How server hosting & IP affect search engine rankings

As India’s most trusted server hosting provider, we get a lot of questions from customers on the type of server they should choose. Another most common problem that customers stumble upon is whether their IP will affect search engine rankings.

The type of server hosting affect site rankings but not directly. In recent times, Google has started focusing on page load speed as a ranking factor. Naturally, websites that are hosted on servers close by are ranked better.

So, if you are targeting countrywide customers with a VPS hosting servers in India, it is likely that the search engine will give you more preference.

However, it is to be noted that page-load speed is one of the factors, and might not fetch you ranking alone when all the other factors are accounted for.

Here, we take a closer look at how things work.

Say you run two e-commerce sites powered with two VPS hosting servers located in India and the USA. Both websites sell the same product but with a different domain name. Site one targets customers from India and is hosted on Indian Server, while the one hosted in the US runs globally and is optimized for global rankings.

Now, if a user in the subcontinent searches for your product, he is more likely to see the one with Indian IP. This is because it loads better, given its proximity to the user. Similarly, a customer from Mexico will see the US-based domain higher in the list.

Server at the same location but with different rankings

Take another example with two sellers named A & B, both running a server at location X, and with equally competent SEO staff. The only difference between the two being that A runs a shared server while B a dedicated server.

Who do you think is more likely to rank better in SERPs, A or B?

It’s B, right.

Since seller B runs a dedicated server hosting, his website will load faster and better than his competitor A’s. Moreover, shared hostings are infamous for running into ‘N’ number of downtimes, and search engines have developed a mindset that shared machines host inferior websites.

Busting myths surrounding shared IP

Shared IP addresses are not very forgiving when it comes to ranking. On the other hand, if you choose a dedicated IP address, you are guaranteed to get more from your website.

A lot of myths surround shared IP. One of them being that a notorious domain can get the entire IP blacklisted. Actually, Google is quite smart and knows that hundreds of people are running a shared IP.

First off, Google doesn’t take blacklisting lightly, and it investigates a number of spam and malware attacks before hitting sites with a negative SEO.

Secondly, in general, sites are blacklisted based on their domain-names and not based on their IP address. But blacklisting domains is not a hard and fast rule as such. Hosts that allow spams and hacked-sites to continue for long can have the entire IP blacklisted at once.

A dedicated IP address is more secure, less prone to spams and SEO policy-violation, and easier to secure a spot in SERP.

What’s best for me?

If there’s slit-throat competition in your business, you will experience a significant ranking boost once you move to a dedicated server. However, a dedicated machine is not an easy thing to acquire and its cost is often a prohibitive aspect. If you are constrained with funds, you can choose an intermediate dedicated hosting-like option called VPS hosting servers.

Both VPS and dedicated servers score similar points on the scale of performance and security, and you wouldn’t have to spend as much as you would with a dedicated machine.

Location-based targeting

Don’t you think it makes more sense to target only select areas when “73% of the online activity has to do with local searches”?

Here we have curated a list of things you can do to target business in your areas.

• Target location-based keyword

Say, I search for “servers in India”. Now, as a user, I have confined Google into displaying local (countrywide) results.

Take a look at what pops

Notice the occurrence of the keyword “server” and “India” in the meta-description.

To successfully target localized business, it is essential to focus on keywords first.

• Target the domain

If you want to operate in, say, India solely, it is probably in your interest to opt for an Indian domain such as .in, .co.in, etc.

With an Indian domain, you will rank better in Indian searches; though, it might not be viable if you are planning to target more than one countries.

• Optimize unique content

In case you are creating different domains with the same brand name, make sure each website has unique content, even if the contents are relating.

There’s no place to con-artistry in google. If Google finds out that you are using duplicated contents in several websites, each of these domains will experience a ranking de-boost.

Read more  :  An Innovative Approach for Server Hosting in a Dedicated Way!

Takeaways

• Local servers fetch better rankings in local results
• Shared IPs can hinder SEO at one point
• VPS hosting servers perform better than shared servers both in terms of hosting as well as SEO. A VPS is also an economical solution to the dedicated server.
• Target specific local-keywords, write unique content and host a native domain to engage area-specific clients.