Surely it sounds like using a VPN to improve privacy or the freedom to browse the Internet, but have you ever considered a VPN’s utility in SEO? When we carry out projects in our SEO agency, we use a VPN for different reasons that we will tell you about in this post.
First, if you want to put what we have said into practice, you can use a free trial VPN and check the benefits of an SEO VPN.
What is a VPN, and how does it work?
To understand how a VPN helps improve web positioning, you must first know what it is and how it works. We summarize it for you; pay attention!
Without going into technicalities, a VPN ( Virtual Private Network) is a network technology that allows you to connect to the Internet from a different IP than your device. It creates one more layer in the Internet connection, generating greater privacy and security for browsing.
- Hide the real IP of the device.
- It can simulate a geographic location other than yours.
- Create an extra layer of security when you connect to public Wi-Fi networks.
For decades it has been used at the business level to virtually connect different offices, branches, or users to the same private network. This way, some advantages of having a private network can be maintained: having the same functionalities, management, and security.
VPNs have become increasingly popular since they serve, in addition to the improvement mentioned above in security and privacy, to avoid content censorship, such as access to Netflix content only accessible from certain countries to avoid censorship of Social Networks for citizens.
How to use a VPN in SEO
In addition to being useful for any user who browses the Internet, it can also be used to improve SEO. A VPN does not contribute anything to web positioning; to benefit from it, it is necessary to apply it when solving or improving certain situations that SEO specialists can find when we do our job.
An SEO VPN serves to get rid of geolocation and the personalization of search results, that is, to get rid of the search history and the geographical place where you work.
Detect ads and competition in different locations
When performing an analysis of the SERPs, it is necessary to detect the advertisers, types of ads, and possible threats for the target keywords of the SEO strategy. Sometimes these change based on the specific location being searched or user profile or history. With a VPN, we eliminate these factors and create a complete threat map in search results.
Analyze the SERPs from other countries
When we face international SEO projects, knowing the SERPs in other countries where you are not physically located is necessary. Using a VPN is a very simple and efficient solution to simulate searches from the target countries. This is the main functionality that we regularly use in our international SEO projects. With this, we can understand the search intentions for keywords in different countries or languages, detect what the user’s needs are, and the competition and their SEO strategy.
Understanding Local SEO in detail
Similar to what happens with international SEO, with an SEO VPN, we can analyze the SERPs from different cities to specifically understand Local SEO in the regions, cities, or neighbourhoods of interest for each project.
Avoid personalization by searching history
Search engines like Google, to a greater or lesser extent, personalize results based on search history. Using a VPN and a private browser, we ensure that previous visits to our site or competitors do not influence search results. Thus, we have a more realistic idea of the search results for a potential generic customer.
Investigate strategies of other countries
To develop the best possible SEO strategies, we can expand beyond the national or local market in which the project is located. Sometimes it is very effective to analyze a similar market in another country, where the competition is more aggressive, and detect which SEO strategy works best and that nobody is executing in the project’s target market. This is one of the tips we like to use in the agency.
Train and obtain information not available
Just as regular internet users can use a VPN to access content not accessible from their location or IP, SEO specialists can also access educational content or information only accessible from certain countries.
From courses to technical documents reserved for users from certain countries, we use a VPN to access the best information available on the entire Internet.
We can also find SEO tools only accessible from certain locations that we can access thanks to a VPN.
Avoid reCAPTCHA
When running an analysis and doing many different searches in a short period, we may be flagged by Google and see a reCAPTCHA every time we perform a search. This happens many times and slows down our work.