Special tactics for ranking high in foreign Google SERPs?

[John Williamson]

Are there any special tactics for ranking high in G's foreign SERPs (.co.uk - United Kingdom, .ie - Ireland, .com.au - Australia, etc) or are they basically the same as the SEO tactics for the normal Google.com? Thanks.

[communityn]

AFAIK the domain plays an important role in the market you are trying to rank. For eg: a .co.uk might rank better thank a .com in google.co.uk. However the flip side of having a .co.uk is that it becomes extremely difficult for it to rank on google.com.

[PhilipSEO]

Originally Posted by communityn

AFAIK the domain plays an important role in the market you are trying to rank. For eg: a .co.uk might rank better thank a .com in google.co.uk. However the flip side of having a .co.uk is that it becomes extremely difficult for it to rank on google.com.

That's far from the whole story, and the last statement ("However the flip side of having a .co.uk is that it becomes extremely difficult for it to rank on google.com") is simply not true. Search for "shorten URL" and the first result is bit.ly -- if one were to believe you, that could only rank in Lybia's google.com.ly

If you are targeting only a particular country, you can get either a domain with a country-specific extension, or get a .com/.org/.net and associate the site with that particular country in your Google webmaster tools.

More importantly, to rank high in a particular regional Google, get quality backlinks from websites hosted in the appropriate country. This is the single most important thing for achieving this goal.

If you want to rank globally, get global backlinks.

[John Williamson]

Thanks so much Philip. My only question now would be if I target a specific country by associating my site with it using Webmaster Tools, do you think that would increase its rankings for that country's SERPs?

[PhilipSEO]

Originally Posted by jtwillia1

Thanks so much Philip. My only question now would be if I target a specific country by associating my site with it using Webmaster Tools, do you think that would increase its rankings for that country's SERPs?

Yes, it will help, unless you already have a country specific domain extension, in which case it will make no difference. But if you use GWT in this way, this is likely restrict your rankings to that particular country (unless you get a whole lot of backlinks from elsewhere).

[John Williamson]

Makes sense. Thanks again.

[examineseo]

Originally Posted by PhilipSEO

More importantly, to rank high in a particular regional Google, get quality backlinks from websites hosted in the appropriate country. This is the single most important thing for achieving this goal.

If you want to rank globally, get global backlinks.

Let's say you have a dot com site hosted on a US server but you want to rank high on google UK. Will backlinks alone do it for you?

[PhilipSEO]

Originally Posted by examineseo

Let's say you have a dot com site hosted on a US server but you want to rank high on google UK. Will backlinks alone do it for you?

Yes, enough UK-based backlinks will take care of it.

[jayuk76]

Originally Posted by examineseo

Let's say you have a dot com site hosted on a US server but you want to rank high on google UK. Will backlinks alone do it for you?

will also depend on your traffic sources. Regional instances of Google will have preference for ranking in the respective area. What has some good "weight" is where the server is hosted and where the connections come from.

Of course backlinks and content also play a huge part - but you will always be behind a local domain in the region unless you site trully has international exposure.

[Fraggler]

One thing that I experienced when targeting UK traffic for Adwords for a US hosted .com was that I rocketed up the ranking in Google.co.uk. The term was pretty competitive and I did absolutely no offsite promotion of the page. It was made just as a landing page for a UK CPA offer. The offer was based on Accidental Injury Compensation so you can image that is was pretty competitive. The page was no where to be seen in the US rankings. Just some food for thought. It doesn't really help with SEO but just an interesting side effect to an Adwords campaign.

[Davioli]

Regardless of where your website is hosted or where your backlinks come from... Google allows you to select a region to target within the webmaster tools settings.

I've used it for two of my websites and It usually takes around 3 to 4 weeks for it to take effect.

[Daniel Brock]

Originally Posted by Davioli

Regardless of where your website is hosted or where your backlinks come from... Google allows you to select a region to target within the webmaster tools settings.

I've used it for two of my websites and It usually takes around 3 to 4 weeks for it to take effect.

Excellent tip! Never knew about that - will be very useful. Thanks!