There are several factors involved in boosting your SEO to achieve success. This includes the speed at which your website operates and your content is delivered, optimization of your website pages, the place where your server is located, and much more. Regardless of whether you consider the speed of your website to be a leading factor in your website’s success, it does have an effect on your ranking on search engines. The location of your server is one of the most important aspects that determine the speed of your website, and by extension on your SEO ranking.
Does your hosting server location have a significant impact on your SEO?
The short answer is yes. The location of your web hosting server does impact the SEO of your website to a very great extent. Let’s take a look at how. Since an IP address is assigned to every website, it pinpoints the location of the server as well. For example, if your server is placed in Africa and your audience is accessing it from the UK, it might end up causing issues such as not performing optimally. Google will assume that your target audience is African as your server is located there.
As a website owner, if your target audience is around where you are situated, then it is preferable to select a website hosting provider that is also located in the vicinity. This is one of the most crucial factors to take into consideration while selecting your web hosting service. In case your top choice does not have servers located near your audience you might want to look for another web hosting provider that does.
How is your speed affected by server location?
The speed of your website can either alienate your users or bring in more traffic. Website management involves content, images, links, and videos that are all your responsibility to handle. You need to ensure optimum functioning so that you get the best speed possible. There are several tools that can help boost your websites speed.
You can check the speed of your website by using the Google page speed tool as well. In case your website is heavy on content with lots of videos and images, it might be a huge reason for your website slowing down. So you might want to ensure you do not have unnecessary content on your website.
It comes down to this, your audience does not have an infinite amount of patience to wait for your website to load at its own sweet pace. Research shows that if your website’s loading time exceeds 3 seconds, your visitors more often than not exit your website.
No matter what discounts or offers you have going, your visitors will still abandon browsing your website. So all of your efforts will be rendered useless if your loading speed is too slow. Since your speed is determined by the location, it ultimately all comes down to it.
Getting to know where your target audience is located that could bring in revenue gives you a good idea of where your server should be placed. Regardless of your own location, your server should be placed as near to your audience as possible to guarantee a boost in speed.
How does server location affect SEO rankings?
Your bounce rate decreases substantially with great page speed. Bounce rate basically refers to visitors loading your web page but then leaving almost immediately without any other interaction with your website. The bounce rate is quite high if your website has a slow loading speed.
As it turns out, the bounce rate goes up by 32% if your loading time is more than 3 seconds. Page speed has a huge effect on the user experience. The more the speed the better the experience you offer. You get maximum dwell time on your website it offers quick navigation. Dwell time is basically the amount of time visitors stay scouring your webpage.
Websites that ensure fast loading time make it easier for search engines to crawl. It helps them take a note of the content that you have updated. It includes new websites, web pages, or any changes being made to the content that already exists on your website. The bots and crawlers periodically go through your content to enable ranking and crawling.
You can see the huge impact your server location and website’s speed have on your SEO rankings. You can pick your target locations with the help of search engines as it aids in identifying the best keywords based on the location and it helps in geo-targeting. Your website can load quite quickly if you have the perfect server location.
Does a content delivery network help boost your website’s speed?
A content delivery network (CDN) includes several servers placed strategically all around the world. It helps increase speed by minimizing the space between the visitor and the server. Your website’s cached version is also stored by the CDN in several locations. The absence of a CDN would compel the main servers to respond every time the visitor requests the contents of a webpage. Due to this, there is a distinct possibility of the servers becoming overwhelmed and slowing down the loading time.
A CDN uses the server nearest to the visitor to deliver the content requested. Once a visitor clicks on your website, the basic content will be delivered from the CDN server located in its proximity. The hosting server delivers the remaining content. A CDN is a perfect way to boost the speed of your page loading time. If your website garners traffic from all over the world, a CDN helps increase response time while reducing the time it takes to load your server.
Conclusion
The speed of your website is dictated by the location of the data center that houses your website. Search engines take into account the loading time and speed of your website.
The VPS server hosting is also the great option to host a website. It gives more flexibility than others. If your website is located near your target audience, it helps boost speed and reduces bounce rate. If you do not find a server nearby, you can select a CDN that can accomplish your goal of fast loading time.