Internet Marketing has become huge in recent years and with more people working online for themselves or as a contractor for others the need to understand SEO and best practises can make or break your profit margins.

A VPN service allows you to gain an advantage over the competition and understand what your potential customer base is searching for on a global scale resulting in reaching more of your potential audience.

A VPN does this by allowing you to appear as if you’re in a different location by altering your IP Address and accessing that locations search engine information.

How does my IP Address hurt my Internet Marketing?

An IP Address allows websites to understand your location. No doubt you’ve visited Google many times and typed in search terms that you hope to target and that you assume your customers will also be typing.

However, when you visit a search engine such as Google, it serves you up a localised version of the site and you’re often pushed to your country specific search site.

If you’re in the UK and you visit Google.com you’re automatically pushed to Google.co.uk and so your searches will be tailored to not only the UK but also a localised area in the UK.

So if you’re from the UK but want to know what potential customers in France or Germany are searching for then your research is useless as it’s likely they’ll be seeing completely different search results and having different search terms suggested.

How does a VPN improve my Internet Marketing?

The term VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and originally they were used by businesses to allow remote workers to access sensitive files. The purpose is to provide privacy and part of this privacy is allowing you to alter your online location virtually.

The great news is a VPN can help you increase your ability in Internet Marketing and allow you to get an SEO advantage over your competitors, giving you access to a little inside information.

A VPN allows you to alter your IP Address to that of a different location or country and by completely encrypting your internet connection the search engines you use will think you are in that location so serve up a localised version of the search site AND most importantly search results.

As an example, I searched for “what is the best tablet for” and let Google make a suggestion which will be based on most common search terms. I did this across Google.co.uk, Google.com and Google.com.au and below are my results.

United Kingdom

United States

Australia

As you can see all three locations are interested in “for kids” and “for me” but Americans are also interested in “for the money” and “college”, British visitors “for gaming” and “watching movies” and Australians “for work” and “reading books”.

This vital information allows you to target all niches and shows you what different regions hold important.

Essentially you’ll get to see into the mind of a customer or client based on their online view, search results and even the types of advertising that target that locality giving you a greater understanding on how to market your services or product.

Top 7 VPNs for SEO and Online Marketing

Trawling through the hundreds of VPN companies can be a time consuming task and sometimes you don’t always get a good deal for your money.

I’ve put together a list of five of the leading VPN service for SEO and compared their features.

1. ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is one of the top VPN services in the industry, overall. They were also our highest rated in this year’s review of their service.

Alongside being an excellent overall choice, they’re also a great option for SEO purposes.

With ExpressVPN, you get access to a massive network of over 3,000 servers located in 94 different countries. This can help you analyse foreign markets and learn everything you need to know without ever leaving your region, or needing to hire someone else in a specific region to do it for you.

With plenty of IP Addresses available, you’ll be able to disguise your marketing snooping and check out the competition without them knowing it’s you.

A standout feature is their 30-day money back guarantee giving you plenty of time to try them without any risk.

Our #1 Choice for SEO & Online Marketing

30-day money back guarantee

2. NordVPN

Next up, we have NordVPN. This service also works as a great choice to protect your online privacy, and it allows you to connect to over 5,100 servers in 59 different countries.

It is a great choice for SEO when working remotely, trying to analyse overseas SERPS, or solely for protecting your identity when checking out competitors.

NordVPN uses the best security features that the industry has to offer, it has an affordable price, and you can be sure that your data is safe thanks to its no-logs policy.

3. CyberGhost

CyberGhost is one of the best options in the VPN industry when it comes to SEO. The service is known for its ability to unblock all kinds of geo-restricted content, which is of great use to remote SEO workers.

With a VPN like this, you can keep working while travelling, or access important information that is only available in other regions.

Its most useful feature for SEO is its considerable server network, which covers over 89 different countries, with 6,500 servers in total, more than almost any other VPN service.

Best of all, CyberGhost also has a 45-day money-back guarantee, so you can test it for a month and a half, and still get your money back if it doesn’t fulfil your needs.

4. Surfshark

In the fourth spot, we have a somewhat younger VPN, known as Surfshark.

Surfshark is a great choice because it offers all the best security features, a decent-sized server network, a 30-day money-back guarantee, but also lower prices than most other top VPN services.

In total, its server network offers access to 1,700 different servers located in 63 different countries, so your reach with the service will be quite broad.

It also features excellent speeds, so you won’t have any trouble with reaching all the essential data needed for SEO with no delays.

There’s also no concurrent connection limit so if you manage a small team of SEO analysts, then you may only need the one account. Like the other services, there’s a 30-day money back guarantee here.

5. VyprVPN

Next, there is VyprVPN – another of the leading VPN services that can secure your privacy and give you access to censored or geo-restricted information.

With a lot of censoring going on on the internet today, having a VPN with a wide reach is crucial for SEO workers.

VyprVPN has servers in 70 different countries around the globe, totalling in over 200,000 different IP addresses.

This way, you can access most faraway regions and obtain the necessary data, and see the real state of the market, which will ultimately improve your SEO strategy.

We really liked the reliability of the VyprVPN service and didn’t suffer any ransom disconnects or other annoying issues.

6. VPN.ac

VPN.ac is another excellent service which has a somewhat smaller server network, but its servers are strategically placed in all the largest online markets.

It keeps no activity logs, so you can count on having total privacy allowing you to spy on your competitors’ sites and services cloak and dagger.

There are also no speed limits, while multiple speed optimisations are available to you. It is also compatible with numerous devices, so you can use it with ease, regardless of what equipment you may have at your disposal.

This VPN service works in over 20 countries which is quite a lot less than the competitors so you’ll want to ensure they cover the markets you’re interested in researching. If so, then you’ll be rewarded with a fast and reliable service.

7. IPVanish

Last, but not least, we have IPVanish, which is a very old and well-known service in the VPN industry.

IPVanish is great for SEO users, as well as others, as it offers private connections, extremely fast speeds, and complete online freedom.

Best of all, this VPN is also much more affordable than many of its competitors at the top of the industry, so you can perform your SEO research without having to spend too much.

IPVanish also an impressive reach, with over 1,400 servers in 75 locations, in total, so you will definitely be able to unblock foreign markets and obtain all the fresh data you may need without having to rely on anyone else.

Can a VPN/Proxy improve the SEO of a website?

Unfortunately, even a VPN cannot improve the SEO of a website directly.

In other words, you won’t be able to fake visitors by re-visiting your site over and over again from different addresses.

However, you can use it to your advantage in other ways, as we are about to explain.

How to use a VPN in your SEO strategy

With a VPN, you can improve your SEO approach in several ways. You can:

• Preserve your privacy and keep your SEO strategies obscured.
• Target markets overseas.
• Improve your online security while working from home.
• Reduce Google Ad Preview inaccuracies.
• Bypass censorship.
• Go around geo-restrictions.
• Get an accurate view of SERPs.
• Work from abroad while still getting reliable data from your home region.
• Improve your overall SEO strategy.

and more.

How using a VPN will benefit your SEO

There are plenty of benefits to using a VPN for your SEO purposes, but here are some of the main ones.

1. Access foreign target markets

As mentioned, a VPN is an excellent solution if you need to access foreign markets and look into specific data, like search results.

Without a VPN, you would have to depend on third-party reports, which may not be 100% accurate. Such reports are often outdated, they may change based on the current trends or they often use assumed data.

When you deal with SEO, you need your data to be fresh and accurate, which is difficult when you’re not in your target region.

However, if you use a VPN, you can simply connect to any region in question, and you will have access to anything you need.

2. Work remotely

Remote work is on the rise this year for a variety of reasons.

Not only is it more practical, but it is also more environmentally friendly.

Thanks to a VPN, you can easily work from your home, or even from a foreign country, and still have safe and secure access to your company’s resources, but also to fresh data of your home market if needed.

Both of these will significantly improve your ability to do your job no matter where you are and what your situation may be.

3. Avoid inaccuracies with Google Ad Preview

Google Ad Preview is a vital tool for planning PPC adverts, but it also comes with its flaws.

The tool is supposed to help you simulate searches for various keywords in different locations. As a result, you get to see your advertisement and obtain organic listings.

But, the problem lies in the fact that the tool is not the most accurate, and working with inaccurate information is bound to mess up the rest of your SEO strategy.

With a VPN, you can get much more accurate results and proceed from there.

4. Become better at research

As an SEO expert, one of your most important duties is to keep track of particular SEO statistics and keywords. Sometimes, that also includes learning of new popular keywords that can be used to improve your strategy and performance.

However, Google’s design doesn’t see to these needs adequately, and the engine will sometimes even flag sources if it detects traffic that it might deem ‘unusual’ in any way.

If this were to happen, you will keep bumping into reCAPTCHA, which will force you to prove that you are human time and time again.

While this isn’t necessarily the end of the world, it is very annoying and it takes away valuable time. But, with a VPN, you can simply change your IP address and bypass the issue entirely.

It also lets you check and target your research in different countries to find out what’s popular.

5. Analyse organic Search Engine Result Pages

Getting to see organic Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) is becoming increasingly difficult due to a number of factors, such as content transmissions, censorship, geo-restrictions, and even cookies, and more.

You can hardly do your job correctly with all of these factors messing up your searches, and if you try to modify your strategy based on the results you are seeing, you are bound to see an impact on performance.

This is why VPNs are a critical tool in this situation, as you can view the true SERPs in your region, or anywhere else where you need to check out the results.

It is really useful to be able to compare SERPs from different regions at the click of a button.

6. Share files in a safe way

Another big benefit of using a VPN is to share files with your co-workers, as well as with your clients.

Doing so is necessary in order to deliver new data, your impact on the clients’ business, or simply for helping out your colleagues, or receive help from them.

However, sharing files online is anything but safe, with all the online surveillance from the government, hackers, competitors, and alike. If your data were to end up in the wrong hands, others could learn important secrets that could impact your projects negatively.

The easiest way to prevent this is to use a VPN, which will not only create a highly-secure tunnel for your data to flow through, but it will also encrypt all the data so it will be unreadable to anyone apart from you and the file sender/recipient.

7. Snoop on your competitors

Lastly, a VPN can be a great way to look into what your competitors are doing and to do so without being recognised.

This comes from the fact that a VPN will mask your online identity and turn you into just another random visitor.

That way, you can gather valuable insights into your competitors’ strategy, without them knowing what you are doing, or even who you are.

This is possible due to the fact that VPNs can assign you a new IP address, which would make you incognito online.

Ever seen the same IP Address or visitor from the same location on real-time Google analytics? It’s probably your competitors checking out your best pages. Make yourself incognito with a VPN, so no one knows you’re researching and block them from banning your connection.

That way, you can get all the necessary data without leaving any behind, and organise your strategy to outperform your rivals.

Summary: ExpressVPN #1 VPN

To get an edge in SEO and online marketing, a VPN is vital.

It will allow you to understand your current visitor base better and also gain an advantage to understand potential visitors or customers that you could be currently losing.

Knowing the search terms and how overseas localised versions of search engines like Google work can really boost your conversion rates and if you’re a small business this could see your profits increase quite dramatically by targeting specific areas or countries correctly.

You’ll need to choose a VPN service that offers the best bang for your buck like ExpressVPN which provides:

• A vast range of connection points – giving you the greatest idea of search terms.
• 30-day money back guarantee – see the benefits before committing to spending.
• Use on five devices – letting you access at home, the office or when mobile.

All you need to do next is load up your web browser in InPrivate or InCognito mode, connect to your VPN and start delving into a new world of understanding customer search terms and how to better target products, articles and paid advertisement.

Have you used a VPN for SEO and marketing purposes? I would love to hear how you found it useful so drop me a comment below.