Hosting Speed Performance

[soapme]

Our site is currently hosted in Germany (1&1) and it primarily attracts users from the USA. We are however keen to improve our search engine rankings on UK search engines and are considering moving to UK servers. I have ‘heard’ that a site doesn’t perform as well for people visiting from the USA to UK servers as for example the German network where we are now.

Can anybody offer advice on whether this will affect the response time of webpages to USA visitors?

If it will have an affect, will this have a significant impact on SEO?

Thanks,

[lavellester]

Hi there,

I doubt there will be any latency difference between the US and UK or Germany.  Just go with a provider who has good network/peering.

Here's a good video on where to host when targeting particular country etc.  Should answer your questions.

Hope this helps.

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi David,

Where you host a site isn't regarded as a strong ranking factor internationally - perhaps in the past it did make a difference, but I think that the search engines disregard this now (probably because it throws up too many issues - e.g. lots of UK targeted sites are hosted in the US).

However - site speed can affect rankings - and more importantly users - I guess I'm saying you need 'good' hosting, but it doesn't matter where it's located.

I hope this helps,

Hannah