Hosting in the UK for SEO

[links]

Hi,
My question is, I have a client who recently started trading in the UK and has a .co.uk domain for his new website. His own site is on Blacknight but as this is based in Ireland, I feel it is better to host the .co.uk website in the UK to help with SEO for appearing in the .co.uk search engines.

Can someone recommend a good hosting company in the UK that are well priced and offer a good service.

Kind regards

Denis

 

[Forbairt]

disclaimer: I work for Blacknight

Via the google webmaster tools you're able to set the geo target for the site.

Given the proximity of ireland / uk .. latency which is one of the concerns with sites hosted outside the country really shouldn't matter

Given it's a .co.uk it's already geo targeting the UK ...

My own experience in the past with UK registrars / hosts has been pretty awful

As such I hosted a few .co.uk's with Blacknight and they rank up there 1st place on google.co.uk

 

[links]

Thanks for the reply Forbairt. As it's a .co.uk domain, I hoped that would be the case as I get a great service from Blacknight. I know you can change the geo target in webmaster but only for .com and .net as far as I am aware.

Thanks for the feedback .
One more question is I have another client with a successful business and we hope to expand into the US market in the next 6 months once we achieve our existing goals. We plan to use a .com domain but would you agree that needs to be hosted in the US or could we try it on blacknight and set the geo target in webmaster. What is your view on this?

 

[Forbairt]

Matt Cutts has a video here Can the geographic location of a web server affect SEO? - YouTube in which he says yes but also that you can experiment with things. I'd probably say experiment and see how you get on with your ranking

 

[link8r]

Just to add to Forbairt, the signal strength of where you're hosted as to where you get a geo-location boost in SERP's is probably very weak but probably only dependent on competition, volume and who you're competing with. More importantly, Google doesn't view the US as one location, it's multiple location, so if you hosted in Colorado but were targeting people in New York, then you haven't solved anything by moving. I think of all the things you can do (for example, talking about New York and linking to New York sites and visa-versa) is probably so valuable.

Hosting where you target is a great symptom of people who like to think in straight lines and tick boxes. Cos ticked boxes means stuff will happen. Even though its not how the world works, some people just work that way.