Using GeoDNS across 3 server locations

[Keith-007]

Hi,

I have multiple servers across UK and USA. I have a web site that serves both areas and was looking at cloning my sites and using GeoDNS to route visitors to the closest server to improve speed and experience

So UK visitors would connect to UK dedicated server, North America - New York server and so on

Is this a good way or would this effect SEO negatively.

Cheers

Keith

[Advanced-Air-Ambulance]

The way GeoDNS works is through one of two methods: split DNS or load balancing. The end result is the same, the user will be directed to their closest or fastest available server.

Theoretically, this helps achieves a major goal of technical SEO - great site speed.

With the new Google Web Core Vitals update of this year, site speed and user experience has been further notched up as ranking factors. To get more technical– LCP, largest contentful paint, the speed of which the largest asset on a page loads, and FCP, first contentful paint, the speed of which the first legible content is produced on the screen, are site speed signals used by Google in their ranking algorithm. By connecting a user to the closest/ fastest server available, you can bring down the time on LCP and FCP and thereby increase your rank. The rank change may not be immediately noticeable depending on the competitiveness of your keywords and industry. You can measure these and other variables here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

In short: No, your SEO won't be negatively impacted, and it will more likely be positively impacted by these optimizations.

[Keith-007]

Hi,

Many thansk for your input

I was planning to use cloudns GeoIP to send visitors to the server of their region.
So having one web site - www.xyz.com that is duplicated across three server (location) so all people see the same site. this would maintain the backlinks and no matter if google crawls from USA or UK it will see it as one domain with exception of 3 IP's in use

or have www.xyz.com and www.xyz.co.uk as duplicates and set this in google webmaster tools.
plus set the language en-US and en-UK

Not sure which is the best solution. www.xyz.com has the most backlinks and DA, where www.xyz.co.uk has zero and will be new to the world

I would rather people generate backlinks for the one domain as well

Your thoughts are welcome

Regards

Keith

[Advanced-Air-Ambulance]

Personally, I would use the one domain. And from what you've said, you would prefer it as well.

Thankfully, rankings are on a domain basis and not an IP basis, so there would be no issue in the first scenario. If you are duplicating and synchronizing the servers, you are better off using the one domain because you aren't creating two separate websites with differing content (UK English vs US English).

Do you have the bandwidth or ability to produce separate versions (for each domain) for each area you want to target? If not you are best off generalizing your website to target all English users instead of en-US, en-GB, etc. You're going to have to evaluate your geotargeting goals and budget.

[Keith-007]

Hi,

I have quite a lot of servers dotted around UK and USA so hosting and bandwidth is no big issue. if I host soley UK the ping times is a whopping 100ms+ to USA and vice versa so this leads me to hosting at least bother countries and latency will be 10-20ms  and TTFB nice and low

I like the idea of creating and maintaining one major site as all will be English based, any backlinks will always be pointed to the dot com as opposed to splitting across multiple domains. Seo wise not too bothered will be focusing on speed and entertaining people with info on what they looking for - too me this is more important then the rest

Al servers are Cpanel based, so will try and find a solution to replicate sites in real-time or cron based intervals. this will be the next challenge

If I can pull this off it will be great for other sites I have too

Regards

Keith

[Advanced-Air-Ambulance]

Hi Keith,

I meant the physical bandwidth - i.e. your time. I probably should've been more clear in a technical forum!

For the architecture, there are a few common setups. What I am in the middle of doing here at my company is through Google Cloud services. Duplicating the website app or script (I.e. Wordpress, Ghost, Drupal, CMS, Python App, Rails app, etc) across the several servers and using a load balancer to determine the fastest server. In the app's configuration I am using a single Database server also set up on Google Cloud, so when one server executes a command, it is reflected for all users on all servers. If you're Cron-jobbing all the servers you have set up but no common database, you're going to have some integrity issues, with some servers having some comments or edits, and some servers not.