There’s been a longstanding debate about VPNs and SEO. While some believe that VPNs can impact website SEO, others believe that VPN does nothing. Some portray VPNs as the holy grail for optimizing websites to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). There are a lot of grey areas about VPNs and their potential impact on SEO, and it boils down to the nature of VPNs and the seeming disconnect to SEO. To differentiate myth from fact, you need to understand both concepts and find potential connections between them. Let’s start with the start!

What is a VPN?

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network that allows users to connect to the internet via a secure and private channel. It works by creating an encrypted tunnel that’s connected to a remote server through which data is transferred from a connected device to the internet. Basically, the VPN acts as a middleman that takes internet connection requests from a device, runs them through a remote server for encryption, before sending them off to the internet. It then repeats the process for data coming from the internet to the device.

According to Cybernews’ Surfshark VPN review, VPNs aren’t just for data encryption, they’re also great for anonymity. In fact, high-quality VPNs even offer malware protection. When a device connects to a VPN, its IP (Internet Protocol) address is masked with the VPN remote server’s IP address. Basically, the VPN gives you a new IP address from a remote location, thus hiding your location. This way, no one can spy on your internet activity or track you. What’s more is that the VPN’s ability to overwrite your IP address with that of a remote server comes in handy with accessing content that are restricted to certain regions, which your IP address might be in.

What is SEO?

You know that’s what we do.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a technical process that involves improving a website’s visibility on the internet. It’s a way of making sure that users can easily find a website whenever they search online. Typically, this involves adjusting the website’s content and keywords to reflect what users typically search for. Also, technical elements like improving the website’s response time, structure, backlinks, and secure connection are done to improve a website’s SEO. When it’s done right, a website would “rank higher” or be visible on the first result pages of a search engine.

Scientific Insights: How VPNs Technically Interact with SEO

From a technical viewpoint, the connection between VPNs and SEO centers on how search engines interpret user data and how VPNs modify that data stream. Major search engines like Google use geolocation, IP addresses, and user behavior to personalize results and rank sites for local relevance. When someone uses a VPN, their real IP address is hidden and replaced with one from the VPN server’s location. This can cause search results to reflect the VPN server’s region rather than the user’s actual location, which is especially important for local SEO and searches like “near me”.   According to Cybernews’ Surfshark VPN review, VPNs aren’t just for data encryption; they’re also great for anonymity.”

This technical aspect allows SEO professionals to simulate searches from various countries or cities, helping them see how their site and competitors appear in different markets. It’s a valuable method for researching local search trends, identifying region-specific keywords, and optimizing content for international audiences (Google Search Central).

However, VPNs don’t just change your virtual location—they also encrypt your connection and route it through remote servers, which can introduce latency and affect website loading times. Since site speed is a factor in search rankings, any slowdown from VPN use can impact user experience and, by extension, SEO performance (Google PageSpeed Insights). Additionally, VPNs may complicate analytics by making it harder to track user locations accurately, which can affect data-driven SEO decisions (Google Analytics Help).

In summary, VPNs offer significant advantages for SEO research and privacy, but they also bring technical challenges that can influence site speed and analytics accuracy. Being aware of these factors is key to making the most of VPNs in an SEO strategy.

Myths vs Reality: How VPNs Impact SEO

There are different beliefs concerning VPNs and their impact on SEO, and they’re evenly divided into positives and negatives. Here are three you’ve likely heard of, and what’s really happening:

VPNs negatively impact SEO and make websites rank poorly on SERPs: 

This usually relies on the perception that VPNs distort the content displayed on SERPs to suit a masked IP address. Hence, it’s likely not going to allow a website to rank high on SERPs if the VPN’s IP address is too remote to attach relevance to the website.

While it’s true that the content algorithm for SERPs is influenced by a device’s IP address, it doesn’t necessarily mean that using a VPN ruins a website’s SEO. First, understand that SERPs operate in such a way that they prioritize content that’s relevant to a user’s location. It works just like how it’d generate results relevant to a search. For instance, you searching for “digital marketing agencies near me” would prioritize results that match the search query and are closest to your location. And for a search engine to prioritize results that are closest to your location, it’ll rely on your IP address.

When a VPN comes into the mix, the IP address typically belongs to a remote server that’s located elsewhere. As such, the content displayed on SERPs would reflect the VPN remote server’s IP address. But then, most users typically specify their location when searching for businesses. Hence, the website’s SEO remains intact in such situations. Plus, an optimized website will still likely rank irrespective of VPN usage thanks to other technical aspects like SEO backlinks and consistent website responsiveness.

VPNs are perfect for bypassing online restrictions:

This is partially true. Thanks to a VPN’s masking ability, users can access geo-restricted content. Basically, contents that are unavailable in certain regions could be accessed by connecting to a VPN remote server located in an authorized region. Apart from this, VPN’s can help with bypassing soft paywalls. But that’s as far as VPNs can help. VPNs cannot bypass hard paywalls or give access to locked/paid content. And even for soft paywalls, the VPN remote server’s IP address would ultimately be flagged if consistently used.

What this means for website SEO is that website owners could engage in wider content and SEO research using a VPN to access different regions. Since SERPs would reflect location-based content, website owners could use VPNs to adjust their IP address to suit the location of a target market. They could then research relevant content, keywords, and market preferences, which they could use to run organic ads.

VPNs affect website speed:

This is both positively and negatively true. For starters, a VPN might slow down internet connection due to its attempt to first encrypt web data before connecting to the internet. Also, if the server has heavy traffic, it’s bound to slow down. This also affects the speed at which websites load. But this mostly happens for devices connected to a free VPN server. Most paid VPNs have several high-performance servers that can optimize both encryption and connection speed. A VPN isn’t a magic wand that’ll give your website superspeed, and it won’t crazily slow down your internet and website either.

Overall, VPNs primarily impact local SEO i.e., it affects location-based content displayed on SERPs, content access, and connection speed. But, it’s not all doom and gloom. When SEO is done right, a VPN won’t negatively impact it. A VPN is primarily for web security and privacy, not SEO. But then, smartly using a VPN could help with SEO research, among other things.