Geographic targeting general question
-
Hi,
I've been looking at some of the Google help centre pages for Geo-targeting and it says flat out if you use for example .co.uk and Geo-target in webmaster tools US then you will not rank as well as using .net, .com and a few others they list.
So if you got a UK online business and want to expand into another country then staright away your in a negative situation if you want to rank in the SE for that location.
-
You are right about your recent comment. Buying individual CLD's is definently alot easier, however you can buy a .com to use as your global and create subfolders to geo target specific countries.
There are also other options you could do. This blog post clearly states it - http://dejanseo.com.au/one-domain-multiple-geo-targets/
Hope this helps,
Vahe
-
Thanks for super quick reply.
Suppose another question really is if you don't set the location (basically open to global SE's) then im guessing ranking will become near impossible, someone who sells a service such as SEOMOZ would want this I guess.
From what I can see, buying a .com is the best and geo-targeting the location you would like to target, if in the future the market dries up in your location you could geo-target another without the problem of having a location specific extension.
But if you do have a .co.uk and target the UK, ranking becomes a lot easier then a .com targeting the UK.
-
Unfortunately that is correct. TLD's are very important. There is no real way around it.
It makes sense some how as in US if a user will see .co.uk in serps will likely click on a noter result (depending on the subject). France is very extreme with .fr domains - users have a huge CTR behavior on fr domains vs .com, .eu etc.
I have a client with a dot com german site with really great PR / DA and still he is outranked in some cases by dot de domains.
Your best choice in this case will be to go, if possible with separate TLDs (.co.uk for UK, -com for US, .de for Germany, fit it for Italy and so on).
If you make a good TLD strategy you can have great results.
Hope it helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keyword Stuffing Question
Say your on a e-commerce category page "Shirts" every lower level category has "shirts" in it such as: T-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweat shirt, v-neck shirt, and so on. Is this page going to be penalized in google for the keyword "shirts" just because it is in the title and on the page a thousand times because i'm targetting words like "long sleeve shirt? and if it is, will the "long sleeve shirt" keyword be negatively affected as well? Answer much appreciated,
On-Page Optimization | | Mike.Bean
Thanks in advance.0 -
Question about multiple versions of home page
Hi guys, I'm having a question, answer to which i'm unable to find anywhere. I browesed the whole internet lol. So the question is about multipple versions of the home page. In particular, i want to know how should i deal with home page URLs with this extention: /index.html All the rest possible versions of home page i know how to deal with but this one "/index.html" i don't. I did add a cononical tag to it but i'm wondering whether or not i should add 301 redirect to chosen version og the home page (let's say it is www.mydomain.com). Please advise the best practices on how to deal with this. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | odmsoft0 -
To redirect or not to redirect...That is the question
We have old product data that is being updated (approx 30k sku's). Most of the old pages have been indexed and drive the majority of our online sales. But, the updated products have different titles, H1's, etc and have been re-formatted for the better in terms of usability. So, should we redirect thousands of pages to the new pages? Will Google be ok with that?...or should we reformat the current url's with the new data? And, if we reformat current url's with new data...the fear is that the on-page elements that the pages are being pick up for will get wiped out, (be it the H1 in some cases or the title or alt tag for another, etc) because it's simply too much to retain them during the import. Please share
On-Page Optimization | | nisvision0 -
Is it still worth changing a url with half the pages target keyphrase in to the entire phrase still ?
Hi If a pages url has half the pages target keyphrase (i.e. 1 word instead of 2) is it still worth changing to include entire keyphrase (2 words) given need to then add 301 redirects etc after ? If it was a new page then I would definately include full keyphrase but the page is a few months old and has quite high page authority as is (i know a 301 should transfer most authority) but given this page and other sub pages would also need to be 301'd if this change occurs and the dev time/cost that would incurred/charged by the design/dev agency. Also thinking Google being cleverer now (the pages content will be about the target kw) so thinking G would work it out from rest of page content and partial match kw in url. In other words to best target keyphrase is it best to leave url as is or change url to include keyphrase ? For example if the pages target kw is 'swimming clubs' and the current url is www.franksleisurecentres.com/clubs changing it to www.franksleisurecentres.com/swimming-clubs :Thanks Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SEO targeted text on Mobile Site Version
Hey Mozzers, I run SEO for a retail site www.uncommongoods.com. We are building a mobile version of our site on m.uncommongoods.com On each of the category pages of www.uncommongoods.com, we have included a few lines of text at the bottom of the page to get some of our target keywords into the body. As an example, if you look at this page: http://www.uncommongoods.com/office/journals-stationery/journals You'll see this copy at the bottom: "Find unique journals and diaries at UncommonGoods. Our creative journal gifts are great for marking special occasions with sentimental keepsakes." We are debating whether or not to remove this copy on the category pages of our mobile site, just to keep the pages as clean as possible. Would there be any risk in leaving this out ? Thanks for your help on this! -Zack
On-Page Optimization | | znotes0 -
Targeting Cities in Different States on a Landing Page
I'm having one issue with my SEO rankings. If I target let's say four cities in the same state for one keyword in a title, it ranks well. let's say one of those cities ends up being outside of the state though for another landing page, then it usually ends up on page two. Does anyone have a solution to this issue? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OOMDODigital0 -
Do I need canonical link on target page?
I've placed in my head tag on duplicate content pages, but do i need to place it on the target page such as http://www.example.com/index.html too?
On-Page Optimization | | CaliB0 -
Drupal SEO Question
Still trying to get a handle on all this...a lot to figure out! My site is Drupal and a few weeks ago I had my developer install an SEO Module so I could add a meta description and keywords for my pages. I have done that for the majority of the landing pages and the product pages as well. Earlier I posted a question about the use of adding the meta description and keywords to each product. The answers were mixed and pointed out the problem of the duplicate content which I am trying to figure out how to fix. BUT...when I went through my On Page Analysis grading for my campaigns one of the reasons my grades were low were because of the use of meta keywords tag. That the search engines ignore them and competitors can use them against you. So now I am thoroughly confused. I should optimize each product page with the meta description and keywords or i shouldn't? Keywords should show up in the title tag and the content....anywhere else? Help! Thanks much, Shara
On-Page Optimization | | Confections0