Should I Use a Separate IP Address for Each Country-Specific Site?
Posted on: May 30, 2014
Some websites offer their products and services to their customers from different countries. One of the best practices observed in this case is to have separate top level domains per country to indicate which ones should be used within a specific location. This allows customers to distinguish which sites are for France, the Philippines or Germany. Matt Cutts, Google’s main man in search spam was presented with a question related to TLD and IP addresses per country: “Should I use a separate IP Address for each country-specific site?” This is a growing concern since there are businesses that operate in different countries; an online retail store may have a domain that deals with their American clients in the United States and at the same time have another domain that caters to their clients in Singapore; while this is possible, owners are also concerned about using the same IP address for all domains.
The highlights of the video are as follows:
- Matt Cutts acknowledged the importance of having separate Top Level Domains per country- since this allows Google to distinguish which domains are for a specific country. This will also allow them to easily localize search results faster.
- A single IP address can be used even if more than one TLD are being used by a specific online retail store or business. He mentioned that using 1 IP address would not affect SEO rankings or results since TLDs or countries are specified in the domain names.
- IP addresses specific to the domain’s location can also be used, and in fact more preferred to help filtering and indexing a lot easier and quicker. Example: use an IP address in France if the domain is .com.fr – or if the site should be specifically used in the country.
- Although location or country-specific IP addresses are preferred, the use of a single IP address for all TLDs is not the end of the world.
In order to increase your SEO Ranking in a specific country, you should:
- Use the proper domain name. Domain names should be appropriate for your business, and of course your location (eg, .com.sg for Singapore or .com.my for Malaysia). This will assist Google in making sure that the search results are more specific and localized.
- Register to Google’s Web master tools for more online marketing guide. Since you would like to always follow protocols and optimize your users’ experience, signing up with Google’s webmaster tools can help you gather enough information to make sure that your maintain and create a relevant and searchable website.