Website Hosting Location, and should you use .com/.co.uk/.au etc...

There's been a few posts about problems hosting websites overseas, or people using a .com instead of a country specific, so thought I'd have a crack at shedding some light, or at least from our experience.

A lot of people in the SEO industry will say you shouldn't host outside of your country, as you will be penalised by the search engines.

There are lots of arguments fore and against, but I personally disagree. We have hosted My Local Services (UK) out of Texas USA for the last 3 years without any issues, Traffic is UK targetted, and google indexes nearly 2 million of our pages. Hosting costs for dedicated servers are also lot cheaper than in the UK.

That said, If I had a choice, I would prefer to host in the UK, i.e. I could be assured of the same quality of service, mainly uptime and support, the lifeblood of an online business, but previous experiences has sadly taught us otherwise.

I think businesses looking to target country specific users, should use country specific domains, ie .co.uk .us .ie etc. Businesses looking for general non targeted traffic should look at using .com domains.

Google (lets face it, the main source of search engine traffic) will automatically geo target your traffic depending on your domain extension. Eg you will get UK targeted traffic and little to no US traffic if you use a .co.uk domain.

But you can overide this in google webmaster tools.

Also, if you are using a .com extension, but want country targeted traffic, set up your Geographic target. In webmaster tools, once you have set up and verified your site (follow googles instructions) go to site configuration, settings. You can then choose which country to target your site at.

This should then show up correctly in things like Googles own listings, when searching for your business, but be patient, these things can take a while to update.

Key thing is, make life easier for yourself. If your choosing a new URL, think about your intended audience. If your going to use some economy cheap shared hosting provider, then you may as well pick one in your own country rather than save £3 a month by hosting in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas.

If you get to the stage where you want your own server, then really start doing your homework, a dedicated server needs to be sat in a professional highspeed datacentre, which can be just about anywhere these days, not sat under a desk or in your nephews garage

__________________
cheers
Steve

Online Marketing | Free USA Business Directory | My Local Blog | Jobs Vitae

Forum Rules FAQ's & Help

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban Copy & Paste monkeys - we're watching you!

Good info Steve

__________________
PDF Software | K Rend | Plasterer London |Fast Drying Screeds

Forum Rules FAQ's & Help

OK, copy and posted this from another forum, where the same discussion is taking place, I just cannot be bothered to type it all out again !

The one thing that nobody has mentioned (and actually gets my goat) is that we used to be quite proud of the British Industry/Product, if so many of you host abroad, you are sending money earned in the UK to other countries, do not scratch your head when a UK webhost company is in the news for laying off 50 staff, or the economy is weak and sterling is struggling.

I am getting increasingly wound up at how many people use a foreign country/company to save a few quid a month, and yet will complain about the economy when your grandkids cannot find work, or are staking shelves.

It is not just a choice of where your server is, it is a moral obligation to make a difference to the country you live in, if a product cannot be bought here, you do not have much choice (ie a Spanish omelette ) but you get the point!

I refuse to even buy flowers in supermarkets, as I would rather help keep the independent florists in business, who cares about saving 50p or a few quid, would rather save the country that gave me a free education, free healthcare, lack of military presence on the high street, etc etc!

I really could go on!

My host is a UK company, with UK servers, whether it performs better in searches is down to me, but at least my money is staying where it is earned and not damaging our economy!

__________________
Web Design Portfolio | Social Media beats SEO

Sorry mate, 100% disagree. When it comes to hosting, country loyalty and cost is a secondary factor after reliability and uptime.

In a competitive commercial online world, I want the most professional and reliable service versus cost, as any loss of service is damaging my reputation, and means I'm losing money.

As a firm believer in buy British, I have gone through 2 UK hosting outfits, the second a very major UK based and owned one which I'm not allowed to name for legal reasons.

After repeated outages (3 - 4 per month, sometimes for 45 minutes at a time), exceptionally poor service, incredibly bad customer service (UK call centre), with frequant escalations to director level, and constant blame culture (eg its your web dev that has caused it..) we finally successfully broke contract after it got all threatening and nasty.

After total frustration, I looked to the states after several recommendations for the same firm. Since then we have had unbroken first class service, as an added bonus, it is also 50% cheaper than when we hosted in the UK.

Now if I can use local or British services, then I will, ie our developers are based in Birmingham, may not be the cheapest, but are dam good and I can jump in the car if needed!

Now you want to start a separate chat about the demise of British industry and manufacturing, and why our grandkids will all be working in call centres driving Chinese and Indian motors, then happy days

__________________
cheers
Steve

Online Marketing | Free USA Business Directory | My Local Blog | Jobs Vitae

Forum Rules FAQ's & Help

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban Copy & Paste monkeys - we're watching you!

UK Dedicated Servers - Dedicated Servers in the UK << These are nothing short of marvelous, and I am not on commission!

__________________
Web Design Portfolio | Social Media beats SEO

Having a technical background plus living and breathing in Data Centres in one of my previous lives, I've probarbly got higher expectations than most.

The term data centre is banded round, when it reality it is a rack of servers or even a single VM server, sharing space with a bunch of other servers in some cheap co-lo environment, or operating out of Daves garage.

Having seen first hand, supposedly super resiliant datacentres fail at the first hurdel.. separate power sources plugged into the same circuit, UPS systems that fail because they've never been tested, standby generators that won't start, let alone having ropey porn sites and scammers sat on the same server as your website.. I tend to be a bit cautious.

But fairplay, EZPZ look pretty good, and certainly have some great feedback, but even they admit themselves they've had probs recently.

Kent Power Maintenance – 21/02/10 EZPZ Hosting Status

[Resolved] KSP Intermittent Packet Loss EZPZ Hosting Status

__________________
cheers
Steve

Online Marketing | Free USA Business Directory | My Local Blog | Jobs Vitae

Forum Rules FAQ's & Help

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban Copy & Paste monkeys - we're watching you!

yeah I had a couple of emails regarding these changes or whatever they were, didn't understand any of it so ignored it, never seen any down time on my sites, and bless Dan at EZPZ, i must send tickets in a few times a week, and never waited more than 30 minutes for a resolution or them fixing whatever it is that I have ballsed up!

I went with them because Dan had helped me out with website chat software just as i moved to iWeb, they were terrible, down for 72 hours at one point, so jumped to EZPZ because anyone that can give you help when your not a customer must be damn good to their customers!

Cannot see me going elsewhere, even when google offer us millions for www.Plugged.it Beta Release coming soon . . .

__________________
Web Design Portfolio | Social Media beats SEO

So when you've made your millions, will you remember us?

...and then will you go back on your diet? I sponsored you for £20!

__________________
cheers
Steve

Online Marketing | Free USA Business Directory | My Local Blog | Jobs Vitae

Forum Rules FAQ's & Help

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban Copy & Paste monkeys - we're watching you!

Target weight is still on for the Forces Festival, bad end of 19 stone at the minute, 18 is target! So still on the buck, just aint got the time or memory to do the shakes at the right time or blog about it.

Are you likely to make it to the forces festival either personally or professionally?

__________________
Web Design Portfolio | Social Media beats SEO