How to remove countries viewing my website
-
Hi All,
I operate from the UK only. How can I exclude select countries from viewing both my organic website and Google Adwords listing.
Organic Website
Are the any free online services that give you a simple click + download/view script to cut & paste into a .htaccess file.Google Adwords
Ditto as above with the exception to paste the IP list into Campaign | Setting Tab | Advanced settings - IP exclusionsThanks Mark
-
All,
Thank you for the quality information.
I was not aware that 'out of country - bad influences' would not affect your UK site performance.I agree with your logic that untold ip addresses would slow down site speed thus affect Google rankings.
Thanks Mark
-
Gregory is on the money with adwords, and I agree with organic, its not worth the effort. Also ips address are not always right, I have seen some ip ranges for UK visitors show as Ireland and some Ip ranges for Ireland visitors showing as Austria!!
-
Gregory summed it well, my only add on to it in setting when adjusting the geographical settings also adjust the intent. So if you have a German in Berlin searching for "my service in Newcastle" they won't be served the ad if they out of the actual area, if you don't want any non UK PPC visitors.
-
Hi Mark,
I asked a similar question here and on a few other SEO forums a few weeks ago. Here is what I learned...
PPC (Bing Ads and Google Adwords) is very easy to fix. Just go into the settings for your campaigns and only target the countries you want your ads to show in. Later if you find that your results are poor in certain cities or states or provinces, you can even exclude them. Targeting your ads this way works very well and is very easy to do.
Limiting Organic results is not worth the effort. Though you can add a huge list of excluded IP's to your htaccess, you then slow down your site because of the computing effort needed to check each new visitor. What is worth the effort, is to go into Google Webmaster Tools and declare your targeted country or region. What I was told by a number of different responders was that doing so means that Google will not count poor site performance outside your targeted country against you.
For example, my US targeted site has a generic Bounce Rate of 60%. When I dig deeper I find that traffic from countries like Phillipines and India have a bounce rate pushing 80%, but that traffic from the US has a bounce rate of only about 45%. Since I have declared the US as my targeted country, Google is supposedly not counting poor performance from other countries against my site. I have set up "Segments" in my Google Analytics to only show US visitors, and that really helps get a realistic uncontaminated overview of how my true customers are interacting with the site.
-
Hi Mark,
I haven't actually done this myself, but I have clients who have. You could always try something like this to build the list for you: http://blockacountry.com/
This might also be worth having a read over http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1299746/how-to-allow-access-only-within-country
I don't know of anything specifically for Adwords though.
-Andy
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
-
Houston Printing Company Removed City from Main Page - Will Our Rankings Change?
We operate a full service printing and direct mail company located in Houston (www.catdi.com ). We have been in business for quite sometime and had enjoyed top tier position on page one for many years. However after revamping our website and main page it was determined that we used "Houston" way too often. Our keywords are ( Houston Printing , Printing in Houston)
Local SEO | | NEWCHOPPER
I suppose to the pros it looked and it seemed a little spammy with all the references to our city. But after the changed we have now dropped to mid - bottom of page two. Should we worried or does after sometime
will be move back up? I dont want to hastily change back but to our surprise those aren't really searched terms I would hate to see our positions and ranking fall because of this change. Thanks CATDI PRINTING0 -
How to see SERP from another country?
Hi all! I am trying to figure out why search rankings have decreased. I am currently outside of the US but want to see SERP results from the US. My search results keep reverting and showing me SERP's for the country I am currently in. Not only that, I want to see if featured snippets are showing for a different country. Please help! KC
Local SEO | | kc_hotsoupgroup0 -
Website pages for different cities
HI, Is it ok to have pages on my website that are specifically targeted for one town? Does Google frown on this? is there any thing I should know about doing this, like, does it hurt my seo efforts in anyway? I would be making each page as resourceful as possible to the reader., by Including unique content etc Thanks in advance:)
Local SEO | | MissThumann0 -
How should i Get Max Traffic To my website
Hello Dear Moz friends, I am New to This Forum, I just Want to ask How should I get maximum traffic to My website??
Local SEO | | falguniwpi
As i Have done All The things Correct, But i am Not getting Good traffic To my website, Posted on Forums, regular facebook posting, G+, But Still i am Not Getting good visitors to my website. Please Suggest me some Good Traffic Generation Sources, Thank you0 -
Suggestion "How can I improve my website"
Hi Folks , I'm trying to help my friend , I need your suggestion. I gathered all the data , Please find the attachment , our spam score is 5 as compared with competitors 0 root domain 0 total links 1.)How can we increase the page authority ? 2.)Should i buy more backlinks ? Which website you will recommend me ? 3.) How can i reduce my spam score to 0 or 1 ? I'm not sure about the links which are attached to my website? However, I read in moz article it could be because large domain and few links. It doesn't show any thing on open site explorer. It looks like we haven't discovered link data for this site or URL. We are running google ads , Facebooks ads and twitter. MpYq1
Local SEO | | hemantt0 -
Best approach for international multi country SEO
Hi all We're working with a client that is in the travel industry and they already have a relatively new site (setup in September 2014) which is on a .com domain We've completed a digital strategy for them and have identified 12 key markets within Europe, North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region. We have suggested an approach of setting up individual local websites for these countries and for countries in the same region sharing a common language (like USA & Canada) we're thinking to use a subdomain on the existing .com (eg. amaricas.clientdomain.com) Does this sound like a solid approach? thanks
Local SEO | | seobackbone0 -
Dynamic websites & SEO
Hello Mozzers, I would love some advise from some seasoned SEO people PLEASE. The company I work for are replacing their static website for a new dynamic website which affectedly serves blocks of generic content based on the users activity. Currently we rank really well, especially for local long tail terms - however I am very unsure and apprehensive as to how this new approach will affect our rankings. Can Google index content pulled together on the "fly"? Can anyone recommend an article, website, white paper - explaining how to limit the change to SEO? Kind regards Ben
Local SEO | | Bendall0 -
How many websites in Google Serps
Let say you are an electrician. You have a website in Google Serps After much deliberation you realise that the current domain name is giving the wrong signals to your potential customers. So you decide to rebrand to a new domain name. The new domain will have fresh content (no duplication). Question
Local SEO | | Mark_Ch
Can you have both instances live in Google Serps and eventually retire the current website via a 301 redirect to the new domain. Thanks Mark0