Most of the hosting companies indicate the location of their servers. This factor should not be ignored as it plays a huge part in the performance of your website. If you wonder why it is important to choose your server’s location and how it can affect your business, keep on reading because we’ve got the answers.
What is the server location?
Server location is not necessarily the city, but rather a region, where your server is located. It can be anywhere in the world, which means you have plenty of options to choose from, no matter where your business (meaning headquarters) is registered or situated. Of course, you would not want to make a random choice. This is a very important step that some businesses neglect, however, it can have a big impact on your website’s performance and therefore bring your sales up or down.
What does server location affect?
It affects page load speed
Nowadays, with the exponential growth of businesses and even in general, customers tend to be less patient expecting a fast browsing experience. The relationship between bounce rates and page load speed is quite obvious. There are multiple reports on a correlation between these two. As an example, take a look at the report by a digital marketing agency Portent. According to their research, the first five seconds have a significant impact on conversion rates, and every second after that decreases your chances of conversion. Now, you could have the best possible location, but if your hosting provider is not reliable enough, it would only make things worse. That’s why, first of all, we recommend you to find a reliable hosting provider. Do your research, read the reviews, test their network speed, etc. Then, check their server location. The closer it is to your target audience, the better it is for your business because surely your website will load faster.
It affects privacy
You probably know that different countries have different laws and regulations for information security. In some countries, it is allowed to some authorities to get access to the servers and to track information that is hosted on them (websites, applications, etc.) We have to note that we are not talking about illegal or forbidden content, it is more about user information protection. When choosing a server location, you have to keep in mind that the privacy and protection of your business and its customers is the top priority. How do you do that? You need to check the legislation on personal information protection in the region of your interest and decide whether it fits your purposes.
It has (no) significant impact on SEO
This is where it becomes tricky as no one is completely sure how the server location might affect search engines, although many still believe that your website’s ranking in the search results would depend on the location of your server. However, to be completely fair, take a look at the tweet from John Mueller of Search Quality at Google. As a response to the user’s question “Does changing the location of the IP address affect SEO?”, Mueller said, “Usually not. We get enough information about geotargeting, for example, from TLD settings and geotargeting in Search Console.” While there is no certain answer to the question of the location’s direct impact on SEO, many professionals recommend hosting your website on a server located in the country of your target audience or nearby regions.
How to make sure it’s the right server location?
Let’s summarize. There are a few main factors you have to consider before making a final call on your server location:
- reliability of your hosting provider;
- target audience location;
- legislation on privacy and protection of personal information in the respective region.
Once you have this information, find a suitable hosting provider with a perfect server location close to your target audience and transparent privacy legislation. That’s it. You are all set for the start of your new business or the future development of your current company.
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