I am developing a website in a local market. In this market they have bad connections and also very expensive hosting server services.
But to get in Google better ranked in their area it is benefit that we have a hosting server located in the same country. So I was thinking to host my site on server from this country, but all images (which will take most traffic and space) I would host on US server and put inside href an url of image hosted in US server.
Is that ok for SEO to point href to other server?
It will have no effect on your SEO. The images on this site aren’t served from the same server as the website.
So I can do this and I will still get advatage of having my website hosted on the server from this country.
If the connectivity to US Servers in the target area is good then there is no reason to host it in an expensive hosting facility.
And if you are just looking to get it hosted in the same country to get in Google better ranked then that can also be achieved by setting your Target Audience country through Google Webmasters Panel.
As this will not just save you money but also time in managing 2 hosting accounts.
Cheers,
Vijay Bhatter