Does hosting server location affect SEO? Well, the success of your website SEO depends on multiple factors. And hosting server location is indeed one of the essential aspects to consider. Also, it does play a significant role in the success or failure of your website SEO. In this guide, I will try putting some light on how hosting server location can impact your website SEO. And why it is important to pick the best hosting provider. So, let’s dive in!

Of course, when you create a website you try and choose the best options to build your website. But when it comes to choosing the best hosting provider, you need to be very careful. I am sure you also must experience how some websites load so quickly and some take an infinite amount of time to load. Well, that’s because of the hosting server. However, it doesn’t matter which content management system you are using, you will find a CMS-specific hosting provider out there. For instance, there are several WordPress hosting providers, Joomla hosting provider, Drupal hosting provider, and so on. 

You will find numerous useful and productive solutions out there. How competent a hosting provider is, will decide how your website will behave. The effective the hosting provider the better the site performance. The time your site is taking to load will decide how well your site will perform. Time is precious and only time will bring your money and help you generate traffic to your website. Thus, paying attention to the hosting server is crucial. Let’s dig a little deeper now. 

Does Hosting Server Location Affect SEO? 

Yes, it does! The straightforward answer is yes your hosting server location highly impacts the SEO of your website. I will show you how. I assume you all are aware of the domain vs web hosting difference. Because you need to understand that every website has an IP address. And this address points out the hosting server you are using. 

Okay, let’s take an example. Imagine you are located in Portuguese and your server location is the United States. So, Google will reckon your website is built for US users. However, another factor is which extension you are using. There are different types of domains to choose from. If you know what is a domain name and how exactly they work, you are halfway through. 

Well, if you aim to target customers near your geographical location then, it is a good practice to look for a web host provider whose server is near to your location. Before picking up any provider, it is fundamental to check where the server is located. If they do not have a server in your proximity, you should look elsewhere. 

How Hosting Server Location Affect Speed

Website speed can attract or annoy your users. There are many things such as images, videos, content, and links that you need to manage. You need to keep everything aligned so that your website never slows down. However, you can take help from website speed test tools like Google page speed to check if your website is loading at the intended speed or not. For instance, imagine you have tons of images and videos on your website that may be a reason for your site’s low loading speed. Well, in that case, you can enable lazy load for your WordPress website and manage your image loading speed effortlessly. 

Generally, visitors on your site will not wait for so long for a site to load properly. According to studies, if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, visitors are likely to leave your website. They will not wait to see what you have to offer them. No matter how good or useful offers you are making, it will go in vain, if your website is taking too much time to load. And this all is because of the server location you are relying on. 

However, if you know the geographical location of your potential customers, it makes sense to choose a server located in that particular area. No matter where you are located but, your server should be located within the customer’s geographical location. 

Use of Content Delivery Network (CDN) to Influence Page Load Speed 

It is possible to choose a server location depending on the customer base you have. But what about websites that have customers around the globe? Of course, you can not have different servers in different countries for your single website. Right? Actually, the better option is to choose a hosting server that offers you CDN. Well, CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. Basically, it is a network of servers located all over the world. There are various CDN services that you can choose between. 

The main objective of a CDN network is to load your website as fast as if it was right in your user’s location. However, one of the major benefits of CDN is to ensure website load time should remain the same irrespective of the user’s location that of the server. Thus, it reduces the wait time to a great level. However, to ensure that your website delivers speedy results for visitors, the key is to find a web host that does not overload their servers.

Certainly, more websites on a server mean more resources used. Hence, a slower page load for your website. It is also important to make sure that you are reducing page load time at your own end as well. This includes reducing HTTP requests, reducing image size with the help of Image compression tools, and removing useless plugins. 

How Search Engine See Server Locations 

Search engines such as Google have their own set parameters on the basis of which they analyze a website for multiple factors. They allow website owners to set a country target in their webmaster tools. If your website uses a country TLD (.uk for example), then you will be unable to choose a target country. 

This is because Google associates TLDs such as these with a country location (.uk for the United Kingdom). However, if your website uses a TLD such as .com or .org, then you need to enter a country target in your webmaster tools. On the other hand, if you don’t do this, then Google or other search engines will carry out selections based on other criteria.

The criteria are as follows.

  • Server IP address.
  • Any or all information about location available in the website content, such as contact information, structured data or content snippets, etc.
  • Backlinks to the page.
  • Any other information relevant to local SEO

Therefore, if your website is hosted on a server located in the United Kingdom and your website content is meant for users in Spain, it is very important to set ‘Spain’ in Google webmaster tools or other search engine webmaster tools. So, all-in-all it is not required to host your website on a server located in Spain. 

However, you can set international targeting in the webmaster’s tools and that should be enough. Whereas, if your website targets users from all over the world, it doesn’t matter where it is hosted. You only have to make sure your web host provides some form of CDN. That’s it! 

Happy Hosting!

Does Hosting Server Location Affect SEO – Wrapping It Up 

So, now you know it is vital to choose a server location depending upon your website. A hosting server location can have a huge impact on your website SEO as well as page ranking. If you are struggling with your site’s poor ranking, then it is advisable to check it with your hosting provider. However, in some cases, you can manage everything with the help of webmaster tools. You can manage and set your geo-targets using such tools. Well, in such cases, the hosting location should not be an issue. 

But at the same time, it is wise to host your website in a manner that provides your visitors ease of use. Moreover, it is notable to mention here that an appealing web design compliments the success of your website SEO. Thus, using the best web design software to create your website such as TemplateToaster would be a great choice for your business. So, now you know the answer to ‘does hosting server location affect SEO?’. But there are chances that you still might have some SEO-related queries. So, feel free to leave me a message below sharing your queries as well as your experience.