If you're a local small business meaning..
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Guest
.. we only do business in a 50 mile radius, should you block all traffic to your website that isn't local, for instance coming from Russia, Mexico etc? Or does the traffic help your SEO?
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Brandon
Depends where the traffic is going. If it’s going to a blog and showing long read times, then it means you wrote a winner. Traffic outside your location for services, not so beneficial.
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Mike
It's not really necessary normally. You also want to be careful you don't accidentally block search engines doing that. They don't only crawl from the U.S.
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Peter
The simple answer is No. My reasons are:
- 1. Many user use VPNs
- 2. You can ignore 'external organic traffic' if your (local) lead gen is OK
- 3. Location filters are unreliable
- 4. (reliable) location filters should only be used if the international traffic is extreme and/or spammy
- 5. This is a clear signal that your content is not localised properly so you should rather use it as an indicator.
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Dan
Block for political or security reasons but not for SEO.
If you have bots attacking your site and they’re mainly from China, exclude them.
If you’re mindful not to have traffic from Russia so that you stand with Ukraine
then fine.
However, if you block traffic from someone who just happens to be out of town at the moment but wants to book a service, then why would you do that?
“I’m on holiday with my family in Mexico City and would have booked you but I got blocked when I clicked through from Google. What’s that about?”
Better to do as recommended by others and localise your content.
If you have bots attacking your site and they’re mainly from China, exclude them.
If you’re mindful not to have traffic from Russia so that you stand with Ukraine
then fine.However, if you block traffic from someone who just happens to be out of town at the moment but wants to book a service, then why would you do that?
“I’m on holiday with my family in Mexico City and would have booked you but I got blocked when I clicked through from Google. What’s that about?”
Better to do as recommended by others and localise your content.
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Kathy
We have a couple of posts with really helpful info on cleaning carriers and upholstery for anyone anywhere in the world. They bring in thousands of visitors a month who spend on average 5 minutes reading them. Why in the world would google think that’s bad? If anything that establishes my client as an expert.
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Brodey
Use Cloudflare. If you're being attacked, they'll handle it.
I cannot think of a logical reason why you'd ever need to block traffic unless it was ddos or exploits, but they are handled accordingly not by blocking traffic.
I cannot think of a logical reason why you'd ever need to block traffic unless it was ddos or exploits, but they are handled accordingly not by blocking traffic.