Table of Contents
Introduction
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is a very complex field. You need to play with Google’s rules and implement new features on your website to make it more search engine-friendly, and especially user-friendly.
Updating old articles constantly, replacing the broken links, and creating obvious conversion funnels; these are all parts of an SEO specialist’s work. However, it may be less obvious that your website’s performance also counts in SEO evaluation. The speed of your site, the security of the website, and even your server’s location determine your SEO strategy’s success.
In this article, we analyze the connection between server location and SEO, and introduce you to some tips on how you can succeed with server locational website challenges!
What is the server location?
The server location is the physical location of the data center where your website’s files are stored and delivered to users.
The closer your website visitors are to the web server’s location, the faster the site will load for them. That’s why you need to define your target audience in the first place, before choosing a hosting provider and a plan.
If your users are all around the world, focus on building a content delivery network, which creates a bridge between your server’s location and further visitors. This system caches the website’s data from a server closest to the user’s location. Thus, these visitors can also open your site quickly, without any frustration.
Your website’s server location will affect your site’s loading speed and latency, two very important factors. Recent statistics point out that half of mobile users abandon a site if it doesn’t load up in three seconds. If your server location is far away from your visitors, you lose most of them before making a purchase or going through a conversion funnel.
When does server location matter most?
Server location matters the most when your target audience is situated in one country or region. Therefore, for local businesses and physical shops supported with online appearance, server location is crucial. If your target audience all lives in Great Britain, but your server location is in the US, they won’t be satisfied with the delays and slow-loading elements.
In this case, if your goal is to get more sales from your current buyers, try to grab a server that is near your physical shop’s location. Therefore, you can be sure that your target audience will have a great user experience on your website. On the other hand, if you want to conquer different markets with your online appearance, do research beforehand, or grab a content delivery network.
How does server location affect SEO?
We already discussed how users regularly react to a slow-loading website. In this part of the article, we will discover how Google and its search engine handle server locational issues.
Google still remains silent about the exact formula of search engine evaluation. However, they shared the key factors that the algorithm takes into consideration. Website speed and latency issues are among the biggest factors. Google understands how a slow-loading site destroys user experience, so Google doesn’t want to recommend a site like this to anyone. If your site struggles with opening up within 3 seconds – because of server location issues, in this case – Google will put the site into a lower place in its search results.
There is one more aspect where server location affects SEO. Google has a crawling and indexing mechanism that is operated by Googlebot. This process is needed for Google to check your site’s performance, rate it, and place it on a list of other websites. Googlebot makes this activity regularly to discover your recent posts and take note of recent improvements in user experience. If your server responds slowly due to location or other issues, it can limit how efficiently Googlebot crawls your site, potentially delaying new content from appearing in search results. In time-sensitive posts, where it is crucial that the written information is delivered to the readers within days, this is a crucial issue.
Tips to address server location challenges
In this part of the article, we give some solutions to server locational problems.
a. Choose a reliable hosting provider
Sometimes you can’t control your server’s location. You just pay for a hosting provider that hosts your site, and they handle all the other stuff. This collaboration has high risk factors, so trust is essential. Therefore, try to find a hosting provider that has high user ratings and has quick and effective customer service.
If a new hosting provider appears on the market offering the lowest prices, don’t rush in without caution. Wait for other reactions, and when you can ensure that it is a trustworthy entity, then you can finally move forward with them and decide on your preferred web hosting option.
b. Focus on the website’s speed and latency
Not only can a bad hosting provider be responsible for a slow-loading site. Sometimes, you can only blame yourself. In a scenario like this, it is crucial to acknowledge the problem and quickly make a change.
Some website creators believe that a great user experience can only be achieved through an over-edited site. So they insert videos, 3D assets, and high-resolution pictures to make the site unique and spectacular. The truth is, except for a few industries, these ideas rather decrease your chances of being highlighted.
These elements can contribute to a slow-loading site, which – as we observed earlier – makes the visitors to site abandonment.
c. Rely on content delivery networks
A content delivery network (or CDN) is one of the most crucial elements of world-sized websites. If you want to ensure that across North America to East Asia, every visitor should have the same experience when opening your site, you get into a little trouble. Your servers need to be located somewhere, which indicates that some visitors will win from the situation some visitors will lose. But not in the case of content delivery networks. We already explained the system of content delivery networks; now let’s see its success.
Out of the top one million websites according to traffic volume, 46% use a CDN service. If we only take the top ten thousand websites into account, we get an outstanding 59% CDN usage ratio. This statistic points out that a CDN service is unavoidable if you serve the global market online.
d. Monitor site performance regularly
Online visitors work differently from in-site visitors in the offline world. In the second case, you can get information about them easily, and they will tell you their complaints. In the online world, they abandon your website and search for a new site where they can buy the same products without leaving any comment, or note.
Therefore, it is really important to gather data about their in-site movements and behavior. You can do this by connecting Google Analytics to your website or using other data analytics software. But gathering data is just one slice of the solution. You need to analyze them as well.
You can do this on your own, or get some AI help to make that more smoothly. Here, you need to explore patterns. For example, if the visitors spend less time on a sub-page than the others, it may lead you to a broken element. Or if 5 visitors rage-click at one part of the webpage, there’s a chance that the designated button doesn’t work.
And the most important part: you need to check the performance in a daily manner, as a serious mistake would lead to thousands of unsuccessful purchases.
Conclusion
In this article, we analyzed how server location and SEO connect with each other, and why it is crucial to choose reliable hosting providers, and the reason why you need to focus on website speed and latency.
Notice that the internet speed is improving on every continent; therefore, our personal definition of website speed and latency is also evolving. What we categorized as “fast” yesterday may be “slow” for us tomorrow. For this reason, you always need to search for alternative options and explore new server locational updates.