Search Engine Marketing is all about getting higher on Google. A website owner targeting an international audience needs to ask the question – Which Google am I trying to get more traffic from? Google forces people to use one of its Google country specific domains for searches done in each country. How does Geographic targeting of searches and search engine optimization happen?
When you look at Google’s results on Google.com.au as compared to say Google.co.nz for the same keyword, you will see that there are different results for each search. Searches on the Google.com.au Australian shows more Australian websites as compared to the same search on the alternative Google searches.
In other words there is a bias on different country searches to each specific country.
How does the bias work??? How can you work the geo targeting bias in your favor??? How do you get to the top with 1 domain name for many alternate countries, beating the bias of that countries own websites??? What is the best technique of search engine marketing your web site? Its time for Geo Targeting of web sites.
How is a web site geo targeted?
- If a web sites domain is country specific (ie .co.nz, .co.uk, .com.au), then it is geotargeted to that country only
- If a domain name is non country specific (ie .com, .net, .info), then by default it is geographical targeted to the country that it is hosted in. ie a .com hosted in New Zealand is treated as a New Zealand website for geotargeting.
- Via Google webmaster tools, you are able to geotarget a non country specific domain to any country ie geotarget a .com hosted in New Zealand to Australia.
Can a website be geo targeted to a number of different countries?
Yes! Via Google webmaster tools, you are able to add not just the main domain.com, but also add subdomains like domain.com/au/. You can then specifically geo target that subdirectory to a certain country. All pages within that subdirectory are therefore geo targeted to that same country
Therefore you can have one domain that is able to compete on an even foot with the websites of each country. One web site is able to have the same country bias as each countries own web sites.
How are searches geographic targeted
There is a country bias on Google.com searches based on the country of the IP address that you are searching via. For example, if you are using an ISP (internet service provider) of New Zealand, then based on the IP address that you are searching from, you will be given search results biased to that country. If you are searching on Google.mg from a New Zealand IP address, then there is no ISP bias, just the country bias attached to that specific countries searches.
The problem with many domains
You have an alternative. Either create a different web site for numerous domains – ie domain.com, domain.com.au, domain.co.nz etc, or have one domain.com that is targeted to many countries domain.com/au, domain.com/nz, domain.com/uk etc
A number of domains means that each domain needs its own inbound links and each domain needs unique content so as to not have duplicate content issues. Each website needs to be updated via its own cms each time updates are needed.
One domain means one web site to maintain, one domain to get links for, and duplicate content between pages is not as much an issue (although you need to be careful at the same time).
I much prefer having one website.
The problem with having just one country specific domain
I have some country specific domains (ie domain.co.nz) that are competitive on many different country Google’s – ie the web sites ranking high on each of Google.com from USA, Google.co.nz, Google.com.au etc.
However, in order to get high on each search, I have had to invest incredibly large amounts of effort into linking in order to beat the bias of each countries domains. I could have just created a separate .com website and geotargeted it. However, there had already been significant linking resources put into the .co.nz website and got it positioned well. We did not want to wait the six+ months of Google’s sandbox to get a new web site ranking well for such very competitive phrases.
How to create a multi country website
You need a homepage specific to each country, and a number of other pages that are for that particular country as well. Google likes domains better if they have more than one page. Each subdirectory is becoming a mini web site, therefore it needs more than one website page in order to be treated as an authority “web site” in its own right. I like to have a homepage, contact page, and about us page as the minimum number of pages for each country.
Once you are into a country page, you need to see the other pages specific for that country. I like using flags as country identifiers.
Placing people in pages via Geo targeting by IP address
Geographic targeting by IP number is a great help for placing people into their own specific part of a web site. But given that Google is a USA spider, you also need to let Google see all the other countries pages, and not just restrict it to USA website pages. You can set a browser cookie based on Geotargeted country, or the first country specific page that is entered. But then you must allow people to change their country and see the other pages as well, overriding that initial cookie setting.
Avoiding Duplicate content
Having multiple homepages, one for each country, and duplicating other pages brings about the duplicate content issue. With multi country web sites, I work very hard to create unique copy for each page. Particularly making sure that the words around the first instance of the search phrases are unique. But also making sure that the remainder of the pages are different in some way. Spinning the content like you need to spin articles is one way.
If you are creating hundreds of pages per country, and duplicating this out per country, then you need intelligent formulas for each pages opening paragraphs. I insert the country name into opening paragraphs and have numerous versions of opening paragraphs that are randomly selected for the pages.
ie
Welcome Canadian visitors to our pages showcasing Auckland Hotels
Welcome Spanish visitors to our Auckland Hotels page on Domain.com.
…
You can see the unique content around the keyword “Auckland Hotels” on each version, and the added uniqueness of adding mention of the country.
Its hard work
Yes, it’s tough work creating specific website pages for each country, and specifically geotargeting for Google. But its definately worth it when you factor in the lower number of inbound links required to rank each countries pages high.
All the best with creating websites that are geo targeted for Google country specific searches. Click to see more SEO Articles by New Zealand based SEO consultant SearchMasters.
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