Is there any effect on keyword ranking in SERP results due to web hosting?

Started by sagabizsolutions, 06-17-2015, 01:23:48

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sagabizsolutionsTopic starter

If the hosting of my website is changed from one country to another country, is there any effect on keyword ranking in SERP results.
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pathannishat

Quote from: sagabizsolutions on 06-17-2015, 01:23:48Is there any effect on keyword ranking in SERP results due to web hosting?
« on: 17 June 2015, 01:23:48 »

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    Thank You

If the hosting of my website is changed from one country to another country, is there any effect on keyword ranking in SERP results.

Hi There,
Absolutely it happens when a Server where your website hosted slow or not responding properly when onyone open your website, so your website server should be fast. When a server slow sometimes server couldn't open your site and give the error message like "request time out" or "page not found" etc.


Shikha Singh

Migrating your web hosting from one country to another could potentially have some impact on your Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) ranking, but it is generally minimal. The most important considerations here are:

Server Location and Speed: The physical location of your server might impact your website's loading speed, which is a known factor in Google's ranking algorithm. If your new hosting country is far from your user base, and this leads to your site loading slower for your users, it might hurt your SERP rankings. However, this can often be mitigated through the use of a content delivery network (CDN), which speeds up page load times by delivering content from servers close to the end user.

Local SEO: If your website targets a specific geographic region, the location of the server could potentially contribute to local SEO factors. Google sometimes looks at server location when determining the local relevance of a website, but this is small compared to factors like the website's language, whether it has a local top-level domain (TLD), and if it uses local addresses/phone numbers.

IP Address Change & Downtime: Changing hosts will, in most cases, change your website's IP address. While this in itself shouldn't impact your search rankings, any associated downtime (if your site is not accessible while the change is happening) could. Longer periods of downtime may negatively affect your site's SEO ranking. It's best to take precautions to avoid or at least minimize downtime when changing hosts.

Search Console & Analytics: If you're changing your website to target audiences in a different country, you should update your international targeting settings in the Google Search Console.

Webmaster Tools Setting: In Bing's Webmaster Tools, for example, you can adjust the geo-targeting settings to a specific country. For Google, you can set a target country in the Google Search Console (though note that this option is only available for generic top level domains, not country specific TLDs).

Quality of Hosting Provider: The quality of your chosen hosting provider is important. Going from a reliable hosting provider in one country to a hosting provider with poor up-time and performance in another country will likely have a negative impact on your site's performance and subsequently its rankings.

Regulation & Local Compliance: Depending on the type of content you are hosting, and the regulations in various countries, moving hosts could implicate data privacy rights and regulations, such as the GDPR in Europe. This could indirectly affect your SEO if it impacts your website's legal compliance and hence, usability and user trust.

Separate ccTLDs versus Subdirectories or Subdomains: If you're creating different versions of your site per country, it's typically better from an SEO perspective to use subdirectories (example.com/fr/) or subdomains (fr.example.com) versus separate ccTLDs (example.fr), as individual domains split the SEO authority. However, a ccTLD does have a strong signal for geo-targeting.

CDN Use: To reiterate a well-known solution to mitigate potential lag from international hosting, ensure you're utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN works by caching static website data (like CSS, Javascript, and image files) on numerous servers all over the world. When a user accesses your site, this data is served to them from the nearest server, ensuring quick load times regardless of the physical location of your main host server.

Website Speed: Beyond general load times, there are other factors at play with regards to the speed of your website. Things like DNS response times, TCP and SSL handshake durations, as well as server response times can all be influenced by the location of your host server and could impact SEO.

IP Address Localization: Remember that each IP address is associated with a particular country. This means that search engines can use the location associated with your website's IP address to help understand where your website is based. This is a fairly minor signal and is far less significant than things like the content of the website itself, but it is something to keep in mind.

Smooth Transition: The potential impacts of changing web hosts can be largely mitigated by ensuring a smooth transition. This includes pre-planning and ensuring that you have full backups of your website before transitioning (to ensure nothing gets lost in the shuffle), arranging for a period of co-hosting where your website is active on both the old and new servers, testing the site fully on the new server before switching the DNS over, and monitoring the site closely after the switch to catch any potential issues quickly.

Server Quality and Security: The quality, reliability, and security of your host server will also impact your site's SEO. For example, Google and other search engines penalize websites that are frequently down or that get compromised by hаckers. Ensure that your new host offers good up-time and security measures.

Temporary Downtime: Regardless of your planning, temporary downtime is a common occurrence during a website migration. It's important to choose low-traffic periods for your audience to execute the migration. For search engines, you should return a 503 HTTP status code, which means the server is temporarily unavailable. This can help signal to search engines that they should come back to recrawl and reindex the site later, and it won't have a massive negative effect on your rankings.

Redirects: During the migration, it's crucial to correctly set up 301 redirects from your old URLs to your new ones if there is any change. A 301 is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link equity to the redirected page. Incorrectly setting up your redirects could mean search engines start to de-index your old pages, leading to a fall in your SEO rankings.

XML Sitemaps: Keep your XML sitemap up to date and submit it to search engines after completing the migration. The XML sitemap can help search engines discover the new URLs on your site and index them more quickly, helping to maintain your search rankings.

Robots.txt: Ensure that your new host isn't inadvertently blocking search engines from crawling your site through the robots.txt file. Check and update this file if necessary to prevent any unexpected surprises.

Crawl and Test: After you've made the switch, be sure to crawl your own website and manually test pages to ensure nothing breaks. Problems like broken links or images, pages that don't load, or features that don't work can all have negative SEO implications.

Monitor the Metrics: Post-migration, be sure to monitor key metrics. Look at things like average page load times, bounce rates, total traffic, conversion rates, and of course, your search rankings for key terms. This can help you quickly identify and troubleshoot any issues resulting from the transfer.

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: If necessary, notify search engines about your site's change of domain or address through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Content Delivery Network (CDN): If you're switching hosts due to location-based speed issues, consider utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to balance out differences in load times worldwide. A CDN can store cached versions of your website on multiple servers around the world, allowing users to load your website from a closer location. CDNs can also help reduce bandwidth costs, increase content availability, and improve website security.

Domain Name System (DNS): The DNS transfer can be one of the trickiest parts of moving hosts. Remember to lower your TTL (Time To Live) values prior to the switch to speed up your propagation times. DNS propagation, the time it takes for your website's DNS information to spread across the internet, can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours.

SSL Certificates: Security is essential, and part of this comes from well-managed SSL certificates. If your website is using SSL (which it should be, given SEO and security advantages), you'll need to ensure there's no lapse in SSL coverage during the transfer.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Plans: Before the transition, have a solid backup plan and be prepared for a disaster recovery situation. Make sure you have a full copy of your website that can be easily deployed in case of any failure during the transition.

Post-Migration Analysis: After the migration, carry out a careful analysis to verify the performance, response time, security, and any 404 error messages. Track your website's performance over time, so you have data to compare to when making your assessments.

Email Transfer: If you're using your hosting provider for email services as well, you'll need to consider this in your migration. You may have to recreate mailboxes, migrate emails, and change email client settings. Be sure to check if your new host provides email services. If not, or if you prefer not to use them, alternative services such as GSuite or Microsoft 365 can provide email hosting.

Database Transfer: Databases are essential parts of most modern websites, storing everything from user accounts to content. When transitioning between hosts, make sure to backup and correctly transfer your website's database, and double-check that the website can still access and interact with the database after the migration.

Scripts and Software: If your website relies on specific server-side technologies, such as certain versions of PHP or other software, you need to check if your new host supports them. You might need to reconfigure these technologies or even modify your website to comply with the new hosting environment.

Plan Your Timing: Coordinate the final switch with your old host to ensure you do not lose your website data or face unnecessary downtime. A good practice is to keep the old site running until you are fully settled into the new host.

HTML Checking: Post-migration, run an HTML validator to check the syntax of your coding. Coding errors can occur during a transfer, causing issues with the site's functionality or layout.

Hosting Customer Support: Ensure that your new hosting provider has a robust and prompt support service. This could come in handy if you experience any troubles during the migration, or if anything goes wrong at any point in the future.




Web hosting can affect your ranking. A good host isn't going to boost your rankings or guarantee you a spot at the top. A bad host it can actively damage your chances at building credit with Google, Bing, and other search engines. Quick, responsive sites are far more likely to scale search rankings than their more sluggish brethren.