Hello
I am based in the UK and have offered to do a website for someone in Canada.
Would I be better of using a Canadian hosting service or would it be ok to use my eUKhost account? The site is for a small business out there so it would be directed at Canadian clients.
I seem to have gotten conflicting advice as to whether it affects speed or SEO.
Any thoughts?
Much appreciated, thanks in advance
if you host the site close to the country, your website will load faster, but only if the server you are hosting on isnt overloaded.
AFAIK, there are two advantages
I suppose that better to find web host in Canada. If you are worrying about service providers there - please do not worry there are a lot of web hosts to chose from.
My sites load much faster on local (Australian) server than they do from the US, especially when images are involved. I test on my US server and then sometimes transfer to a local one (if the client is using his/her own hosting), and the difference is quite marked.
IMO is you have good web host in US you will have the same latency around the world. Of course there will be delays but they will not be visible at all.
I think you need to take care of your target audience. If your web site’s audience comes from one certain region - better have web hosting account in this region.
About the SEO part, at least when it comes to Google: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399
If the customer has the vast majority of visitors coming from Canada, it’s probably worth considering hosting close to them. That doesn’t necessarily mean somewhere in Canada, US might be just fine too from a performance POV. Be aware that some Canadian hosts will actually have their servers in the US anyway.
Hi,
Personally for Canada I’d use Canadian hosting, it’s always better IMHO and experience to host close to your users - there’s less potential for problems, sites load as quick as they can and you avoid any potential SEO issues - They can be worked around, but it’s far easier just to go local 
Thanks,
That’s great, thanks for that Ralph, so clients don’t notice page load not being as fast or the SEO results?
Many sites are hosted out of foreign countries, so it’s not a problem to do that. I don’t see any advantages to it, except perhaps cost. (US hosting is cheaper for Australians than local hosting.) Or if a site has an international appeal, it is worth having it hosted close to the majority of users (just as SitePoint is hosted in the US, even though it’s an Australian company).
There are advantages to local hosting. For a start, page load is much faster. I’m also told that Google also favors locally hosted sites when organizing search results. Perhaps an SEO expert could confirm or deny that, though, as I’ve not seen evidence of it.
That said, I host some of my local clients on my overseas server, and the clients couldn’t care less.
If they have a lot of images, I recommend local hosting. And some clients may be more savvy about page loads and SEO than others. Like Karl, I’d recommend local hosting if you can get it, but I also wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. It’s nice when you can ring a web host and discuss a problem locally; so that’s a reason why your local hosting might suit you better.