Let\u2019s say you\u2019re trying to choose between two different web hosts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The first is almost prohibitively expensive, but it\u2019s situated very close to your target audience. Right on their doorstep, essentially. The other, while more in your price range, is also on the other side of the country from you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These characteristics aside, neither of your hosts differ from one another in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naturally, you\u2019ll want to go with the former of the two, right? After all, it might be a lot more expensive. But you\u2019ve heard over and over again that where search engine optimization is concerned, location is everything.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That advice doesn\u2019t actually apply here. Not for the reasons you might expect, anyway. While it is extremely important to optimize your business\u2019s website so it targets your audience, the only significant impact your web host\u2019s location has on SEO is tied to page speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that I said significant. <\/em>Google has, on several occasions, gone on record mentioning that a web server\u2019s IP address has at least some impact on ranking. In that same statement, however, it also explained that, since many websites rely on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or tend to be hosted out-of-country due to another region having better infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As such, results aren\u2019t based on location alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speed is far more important, anyway. It\u2019s long been known that a website\u2019s performance has a marked impact on how well it ranks. And it goes without saying that a host that\u2019s closer to your target audience will give you better load times than one that\u2019s far away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n CDNs can only go so far, after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore it\u2019s far more important that you optimize for local search. Fill out your Google My Business Page, set your website\u2019s location in the Google Search Console, and include comprehensive contact information on every page of your site. Note that these steps only matter if your target users are in a specific country or region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If your audience consists of people from all over the world, your server\u2019s IP address matters significantly less. At that point, it all comes down to quality. A good user experience and fast load times will have a greater impact on SEO than a simple IP address ever could. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re trying to choose between two different web hosts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seohost.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"