Gopi's Digital Web book

Country Specific SEO Tips

June 26, 2011 | Posted by: admin | News | 2 Comments

Get a local domain extension

Google places a lot of weight on the domain name, so it is important to get the appropriate country-code domain extension. If you compare results across the different geo-targeted flavors of Google, you’ll notice the weight given to the local TLDs. There are exceptions, but the local TLD tends to trump .com when it comes to local result sets. Different countries have different registration criteria for domain registration.

Geographic target: If your site targets users in a particular location, you can provide us with information that will help determine how your site appears in search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. You can only use this feature for sites with a neutral top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Country-specific domains, such as .ie or .fr, are already associated with a country or region. If you don’t want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted.

Specify your country association in Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools offers a facility whereby you can specify a country association for your content. You can do this on a domain, sub-domain and directory level. More detailed instructions can be found on Google’s Webmaster Tools Blog.

Language and spelling

With local optimisation, you should be careful about regional language as there is difference between “optimsation” and “optimization.

Inbound Links

Inbound links from local TLDs will help your SERP performance for local search engines. Try and gain links from business partners, chambers of commerce, government agencies, suppliers etc.