How Does Geography Affect Search Rankings?…
Hi guys.
This is a follow-up to “Link-Juice And Pagerank“, posted at the start of last month.
Some ClubBloggers have gotten a little excited about geography. And understandably so.
Why and how does the main Google site serve-up particular results for one user in the UK, one user in the US and one user in Italy?
Most of those who spend a lot of time on SEO will get this. Others who don’t may struggle. Those in the last bracket who have done a little work on the topic, and particularly those who’ve used AdWords, will get a little caught-up in obsessing about IP addresses.
However, whilst the IP address (which most of you know is one of the vertebrae in the backbone of the ‘net) does play a part, here (particularly with country-specific domains such as .co.uk), it is by far from being the only element. And you really do need to know more than that to properly optimize your blog/page.
Before we get to those other elements, let’s dwell a while longer on the top-level domain. In particularly, on “.com” domains.
Above, we mention the UK and Italy as geographic areas aside from the US. Well, quite a lot of people don’t realise that a “.com” domain hosted in the UK will typically be seen by Google as a UK site. Yes, you guessed it, a “.com” in Italy, an Italian site. This is despite the “.com” universal domain extension.
So, lesson number one here is that, depending on what geographical audience you wish to target, and this really is at the heart of top-level targeted traffic, then look to host locally to your audience.
Lesson number two is that the location of your inbound links (yes, we all know how much Google loves those) is also very important to the issue of geographical audience. In a similar manner to “get hosted in the jurisdiction you wish to target”, you should get your link juice from the target geographical area. Yes, it really does matter.
So, you say: ”c’mon CB, my site’s international, not linked to UK, USA, Italy, Luxembourg”. Well, fine. A lot are (you’re not unusual:) ). In that case, your links should be balanced, geographically. Yes, it’s all about relevance, at least in the eyes of Google. Is your site relevant to that Italian searcher? Or that guy in London?
There are other lessons to learn whilst on the topic of geography, but we won’t obsess about those in detail, here. They do, however, deserve a passing mention….. We have seen some poor SEO operators advise on translation of a site into another language (e.g., you started in the US, you now want to target Turkey, too, and want a language-friendly Turkish site) but they forget translation of important elements like meta titles in the code, for example. C’mon guys. Get a grip.
We’ll come back to this overall topic again, as we’ve been asked to (and of course we always do what we’re told) but also mainly because it’s objectively really important.
Before dashing, we can’t over-estimate the importance of using Google’s Webmaster Tools properly. Have a look and let us have your comments, thoughts, moanings if you have any.
Nice post!!!
zappolos last blog post..Tips for maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues
Does hosting on a UK server help your rankings on the UK yahoo?
Would Hosting at a chinese server in china help rankings on chinese version of yahoo?
Great post, but it can be difficult enough to get in-content links from anywhere, so you could go a little crazy looking only for local links. Of course, it's important, but it could potentially be limiting if you're not getting links from all possible sources.
Yes, totally understand your comment. It’s a balance, like everything else. SEO isn’t a science (still too many unknowns and too many variables for the average user) – it’s very much an art. Thanks,
Yahoo is a somewhat different proposition and we’ll cover the other engines/directories in future posts. In the meantime, you may find this helpful: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/ranking/
Please see our previous comment.
Nice post my friend, I'll try to follow your suggestions!!!
<abbr>Forex RoadMaps last blog post..Trading Calls 5/21</abbr>
To be honest, this geography issue is making my head spin. I have heard so many pieces of advice about it that I’m not sure which to follow. I was told that one of my sites (a local job site) doesn’t earn much through adsense despite the many clicks i get simply because my target audience is local. sigh
Ninahs last blog post..Five Tips to Buying Contact Lenses Online
Thanks for this… it's an understandably tough topic. We're doing a follow-up soon…
Luckily I'm not so worried where my traffic comes from right now but if I ever make a site where geography is more important this will definitely come in handy.
Wonderful information. I think some business like restaurant is needed local search optimization. Your article will be useful for them.
.-= Jaydip Parikh´s last blog ..How to Update Sitemap automatic to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other leading Search Engines =-.
Thanks for this informative post! good luck guys!
That was really great information. But I think SEO is a very difficult stuff for me to master, I'm only great in forex trading. If the geographical audience I want to target is U.S, what should I do?
Regards,
Dan
@ Daniel Su
Better cross your fingers and keep your hopes up buddy.
great blog .It is true that the work will be useful for my SEO
SEO is a great subject. Thanks for the nice opportunity and helpful information
Michel from http://terabout.com