website is not enough to attract visitors and make sales. People have to know your website exists to visit it.

Every computer on the Internet has an IP address. Your computer, your web-enabled phone, and the server that hosts your websites all have IP addresses. Inside data centers where your server is located related servers or websites are often hosted by servers with the same ‘C’ class of IPs.

The search engines know this and can spot when related sites cross-link to each other from within the same class C IP address. These links are often filtered out of the ranking algorithms. If your site has too many of these types of links it can even bring a penalty to your site.

That’s why a few companies came up with the idea of “SEO hosting”. This is where they will sell you hosting on completely different sets of class C IP addresses. People often use this to hide their mini-site networks, blog “farms” or cross linking networks.

What is SEO in hosting?

A new method of search engine optimization involves creating an online marketing campaign that stretches across multiple websites, IPs, domain names, Class Cs, and DNS. The reason? The current theory is that search engines award a higher ranking to a site that has links pointing to it from related sites located on unique Class-C IPs. Owning multiple IPs for several sites lets website owners create links between their sites without the search engines finding out.

In most cases, web hosts that offer SEO hosting provide comparable hosting packages offered by the competition but with multiple C-Class IP addresses for each domain or website. Some companies even provide branded name servers on separate Class C IP addresses.

This option allows website owners to host more than one site with the same company (on the same server) without search engine bots recognizing that the same person or company owns all the websites.

From the very start, we’ve seen that search engines have been the key ingredient to expanding your base. If you were lucky enough you get your exclusive advertising spot to show off your banners at the very top of the search results for the coveted keywords Web hosting and hosting.

Search engines haven’t lost their value today. In fact, their importance has increased. Every businessman wants to see their business in the top search results. But unlike the 90s, there are fewer contenders in search. Google is the most popular search engine, Yahoo! has faded into the background, along with MSN, Alta Vista, AskJeeves, Go, and Excite.

SEO gurus today, are more into understanding the nature of the businesses that they are marketing and have access to software that reveals the specific traffic for each search term as well as the optimum page setup and keyword densities that consistently yield the highest rankings.

Conclusion

For more information, visit Ideastack.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is SEO in hosting?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing your web pages to achieve higher rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). It is an effective and cost-efficient marketing approach that aids in generating website traffic and increasing conversion rates.

Q2. What hosting is best for SEO?

In the event of a server problem, the remaining servers in the network will seamlessly assume control. Cloud hosting is highly advantageous for maintaining optimal uptime, which positively impacts SEO. Additionally, when configured proficiently, it represents one of the most efficient methods to establish a website that loads swiftly.

Q3. Why is hosting important for SEO?

During periods of downtime, search engines encounter issues when accessing your website, prompting them to swiftly move on to other sites. When this occurs frequently, your website is perceived as unreliable, resulting in detrimental consequences for your search rankings. Consequently, the significance of reliable website hosting for SEO cannot be overstated.