Targeting Different Countries

Started by apexis, 12-10-2012, 03:01:09

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apexisTopic starter

Targeting Different Countries
As a long-term subscriber I would like to ask for your advice concerning optimisation of an e-commerce site for multiple countries.
Specifically I am in the UK and have a client in Australia operating an e-commerce site. The site is well established and ranks well in the UK (where it is hosted) but not very well in the USA or Australia.
My client believes this is because the site is hosted in the UK and that in order to succeed in the bigger US market he needs to host in the USA (same for Australia).
He is asking if he should operate 3 sites – one hosted in each country – and I wondered if you could comment on the importance of hosting in the target country, and the implications of having what will essentially be 3 duplicates of the same site – one for .co.uk, one for .com and one for .com.au.


SEO Haven

It's not smart having exact duplicates of a site; that might get all 3 penalized eventually. Rewrite the content on 2 of the 3 so that they all say the same thing, but are 100% unique and different from the other sites. Also, don't link them to each other.

The first step in targeting countries, is to set your preferred country in Google Webmaster tools. The next step is to create relevant content, on-page and off-page when doing any type of backlinking.

For example, when writing/posting and article on/for the .com.au domain, mention Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and so on somewhere in the texts. This will indicate to Google that it's related to Australia and they'll rank it accordingly.

Feel free to contact us if you need any help with this.


damponting44

This option allows you to target people who are currently in a specific city or area. These includes people who are  updated their current city in their Facebook profile, as well as anyone can be determined to be in that location based on device and connection information. You might want to advertise large fairs or high-profile sporting events, for example, to everyone in a location.

SEO Travis

Yes you should create a different site in each country. You should also buy country specific TLDs. That will help much better. Want to rank in Australia? Buy a .au domain. Canada? .ca  etc...