Does it matter what country you use as target country?

9 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I am in the UK and trying to rank my keywords in the US
I have changed my target country in Google webmasters to US
Does any of this matter and why?
#country #matter #target
Avatar of Unregistered
  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Yes, it matters. Google will throw you in the US pool. You will lose rankings in UK and, hopefully, gain rankings in the US.

    I once had a site based on the word remortgage (in the US, they use refinance). I was ranking on page 2 for some keywords, bottom of 1 for some keywords.

    Then, I chose to tell Google to target UK.

    Within a few days, I was nowhere on pages 1-5 in US, but moved from the 8 or 10th page in the UK to page 1 and 2.

    Except, in the UK, I did not make it as high as I was in the US.

    If in the US, I was number 3 or 4, the the UK, I was #11; if in the US I was #6, in the UK I was #21.

    The numbers are not accurate, just a memory re-enactment.

    Originally Posted by mikeb222 View Post

    I am in the UK and trying to rank my keywords in the US
    I have changed my target country in Google webmasters to US
    Does any of this matter and why?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11286606].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author mikeb222
    Ty. I was thinking that was how it works.

    Another point, I have a keyword for both US & UK, so I decided to go for the .com version but I also bought the co.uk


    Should I make duplicate site using the co.uk domain using £ rather than $ I currently use?
    Would Google penalise me for that?

    I'm a bit confused as to how you go about targeting both countries as you can see?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11286929].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author jacksonsophia086
    Yes, it definitely matters
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11286993].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Maxxx333
    Yes your targeted country does really matter! You should keep in mind that what works on some countries, doesn't work for others. You should definitely think it well before.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11287708].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author copywriterpros
    Of course, it matters. First value of the profit is not the same in each country and mainly because of this lot of people target the US. I would said that you should also take a look into Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some others with a good marketing values.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11288231].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Alexandar33
    Of course, it is important.
    Its great thing that you encourage yourself to try different market.
    But be careful, keywords can go UP pretty high in USA

    Good luck
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11288847].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author zhao camelway
    I always thought that in the Google webmasters positioning to a country, the effect is equivalent to buying a local domain name suffix,right?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11288880].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Naksh Kaloo
    It does not matter where you target from but it matters what you target. I can even target Australia and US from India and it does not matter as long as you use proper strategy for respective target audience.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11288932].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Steven Henry01
    If you have website in i.e. .co.uk so it's dificult to rank for usa. According to me just target your country (UK) and get rank on Google.co.uk. If your website get rank on google.co.uk, then automatically ranks your website for google.com. Our keywords get rank automatically on google.com.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11289875].message }}
Avatar of Unregistered

Trending Topics