Although most clients have no clue where the server that hosts their website is located, it actually has a significant impact on the amount of traffic you get and any search engine ranking you should get from your website. Finding the right server location should be the first SEO (Search Engine Optimization) task that you do, but is often ignored because people don’t even know that it matters. It does!
Knowing where your website is hosted combined with your domain name suffix/extension (.com, .co.uk, etc.,) will determine which geographical version of Google will give you the best results. If you use a generic name suffix such as .com, .org or any domain that is not country specific, Google and the other search engines will determine the location of your website’s business. If you are a US company, and you are working to get US visitors to your site, but your hosting company has servers based outside of the America, your site will often not show up in the US search results. This will probably result in lost revenue. Popular search engines such as Google offer two kinds of search. You can search the web by country such as the US or UK, or you can search from all over the world.
Most hosting companies buy the least expensive servers, and do not really care what part of the world they are hosted from. Their concern is simply how to make the most profit. Keep in mind that if your business is based in the UK and your host is located in the US, your business will be affected. Most of your searchers will actually be using Google.co.uk instead of Google.com so you should do your best to target them.
Another important issue to think about when considering server location is the load speed of your website. A US based server hosting visitors from another country will take longer to load, then it would hosting to a users own country. This is one more reason to choose your host company within the country where your website and eventual business is directed.
In conclusion, make certain that when purchasing a server or host that you think about location before considering other needs. If you bypass this issue, you will probably be wasting your SEO efforts on an internet site that cannot reach its potential. Remember that clients from all over the world choose to host their sites with USA based hosting companies for the affordable price, quality customer service and reliability servers. If this fits into your plan, go with it. If your host service is already in place, be sure to take note where it is based. You can access this information easily by simply calling your host company. Although changing sites can be time consuming, once it is done you can be assured that your selection is best for your SEO strategy.
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