The Influence of Server Location on SEO Performance
When choosing a server, you might be considering various aspects, such as the hosting type, be it dedicated server hosting or virtual private server hosting, your budget, the resource capacities that your project requires, and more. In other words, it’s likely that the primary aspect you pay attention to is the “inside” of your server. But the “outside” of the server, the conditions that it’s kept in and the place where it’s located play a huge role, too.
In particular, the place, the location has a considerable impact on the experience of your users and on many aspects that are directly affected by that – particularly, on the search engine optimization of your website. Let’s see how this works and why you should pay close attention to the choice of location for your digital projects.
What Does Server Location Do?
The global network is not a metaphysical object, but quite a physical one. It is composed of a huge number of servers and even a huge number of cables connecting them. How this all works, this is a true miracle of technology and science, but there are still limitations to all these systems. Physical distance is one of them.
Your server and the personal computer of your visitors are connected through a network, a long network of fiber optic cables that make up a continuous way in the physical space. This way always has a certain length, making up a certain distance that signals have to cover to reach the opposite side, and the longer this distance, the more time is required to cover it.
In network terms, this time is referred to as latency. The higher latency, the slower the communication between the client and the host. When we talk about websites, high latency will lead to your website’s slower performance, lower load speed and subsequently poorer user experience. With all this in mind, the most intuitive way to follow is to opt for a server that is to opt for a serve that is located in the closest proximity to your target audience possible, so they can as no one else enjoy the benefits of your website.
The Influence of Infrastructure
It’s worth mentioning that latency is not only about physical distance, but about the way the information has to cover in order to reach its destination. This in turn depends on the way the infrastructure is constructed and organized and often data will travel a bigger physical distance faster than a shorter one, if it travels through a better infrastructure.
It may be hard to figure out all at once about the infrastructure of your server, but you can at least look for servers hosted in a more advanced data center. When choosing a server, make sure to check the data center it’s hosted in. Best you should look for TIER III or TIER IV data centers. These are the highest levels of data center certification, meaning that the servers most likely have access to a better location.
The Location Effect on SEO
The location has a considerable effect on the SEO ranking of your website.
a. First, the quality of the website, the quality of the user experience it provides play a huge role in how a website is ranked by search engines. Websites that offer high page load speed are ranked much higher than those with low page load speed, so optimizing the page load speed is a critical contribution to SEO. Location is fundamental for providing optimal page load speed, which makes location fundamental for SEO optimization.
b. Another important impact of location is that search engines are more likely to show results that are more relevant to a certain location from websites that are directly hosted near that location, which again, leads us to the importance of opting for a location closest to your target audience.
How to Choose Server Location?
As we have already shown you, the rule of thumb for selecting the right location is to go for the one that is either directly in the region with most of your target audience or at least the closest one. So pay close attention to what locations providers offer and consider it as a substantial factor of giving preference to this or that provider.
What About Visitors Out of The Location's Optimal Range?
If your business is oriented towards some particular country, then you simply have to go for the location that is as close to this country as possible. If you have your audience distributed throughout a bigger area, then you’ll have to conduct an analysis of the countries in which your offers might be in demand and choose the optimal location based on that. What to do in order to cover the audience that is out of reach of your main location? In this case you should consider looking for a CDN provider.
A Content Distribution Network is a globally distributed network of servers that store cached versions of your website to deliver them quickly to your website’s visitors that are located at a significant distance from your main server. This might not work as perfect as a server that is directly near a visitor, but it compensates for a great deal of latency that arises.
To Sum Up
This is what you should now about the server location and the aspects affected by it, with SEO rankings in particular. As you can see it’s worth paying close attention to this aspect and this will eventually pay off with a significant boost to your server rankings. Good luck!
Share This Post On
About the Author
