In today’s discussion, we cover whether it really matters if you host your website somewhere other than where you live. In short, the answer is yes.

There are countless hosts available and knowing which country you need hosting in will help you narrow down your choice.

Before you start, you need to know and understand your target market. Are you aiming for readership from the UK or elsewhere? If you decide that your readership is coming from more than one location, consider purchasing the corresponding location domain names and hosting each domain name (even with identical sites) in each location. The rest of this post assumes you have decided that you need a UK readership; but the information applies equally well to any other location.

Your readership need to be able to access your website efficiently. The servers closest to your readership will almost always deliver your content the fastest. You should therefore use UK hosting if your readership is in the UK.

Another consideration is that Google (and other search engines) have a search facility that allows website users to narrow their searches to a particular region. Google have loosely published how they decide which websites get listed in each regional search group. If you have a .co.uk , you’re pretty much home and dry. You could host anywhere and Google will still recognise that you are aiming at the UK market and will list your site on the UK Google.

If you have a .com however, things are not so simple. A .com domain doesn’t give any indication of the site’s location. In this instance, Google will consider two other location factors, and your best chances are if the results of these are the same. Firstly it will consider where the domain is hosted. If this investigation comes back as ‘on a UK server’, Google will be happy to include your site on the UK Google (provided it is happy to list you in the first place of course!). You can also tell Google where you think your domain should be listed. It will consider this, but there’s no guarantee that it will believe you, especially if it doesn’t tally with the server location.

Finally, be aware that if you do choose to host outside of the UK, you do so under the jurisdiction of the country that you host in. Make sure you understand what rules might apply, particularly about taxation, legal content and intellectual property – and what penalties there might be for omitting to adhere to them. This is vital in the case of blogs and similar sites where what is seen as a personal opinion in the UK could be breaking the law elsewhere.

Are you ready to buy some UK hosting now? Or do you have any queries on this article? Get in touch and we’ll try to help.