In the world of Search Engine Optimization, Location is important.
Search engines like to bring relevant results to a user, not only in the
area of keywords and sites that give the user exactly what they are
looking for, but also in the correct language as well. It doesn’t do a
lot of good for a Russian-speaking individual to continually get
websites returned in a search query that are written in Egyptian or in
Chinese. So a search engine has to have some way to be able to return
the results the user is looking for in the right language, and a search
engine’s goal is also to try and get the user as close to home as
possible in the realm of their search results.
Many people wonder why their websites don’t rank well in some search
engines, especially if they are trying to get ranked in a search engine
based in another country. Perhaps they may not even know they are in
another country?
You say that is impossible: how could one not know what country they are
in? It might surprise that individual to find that their website might
in fact be hosted in a completely different country, perhaps even on
another continent!
Consider that many search engines, including Google, will determine
country not only based on the domain name (like .co.uk or .com.au), but
also the country of a website’s physical location based upon IP address.
Search engines are programmed with information that tells them which
IP addresses belong to which particular country, as well as which domain
suffixes are assigned to which countries.
Let’s say, for instance, that you are wishing to rank highly in Google
based in the United States. It would not do well, then, for you to have
your website hosted in Japan or Australia. You might have to switch
your web host to one whose servers reside in the United States.
There is a tool we like to use called the Website to Country Tool.
What this tool does is it allows you to view which country your
website is hosted. Not only will this tell you what country your site is
hosted in, but it can also help you determine a possible reason why
your website may not be ranking as highly as you might like in a
particular search engine.
It might be disheartening to learn that your website has been hosted in
another country, but it is better to understand why your site might not
be ranking as highly as you’d like it to be, especially when there is
something you can definitely do about it.
