Nowadays, online marketing is a crucial part of most businesses. It involves ads on search engines, maintaining social media platforms, expert reviews, etc. Besides, one of the best ways of getting a solid online presence is through search engine optimization (SEO).

In this article, we will look at how you can leverage a VPN to enhance your SEO.

Why a VPN is necessary for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique you can apply to your website to improve its ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). This helps to make your website more visible to people looking for solutions your product, brand, or service can offer.

A VPN can come in handy in the SEO process in many ways.

Unbiased ranking and competitor research

Where your website appears in search results means a lot to your business. For example, more than 90% of Google traffic appears on the first page of search results. In addition, the first search result (except paid ads) receives 30% of the clicks.

Therefore, you should analyze your website’s SEO by searching the relevant keywords and see where your site will rank on the search results. Also, you should check your competitors’ ranking.

Because you visit your website repeatedly, Google will be biased and favor your site. But this is not an accurate representation of what a random potential customer will see on their results.

However, a virtual private network (VPN) will change your IP address, which will help to eliminate biases in Google results. Hence, you will get a more realistic depiction of your website’s ranking compared to your competitors.

See your site’s ranking in other countries

These days, you could be living in the UK and working for a company based in the US. However, when you look for your company’s Google ranking, you will get UK searches instead of the US, which might be irrelevant.

The solution is to connect to a VPN server in the US. This will make you look like you are in the US, and the results will be different if you do the same research.

Some businesses have branches worldwide. A VPN will help you see your website ranking in different countries and take necessary measures.

How to change your location with a VPN

1. Subscribe to a trustworthy and reliable VPN
2. Download and install the VPN software on your device
3. Open the server list and connect to any location
4. Go to your browser and conduct the search

Additional tips for unbiased SEO research

Use incognito mode

Many browsers like Google, Edge, and Firefox offer private browsing windows where cookies won’t affect your search results. Hence, your results will be almost the same as your potential clients will see.

Sign out of your Google account

Checking your website’s ranking while logged into your account will show personalized results because of your search history, IP address, and location. However, you can sign out or use a different account so that your personal preferences won’t affect the search results.

Using a VPN for SEO frequently asked questions (FAQs)

1. Will a VPN affect my search results?

Yes, it will change your search results based on your server location. Also, a VPN will encrypt your traffic to prevent the search engine from using your data to tailor your results.

2. Will my browser reject my VPN?

No. In fact, some VPNs come with browser extensions, which makes it easy to configure the VPN when accessing the internet.

3. Is Google analytics affected by a VPN?

Not likely. However, if the people visiting your website are changing their locations with a VPN, then Google Analytics will show these locations instead of their actual locations.