How to Select the Best Server Location for Your Website

Once considered a nicety, a quick website is now a fundamental expectation. Web page load times affect your site's search engine rankings and the satisfaction of your visitors. The location of the server on which your website is hosted is vital to its performance.

If you're a website owner, you may have realized the impact it can have on things like page load time, search engine rankings, and even legal compliance.

The first step in managing a website is figuring out where the bulk of your visitors is coming from. What makes this step so crucial? Because network latency is greatly affected by the location of the server hosting your website, you must choose an optimal location for your server.

Server's Location Impacts website speed:

Data is transmitted across the Internet through a system of cables. A basic mathematical formula applies to the speed of electronic pulses and signals: the further the data travels, the longer it will take to reach its destination. Latency refers to the delay experienced by a sender when their data is in transit from one location to another.

For the sake of argument, let's say that you're the administrator of a website aimed primarily at people in Asia. If your web provider only has a dedicated server hosting Singapore, the information that makes up your site must travel across the globe before reaching any of your visitors.

How to choose the location?

If you're looking for a good web host, one crucial factor is their servers' location. Some hosting providers, like London dedicated servers, make it easy to find out the place of their data centers by including a map on their site.

Not all hosting services are so transparent. What you should do in such a situation is contact their sales or customer service department and inquire there. It's better to go elsewhere for a hosting provider if they won't even say where their data center is.

Choose the server nearest to your visitors:

Every online business desires optimal functionality and top search engine results page (SERP) placement. Hosting your site geographically close to your target audience is essential to his success. Instead of hosting on UK dedicated servers, where data has to travel hundreds of miles and increase loading time, it would be advisable to host on Singapore dedicated servers that assist in lowering latency if the majority of your users are located in Asia.

It is wise to locate your website server in a more convenient area for your target audience. If you already have and you're still experiencing sluggish website speed, you may want to look into switching web hosting providers.