Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)

    International SEO
    3
    8
    5058
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Webpresence
      Webpresence Subscriber last edited by

      Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust!

      We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling.

      Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there.

      They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com?

      Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
      Lee.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Webpresence
        Webpresence Subscriber @TomRayner last edited by

        That's the answer I was hoping for, thanks Tom!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • RobertFisher
          RobertFisher @TomRayner last edited by

          Tom,

          This is very well stated. Thanks

          Best

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TomRayner
            TomRayner @Webpresence last edited by

            It certainly used to be a bigger factor.  And the annoying thing is that Google still has older videos up saying as much.

            However, with so many new TLDs, server locations and CDNs in particular, I think the impact of server location has diminished quite a lot.  For example, on my UK sites I always try and use UK servers.  However, I often use cloudflare on them, which will be either US or Central Europe based.  It hasn't affected their performance.  Google alludes to this:

            “Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure; so, we try not to rely on the server location alone.”

            So I wouldn't say a server's location will hinder a website's ability to rank in a certain country.  The only way that it might would be related to speed.  Obviously, the further away your user is from your server, the slower the website's response might be, and speed is considered to be a ranking factor.  However, if you get any decent hosting solution, the speed difference would also be negligible.

            RobertFisher Webpresence 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Webpresence
              Webpresence Subscriber @TomRayner last edited by

              Sorry Tom, forgot to ask.. will the fact that the website is hosted on a UK server (having a UK IP address) hinder the performance of the US campaign?

              We could move it over to a US server however this may effect the (currently very good) UK rankings.

              Thanks in advance, Lee.

              TomRayner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • TomRayner
                TomRayner @Webpresence last edited by

                No problem Lee!

                This is also a good article from SearchEngineLand on international SEO, including some pros and cons on different approaches.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Webpresence
                  Webpresence Subscriber last edited by

                  Many thanks Tom, great answer!

                  Yes, the client would like to rank in both UK and US.. so your suggestions sound ideal, and pretty easy to implement.

                  I'll read Aleyda's article tonight, sounds interesting.

                  Thanks again Tom, much appreciated.

                  Lee.

                  TomRayner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • TomRayner
                    TomRayner last edited by

                    Hi Lee

                    Would I be right in saying that the client would like to rank in both UK and US?

                    If so, this is possible.  What I would recommend is to create a new geo-location subfolder for the US site.  Something as simple as website.com/us/ would do.

                    From there, you would set up the US subfolder as basically its own website.  That starts with adding the right kind of hreflang schema code for the subfolder.

                    There is a fantastic guide here on Moz by Aleyda Solis on how to set up an international SEO structure.  You can find it here.

                    This hreflang generator tool, also from Aleyda, can help you generate the right code to add to the subfolder.

                    From there, as mentioned you're basically treating the subfolder as it's own individual site.  That means you can build new links to it, you should have unique content within it, and you can even set up its own individual GWT account - meaning you can set the geolocation settings in there too.

                    The benefit of this approach is that it would allow your client to keep the current site as-is, and not jeopardise it, while also setting up a site for the US audience.  Of course, you could do exactly the same thing on a new TLD - but that might be difficult as you're using the .com already (and besides, I like global sites using a .com /country/ subfolder setup)

                    Hope this helps, let me know if you'd like anything clarified.

                    Webpresence 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • Davide1984

                      International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets

                      Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David

                      International SEO | | Davide1984
                      0
                    • Dan-Lawrence

                      What's the difference between 'en-gb' and 'en-uk; when choosing Search engines in campaign set up?

                      Hi What's the difference search engine wise and which one should I choose, i presume GB since covers entire British landmass whereas UK excludes Ireland according to political definition, is it the same according to Google (& other engines) ? All Best Dan

                      International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                      0
                    • lcourse

                      Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

                      Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
                      We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine. When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code). Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page. I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
                      rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" /> canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page. Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?

                      International SEO | | lcourse
                      0
                    • Humix

                      Problems with the google cache version of different domains.

                      We have problems with the google cache version of different domains.
                      For the “.nl” domain we have an “.be” cache..
                      Enter “cache:www.dmlights.nl” in your browser to see this result. Following points are already adapted: Sitemap contains hreflang tag Sitemap is moved to the location www.dmlights.nl/sitemap.xml We checked the DNS configuration Changed the Content language in de response header to : Content-Language: nl-NL Removed the cache with webmastertools Resolved serverrequest errors. Can anyone provide a solution to fix this problem? Thanks, Pieter

                      International SEO | | Humix
                      0
                    • Bush_JSM

                      Blocking domestic Google's in Robots.txt

                      Hey, I want to block Google.co.uk from crawling a site but want Google.de to crawl it. I know how to configure the Robots.txt to block Google and other engines - is there a fix to block certain domestic crawlers? any ideas? Thanks B

                      International SEO | | Bush_JSM
                      0
                    • Indiatravelz

                      Geographic Target set up in Google webmaster tool

                      Hi, When i launched my web site 3 months ago ( I'm am very new to SEO)  I have set up the geographical target section in Google webmaster tool  for US. Now, I'm thinking to change it to some other geo target to see if i can get more traffic. However, recently few of my prompted keywords got really well in Google US ranking. Here are my Questions: if i will change the geo settings in webmaster tool will effect the ranking i already managed to achieve in US? In the list of all the countries in Google webmaster tools what does is mean "unlisted"? Can i select more than one country to target and if I can how? Thanks!! Raviv

                      International SEO | | Indiatravelz
                      0
                    • vanvallejo

                      SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es

                      Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English.  The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's.  Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ?   As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca

                      International SEO | | vanvallejo
                      0
                    • Aviatech

                      French Canadian Website and French Language URLs

                      Hello, One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well? So, this questions has two parts... For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors? For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?

                      International SEO | | Aviatech
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.