Registering domains in other countries

[Ashley Gable]

Hello everyone,

I was just doing a little research on a friend of mines niche, found out that there are more people searching for his keywords in Australia then here in the United States.

So my question is, should he register a domain with the .au extension??


How much does it benefit your ranking?

Thanks
Ashley

[Ashley Gable]

Also, if someone from Australia could do us a favor and do a quick search for me to find out what position his site is in??

We went to the Australian google, and he was at #5. But I think this may be misleading as we have to choose between "all the web" or "Just australia pages". Think that might affect it.

So if someone there could search for "airbrush tattoos" , without quotes. And look for the website www dot theweekendworker dot com we would appreciate it.

Thanks again

Ashley

[KeywordMarketer]

To optimize for a given country, you not only want to have a local domain (in this case .com.au) but also have the site hosted in-country as well.

To check local rankings on Google, install the Google Global extension for Firefox made available by RedFlyMarketing.com

With that extension installed, you can call up SERPs as the locals see them . . . including AdWords ads.

Hope this helps.

[Ashley Gable]

Yeah thanks a lot. I didnt know there was such an extension! Sounds good. I also didnt think of the hosting part, will tell him that.

Thanks agian
Ashley

Originally Posted by KeywordMarketer

To optimize for a given country, you not only want to have a local domain (in this case .com.au) but also have the site hosted in-country as well.

To check local rankings on Google, install the Google Global extension for Firefox made available by RedFlyMarketing.com

With that extension installed, you can call up SERPs as the locals see them . . . including AdWords ads.

Hope this helps.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by KeywordMarketer

To optimize for a given country, you not only want to have a local domain (in this case .com.au) but also have the site hosted in-country as well.

I've heard this said before, too. Why is that? Why should it make any difference where the domain's hosted.

[Jaspworld]

Register a domain in a separate country. I think .coms are worldwide and unless your website is planning to go global (doing really good) there's not much point in maintaining other site.

Now there's probably nothing wrong with experimenting a little. But judging from you posts, I personally believe it's not worthwhile to buy domain in other country.

[Ashley Gable]

Originally Posted by Jaspworld

Register a domain in a separate country. I think .coms are worldwide and unless your website is planning to go global (doing really good) there's not much point in maintaining other site.

Now there's probably nothing wrong with experimenting a little. But judging from you posts, I personally believe it's not worthwhile to buy domain in other country.

Yes I came to this conclusion too. I checked his rankings in australia, and he is #6, while being #7 in USA. So what he is doing now seems to be doing great with his rankings there!

Thanks for the input guys!

[KeywordMarketer]

@AshleyAA . . .

In 2004 Atlas OnePoint (now owned by Microsoft) carried out a study that analyzed the distribution of clicks from a sample of 20 million searches performed on Google.

Here's the results from that often quoted study:

1: 42%
2: 12%
3: 8%
4: 6%
5: 5%
6: 4%
7: 3%
8: 3%
9: 3%
10: 3%

In other words, the #1 Google result gets 42% of all (organic result) clicks on average, #2 gets 12% and so on.

So how good is being #6 and #7 really?

[KeywordMarketer]

Originally Posted by alexa_s

I've heard this said before, too. Why is that? Why should it make any difference where the domain's hosted.

I should have qualified my statement to the effect that you'd want to do this only if you wanted to be regarded as a local web site by Google (ie australian in this context). If your product/service has an international audience, then 'localizing' in this fashion would likely hurt your sales in other markets.

[Ashley Gable]

Originally Posted by KeywordMarketer

@AshleyAA . . .

In 2004 Atlas OnePoint (now owned by Microsoft) carried out a study that analyzed the distribution of clicks from a sample of 20 million searches performed on Google.

Here's the results from that often quoted study:

1: 42%
2: 12%
3: 8%
4: 6%
5: 5%
6: 4%
7: 3%
8: 3%
9: 3%
10: 3%

In other words, the #1 Google result gets 42% of all (organic result) clicks on average, #2 gets 12% and so on.

So how good is being #6 and #7 really?

I know of this, and of course his goal is to get to #1.

What I was saying is RIGHT now he is at #6 in Australia, in USA he is at #7, so his SEO tactics, the ones he was using to rank higher in USA Google are in fact working just as well in Australian Google.

So in other words there seems no need to register an Australian domain as he his site is going up in the rankings just as it is here in the USA. In theory when his site gets to #1 or #2 in the USA it will follow suit in Australia, in theory of course

Understand?

Ashley

[edynas]

Originally Posted by KeywordMarketer

To optimize for a given country, you not only want to have a local domain (in this case .com.au) but also have the site hosted in-country as well.

To check local rankings on Google, install the Google Global extension for Firefox made available by RedFlyMarketing.com

With that extension installed, you can call up SERPs as the locals see them . . . including AdWords ads.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for mentioning the extension didn't knew that one.

The hosting part...I am not so sure that is true. I am dutch and all my dutch sites I have at Hostgator and Dreamhost and I rank high for most of my sites here in the Netherlands. Most are the local tld (.nl) but even with .com and .info sites I don't have any problems ranking in Google for local dutch words.