In this article, I will help you to select the right server for your website.
Generally, selection of country for hosting depends on customers and traffic you are targeting and it is something specific to a particular website. Another reason for a particular location of the server is SEO. For example, if you are targeting UK visitors; by having your website on a UK Dedicated servers that would supposedly give you a boost when UK people do searches, even having a co.uk domain for the website is said to be of help. If you are not looking for a specific location then you can select US Dedicated servers because they tend to be cheaper than UK Dedicated servers however, if speed is the biggest issue and cost is not so important, then you should consider a UK Dedicated Servers if that is where you are located. Website data in your country server travels at the speed of light, and it is possible to get much faster response time and transfer rate when compared to other location. For example, if you are targeting at UK visitors they will definitely notice the difference between connected server in the UK and a connected server elsewhere – the further the distance the data travels, the longer it takes to arrive.
In order to secure your Dedicated server you should regularly update the OS and configure firewall thoroughly. In this article I have tried to cover some basic steps to secure a Dedicated server which are as follows:-
1) You should set limit on the the number of users access to the database. This would seem obvious to most but it is often overlooked.
2) Before hosting your Dedicated server you should check their data centers securities because it is next to impossible to maintain security if there is to much physical access to your dedicated server.
3) All of the hackers are not genius, they are just looking for loop holes and by leaving databases or backups unencrypted is like inviting them in.
4) In order to encrypt databases, choose phrases to encrypt data rather than passwords. Phrases are expressions or combination of words which are easy for you to remember but it’s very difficult for others to guess. In this way things in your everyday life will also jog your memory. For example, if you pass four traffic lights on the way to office, your pass phrase could be pass4lights.
5) You should store keys separated from data. At a minimum, keys should be stored in a different file but preferably on a different drive, server, or device .
These are the most simple and effective ways to keep your Dedicated servers secure.
In the recent past many similar questions arised, what is the importance of server location?, How much does the Geo-graphic location of a web server matter to ranking?, Does Server Location Matter? etc… Here I will try to explain you all the advantages you can achieve by hosting your server in the right geographical location.
It has been believed by webmaster that search engines like Google takes location of server into consideration when providing exact search results. that is If a visitor in United Kingdom searches for a particular keyword like ” UK Dedicated Servers” then a search engine will consider a United Kingdom website as more relevant than a US website with the similar content.
Now the next question will arise is How the search engine cames to know the exact location of a Dedicated servers?
Ans: There are two important points that is analyzed by search engines which are as follows:-
1) A website extension for example a .co.uk is likely to be targeting United Kingdom visitors and a .com extention is for a US top level domain extension.
2) Search engine has an advance algorithms which trace the website’s IP addresses and once the IP’s are traced it can easily look up country block the IP belongs to.
In this manner after analyzing the above examples, a .com TLD websites hosted in America is inconceivable to perform well on United Kingdom targeted searches or searches by United Kingdom visitors. A .co.uk TLD websites hosted in the UK Dedicated servers will perform better than the above. In addition to this, there is also the latency problem to consider when deciding where to host your website. United Kingdom visitors connecting to a UK Dedicated servers can expect a good response time of anything up to 50ms, whilst United Kingdom visitors connecting to a US server can expect a more response time of anything up to 200ms.
