Website IP Location

[theLotter]

My main target audience is in the UK, but my website's IP is in the United States.  Would it be worthwhile to change the IP to a UK address? How would I go about that?

Thanks!

[dcstover1]

It is my understanding that the ip wont really matter seo wise...the only thing that i would see essential here is the ".co.uk" instead of say a ".com"

[JonathanLeplang]

You can chose the target of your website in the Google Webmasters Tools.

Best regards,

Jonathan

[MentorMate]

It may be worthwhile as it pertains to load time. Just find a new host with an IP in the UK if the current one doesn't offer it. It's only beneficial so you might as well if it's not a big pain.

[JarnoNijzing]

Ip adresses are only important when you look at the number of websites hosted on the same server.

I used to host at a company with only shared hosting platforms with more than 5000 domains on the same server. When linking one site to another from the same IP adress Google could interpret this as Black Hat and penalyse you for it.

I know use my own virtual server to host my websites. The biggest advantage is the posibility to use more then one IP adress for my server. So websites with similar content can be shared on different ip adresses and thus be interpreted as single websites voting for one another.

You could alway try to find a host that offers the possibility to host a virtual server with an IP adress in the UK for localization optimalisation.

hope this helps

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi Sara,

Where you host really isn't considered a major ranking factor - there are many UK sites which are hosted in the US and they don't have issues with ranking.

I'm assuming you're not suffering with poor loading speeds - if you are - go ahead and change your hosting but I wouldn't worry too much about whether that's UK or US

You've not said whether your domain is a .co.uk or a generic (e.g. a .com / .net etc). If you do have a generic domain I'd recommend that you geo-target via Google Webmaster Tools - see http://www.seo-chicks.com/1463/geotargeting-on-the-same-domain-using-xml-sitemaps.html

I hope this helps,

Hannah