Yeah, centering the geometry is important. See the two images below. Both meshes are technically positioned at (0, 0, 0), but the vertices have been moved so the origin is in the middle of the geometry, not outside of it:
Origin outside geometry, verts in x-axis range from [-196 to -47].
Origin at center of geometry, verts in x-axis range from
[-74 to +74]:
This is especially important if you’re going to apply rotations, the pivot point of the rotations will be off-centered and may give you unexpected results. Same goes for scaling.