Host in the country of targeted audience, Myth or not?

If you have an .nl domain, set your location in webmaster tools and obtain links from other .nl based sites your server location isn't going to impact your rankings in a great way.

IMHO the biggest reason to choose an .nl based server is the improved pageload speed for your visitors.

A few months ago one of my hosts moved a stack of their servers from the US to their own DC in Australia, my sites that target the US didn't budge at all for their terms when searching from the US.

Another thing i have found that provides a great boost in Google for geo-location is of all things a locality Yahoo Directory listing. One of my domains has a Yahoo Directory listing under the United Arab Emirates, i built a US based site on it, got links from US sites and set my geo-loaction as US in Webmaster Tools and i still get flooded from Google.ae hits as well as rank in the top 5 for some massive common 1 and 2 word terms.

 

Excellent! Well, as I said in my previous post I will see what I can do and choose the best decision. Anyway I am glad to hear that there are possibilities with a host from another country, but you've got a point there about the page loading speed.

And about the local Yahoo Directory listing. I assume that's possible for the Netherlands as well, right? I've found this: http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Netherlands/ Isn't a Yahoo directory listing very expensive? I thought it cost about $300 or something?

Thanks mate!

 

It's $299.00 for a 7 day review, which doesn't mean you'll be accepted into the directory. I believe commerical based sites "must" pay this fee and an annual fee as well.

I had the same issue with a clients site, which was placed in the "wrong" section, repeated attempts never yielded results from the Yahoo! directory team to get it changes. Becareful when selecting your catagory, because you'll be stuck there!

 

I dont think you can even change the geo location in webmaster tools if you have a .tld. I've just checked for .FR and there is no way to switch: Its says(.FR) is already set to country/region: France.

I thought about the local yahoo option before, but spending 299USD for only to be considered is a lot. If they would guaranty listing then i would do it for all sites for sure.