How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country
-
How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)?
I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it.
Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.
-
Hi Miriam.
I agree with your gut feeling. What is wrong is wrong and one should not play games falsify facts and present them as true.... not at least with Google. They are smarter than everybody of us out here.
I'll stick with the following tactic:
-
Find a person or a partner in these countries who is ready to genuinely partner with me... or at least is willing to take calls, talk to leads and direct them to me. A local listing will be created for this/these guy/guys when we have genuine NAPs.
-
Focus on organically promoting my website for these locations without local listings.
Thanks for your help everybody.
KS__
-
-
Hi KS!
Unfortunately, that's not really a practice I would recommend to my clients at this point. There's been some indication in recent times that while Google is completely fine with a single-location home-based business, it's very easy for them these days to see that a string of houses is being used to indicate locations in more than one place. It's my gut feeling that they don't approve of this practice and that they would take action against Google+ Local listings created in this scenario. But, in any case, your lack of in-person contact with customers means that the business does not qualify for Google+ Local listings or local pack rankings, regardless of whether you have legitimate business offices or are using the addresses of your friends. So, this may be kind of a moot point. Virtual businesses need to compete organically and utilize PPC, social media, video marketing, etc. to earn visibility - but Local SEO is not the right marketing discipline for them.
Hope this helps!
-
Will it be fine if I add my friends' residential addresses in multiple cities across Country A in Google Places and buy toll free numbers for each of these addresses/cities? So all locations will have different NAP.
-
Hi KS!
Thanks for the clarification on this. So, if you are not making in-person contact with your customers, whether here or abroad, then this means that the business is not a 'local' business in the eyes of Google. Face-to-face transactions are the prerequisite of this particular type of marketing. So, as you would not be able to go the local business route of building a Google+ Local page for each location in hopes of ranking in Google's local packs of results, then your two options would be:
-
Building organic content on the website that showcases your virtual services in each of your target cities and countries.
-
Participating in PPC that enables you to pay for placement in your target cities and countries.
I'm afraid international SEO is not my area - the links Patrick has shared will be your best bet for learning about this marketing discipline. Wishing you best of luck!
-
-
Thanks Miriam.
Here are my answers:
- Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
Other countries, not counties.
- Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
No personal contact. I have international numbers listed on the website, so they just give me a call (I use VOIP and Magic Jack) or fill up the form. The conversation begins there.
Hope that answers you.
-
Thanks for all the help John.
-
Awesome links Patrick. Thanks.
-
Hi KS -
Got your note on my older post and so am popping by here. I have some questions.
-
Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
-
Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
-
-
Hi there
If you are trying to rank a certain location or country, you can look into hreflang attributes and language tags for your site.
You can also geo-target specific URL variations in Google Search Console. You can read more about International SEO here, as well as an International SEO Checklist.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better.
A website we instructed down this path is www.cottonon.com - It is more complicated - but that is a retailer that rolls out new shops in each country. Hence Australia is www.cottonon.com/au etc. Go to their website and from a practical perspective watch it operation, this may help in clearing it all up for you. Note the power CO is in the store finder - where you get to use google maps...
-
Ok. www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better or www.chicago.mywebsite.com? The only negative with the latter is that all pages (FAQ, How it works etc.) within the sub-domain website will have to be re-done with fresh new content while in the first option there's only one page for the location while other pages like FAQ etc stay the same for the root website as well location specific pages.
What say?
-
Yes, in a nutshell. That is one way - but Google maps for each location would save you alot of work.
The key ingredient missing on the above is on the pages you make - ensure your meta title reads "Flowers | New York | Mywebsite".
Then your H1 is also location keyword rich. Then find links preferable local. Maybe some local directories etc. I would also be trying to make a cracking page - with great user friendly content. Whatever you do do not duplicate content swapping location names - that is an easy way to "never be found on google"...
So it is hard work... for each location.
-
So if I want the website to rate well in Chicago, California and New York, the pages that I should create will be www.mywebsite.com/chicago, www.mywebsite.com/california and www.mywebsite.com/new-york. Is that right?
And when I'm done with that, I have to build location specific links like ' <keyword>in Chicago', ' <keyword>California' etc.?</keyword></keyword>
-
It can be complicated - and without alot more information & countries etc.all answers could be wrong. There are several paths depending on the answers. So everything I suggest is dependent on unknown factors.
Because of the weighting to google maps it is difficult if you do not have an address in each country. I would strongly urge you to change you outlook on this position. Then you could consider subdomains. If you only want to use one domain (which is what I recommend) and no subdomains - you could make a page for each country you are targeting. Have you considered that? Then you have to action each country page uniquely and obtain links and build DA to same. On the link building it should be page specific ie if targeting chicago get chicago based/centric links to that page.
I hope that gives you something to think about.
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
-
Follow/NoFollow?
I run Magento 2 and have two stores, one intended for the EU and one for the US. 99% of the products available appear on both stores, there is an automatic redirect in place to either store depending on your location. But I think Google is seeing these as duplicate products/stores. Should I add the Index,NoFollow tag to one of the two stores? My issue is that I want both stores to rank in their geographical locations and I am concerned that by adding the NoFollow tag is will stop that dead in its tracks for one location. Any advice would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots2 -
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Ranking Suggestions
Hi There, I am currently working on this site: completesteamclean.ca to rank as high as possible for "carpet cleaning windsor" on Google.ca and I can't seem to make any head way against the other websites ranking. I've optimized the page, created social media accounts for activity, even invested in Google Adwords and Facebook ads to try to boost my presence. Does anyone have any suggestions on any tactics/revisions I can make that may help boost my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Ranking on google but not Bing?
Any reason why I could be ranking for Google but not Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Ranking better in different countries than in the UK
My URL is: www.geckonewmedia.comMy friend's site is being ranked in the top 10 in Google in countries such as Norway, Poland, Spain, Germany and France for the term "web design Edinburgh"The site is UK based and it's ranking on page 3 over here. I went into the webmaster tools and changed the location setting to UK on Monday this week as I thought that might be the issue. So far there's been no change.Can anyone help me out with the reason why it might be ranking so well abroad but not in the UK?Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | geckonm0 -
Moz Rank and how to do better?
Could anyone offer me some help regarding Moz Rank? Of all the metrics this seems to be one where we want to improve but just have not been able to. Does anyone have any advice or tips that we could look at implementing to get this thing to move at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0 -
Google Places Multiple Location
Hi everyone, I have a client with multiple locations in the same city. I would like to have their Goolge places listing show up under the main website listing. Currently, one of the Google places listings in being pulled in directly below the main website but not the other. The Zagat rating is being pulled in as well. I would like to have both locations show up when you type in the name of the business. Any ideas how to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0