Domain location is a ranking factor? Back links & website?

[vtmoz]

1. If a website trying to rank in US and it has received many back-links from domains hosting from other countries; how it will impact website ranking?

2. Can a website hosted in country will rank well in other country? How much the hosted location matters? Like....domain hosted in Germany but trying to rank in US?

[Alick300]

Hi,

The below reply is not my own but I believe it is true.

If you getting backlinks from authoritative sites and that sites must be of your niche than it will be a good practice but if you put links on (foreign language) sites just to get backlinks and you not consider that it is of your niche or not than it goes to Black Hat SEO and obviously it will be harmful for your website.

For second point check detailed answer in old thread @ https://moz.com/community/q/does-the-location-of-my-server-effect-my-seo

Thanks

[vtmoz]

Hi Alick,

Thanks for the response and answer. I have gone through the answer posted in the reference thread. Beside backlinks from same niche, we may also receive natural backlinks from different language websites being many products or services popular among different countries. Hope these don't fall in black hat techniques. And we can see many websites rank good for highly competitive keywords without using geo targeting like indicating website.com/us/ for US browsers and search engines as well. What are your views on these two points?

[Alick300]

Hi,

You answered your question yourself if link is natural then no need to worry.

Thanks