The world we live in today is all about algorithms. Algorithms determine how much engagement you get on different platforms and whether your content is worth promoting. Google’s search engine results are no exception in this virtual world driven by algorithms. Consequently, if you are relying on the content available on your website to consistently expand your audience. SEO is vital to your business, and you should focus on it.
Several factors control where your website sits in Google SERP rankings. However, one consideration that few people take seriously is the impact of server location on SEO. Getting your content right to your target audience is what SEO is all about. This means there are several technical steps you can take to properly optimize your website’s SEO. Considering that the performance of a business depends heavily on these small but strategic steps, it is important to know more about them in order to implement them effectively. If you want to know about the impact of website hosting location on SEO, keep reading this post to learn all the details you need to know about optimizing your site’s SEO to engage a larger audience.
Exploring the relationship between server location & SEO
Suppose you have already inquired about the relationship between a website’s hosting location and SEO. In that case, you may already know the plethora of mixed and confusing information around this topic, with many providers trying to lure you into buying their products, claiming that they can revolutionize your website’s SEO and increase its impact.
But does the impact of server location on SEO matter fundamentally? Answering this question is quite complicated. When exploring the impact of server location on SEO, the 1st thing to do is to understand which factors affecting SEO are affected by location. So that we can decide whether or not you should consider server location as a very important part of your SEO strategy.
Of all the factors that govern SEO, two are highly dependent on the geographical location of the web server, i.e. Website speed and its domain name. These two factors will be discussed in detail in the following two sections.
Analyzing the impact of server location on SEO ranking
Google has repeatedly stated that it does not treat websites differently based on their geographic location. Google has no location bias to promote websites in a particular region and ignore websites located elsewhere However, Google does, in fact, use location to geo-target websites, which means that if your web server is located in the US and your provider has assigned you a US IP address, Google will focus on serving you in that specific region which, As a result, your site will appear prominently in Google searches of American internet users. Imagine that your target audience lives in Central Europe; In this scenario, having a US web server is not beneficial for your SEO.
Another way Google can geo-target your website is through its TLD (Top Level Domain). Proceeds with “.fr” as an example, if a domain name is www.example.fr, Google will automatically treat the target audience as French. TLDs specific to a country will favorably affect your local search results. So remember, if you have a local audience, it’s always better to have your server in the same region as your audience and choose a region-specific domain for better SEO.
Analyze server location impact on website speed & performance
Website speed plays an important role in user experience and satisfaction. Still, improved web speed can lead to more positive effects than just a better user experience. For example, website speed directly affects SEO since fast content delivery is critical to how Google ranks search results. Suppose a user is looking for an answer to a question, and even though you have a better-structured and more comprehensive explanation, you’re not answering fast enough. In that case, chances are Google won’t show your website as the first result.
Website speed and performance
But how does this reaction time evaluation actually work? Google uses a metric called ( TTFB ) or Time To First Byte, for short. When you make a request through your browser to view the content of a website, it takes anywhere from a few milliseconds to even minutes for the website to respond. The time it takes for the webserver to respond to the request and deliver the first byte of information to your browser is called TTFB. The location of the server affects the speed and therefore, the TTFB of the website. Now, imagine your server is located so far away that your website data has to travel through undersea networks and pass a series of other servers around the world before reaching the user. Inefficient, right?
Now let’s see how distance can affect speed by looking at and comparing data transfer delays at two distinct geo-locations. The two images below show the number of data hops (ie, the destinations of our data) and the total time it takes a user to visit Harvard’s main website from two different locations. By tracing the requested route from two geographic regions, one westward to Asia and one to the Americas, it is clear that the main Harvard University servers are in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
It can be seen that the closer a client is to this location, the fewer data their request expects. This is basically how position and motion are related to each other.
And the last thing to mention about how speed affects SEO is the effect of low speed on web crawler performance. Web crawlers are the bits that Google runs to check your website content and index it for further promotion. A slow website makes it difficult for crawlers to get through your content, increasing the website’s TTFB.
Conclusion
SEO is one of the most important factors contributing to your business’s successful online presence. One of the most influential things that you need to consider is the impact on SEO of the website hosting location Web server location can affect speed and geo-targeting. Apart from that you have to do a lot of SEO-wise work. Running automated SEO tools can be an option to optimize your website for search engines. Automated tools can help you monitor and troubleshoot your website, build backlinks, analyze your competitors, and more.
