Geographic location of hosting affect SEO

[summer300]

Can anyone confirm if its the geographic location of the web hosting or the domain hosting that can affect seo ? I have a client who has their domain hosting and Website hosting in Australia however their they have a .co.nz and their target market is in New Zealand. thank you

[Travis_Bailey]

It would appear that it's not such a big deal. Generally the ccTLD is a good indicator of intent. But you can actually target your country of choice in Google Webmaster Tools. That would count as yet another signal that your client is targeting New Zealand.

A similar question was recently answered in the Moz forum. I would look there as well.

Some things you can do to target your location:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Meta Data
• Contact Information
• Schema Markup

The only thing I would be concerned about is if there was a better web host in New Zealand, or if competitors were using a CDN. That would generally make their sites faster, one through geography and one through infrastructure. Either way, that's a strong ranking factor where you may lose out.

Other than that, it looks like you and your client should be alright in regard to your question.

[emarketexperts]

The correct answer is: yes, but it is  not a major factor anymore.  Please refer to the another similar  post herehere http://moz.com/community/q/can-geographic-location-of-web-server-affect-in-seo

" Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone.

Said that, a best practice is to follow one of these options:

1. hosting the site in the country targeted;
2. using an IP assigned to the targeted country and operate via proxy " - @gfiorelli1

Thanks

Rashesh