Geo Targeting Ranking Factors

How British is your site? Is it British enough to get into google.co.uk? Regardless of where you come from you will no doubt have a regional Google be it China or Brazil but getting into these various search engines can at times be difficult unless you know what to look for. We have discussed this subject before but now I want to give some sort of ranking to the various factors so here is our guide to Geo Targeting. Through out this article we refer to regional rather then country tld (top level domain) and search engine, while most regional search engines are country specific a couple are not and with new domain names making up a series of countries such as .eu (urgh Europe ) we are starting to have to think of Geo Targeting on many levels.

Domain names

Ultimately the domain name has to be the largest factor when it comes to targeting a site for a regional search engine. For example Getting into google.co.uk the easiest way is to have a UK domain name such as venture-skills.co.uk. Most countries have their own tld’s such as .uk, .ca, .fr etc often these are supplemented with the more traditional tld so .org.uk for example.

Quick Tip: When developing a site that you know is being aimed at a specific region buy both the regional name and the .com but only promote the regional name. The .com simply redirects to the other domain name and catches type in mistakes. Many people seem to be region blind and often forget that .co.uk is not the same as .com so having both domains really helps. However attempting the reverse without using the other factors in this article would not work

The regional domain name is designed to designate which country or region that the site is catering to and therefore has to be considered a large factor in getting into the correct search engines. Domain names: 4/5 – Saves much hassle having a regional domain name.

Hosting Location

Where your site is hosted is often a factor when deciding who to host with, one of the largest complaints made against 1&1 in the UK is that they have no UK based hosting, so the IP address is based in Germany and several sites have famously ended up in the wrong search engine because of this small problem! Where your site is based is a large factor but its both where the actual box is and where the DNS records sit that make these factors. For example we base all our sites hosting in two data centres one in the US the other in Australia, but our DNS records are held in the UK (we have never had a problem getting into the UK search engines) Hosting Location: 2/5 – Where your site is ultimately not as important as you think.

DNS Server location

The second location factor, where your DNS record is held would appear to have more of a factor then the actual location for the box. In many respects this does make sense sites if you move hosting providers normally your DNS record stay with one provider and so provides some engines with a suitable guide as to where the site should be. It however can only be taken as a factor when partnered with Hosting Location. DNS Location: 3/5 – More important then the hosting location, and when taken together becomes a powerful factor.

Colloquialisms

Its colour not color and why oh why do Americans have this thing with z’s! The use of regional dialects words and phrases does have an impact, principally as such terms are only found on sites from the same region and search engines are effectively playing match the relevancy game. However how much this is a factor is limited on how different the colloquialisms are between various countries are. For example the UK and US language is different (you can thank Webster it would appear he was unable to spell!) both are ever changing for example in UK English website is a word, defined in the Oxford English dictionary however our American cousins still use Web Site. Ultimately Language and declared language is more about declaration in doc types then the actual words and as such colloquialism are a rather limited factor. Colloquialisms: 2/5 – Blimey governor who’d have thought me language would be important!

Street Address

I live at number 2, the street, London, UK while great for local search is not as much a major factor as it once was (note we are completely contradicting our earlier post cool huh) but still helps tie the site to a real location. The problem is that Google has no means to either verify that is your location or indeed if multiple address appear on the site to know which address is important. Now if the engines would come out in support of microformats we might have a chance to help give them exact locations but until then I’m afraid real addresses only appear to help on local search level. Street Address: 2/5 – Great for Local search but limited emphasis in regional searches.

Regional inbound links

How English are your friends? Search engines rely on relevancy when creating rankings, how relevant your site is to a certain keyword determines where it is placed within the search results page. However another major factor is how relevant those who link to you are to that keyword and how relevant your outbound links are. This link triangle is just as important when it comes to determining how “British” you are, if UK based sites keep linking to you then it is because UK readers on a certain subject find your site interesting and should be included in the UK SERPs as its relevant to those people. Inbound Links are probably the wild card here as to truly make a difference their has to be an obvious biased, and since most web sites will seek links from just about anyone it takes a clever strategy to get the right balance of inbound links, however if done well inbound links can get almost any site into a region specific engine.

Quick Tip: While I’m generally not a fan of directories and concur with Lyndoman in his recent article, this is one of the times they can be rather useful, regional directories (particularly specialist directories like Bl3.co.uk) are a great way to get region specific inbound links to a site with minimal work (just make sure the site is in the right engines to start with and if not do them a favour and point them here).

Regional inbound links: 4/5 – Like much in Search engine rankings related IBL are one of the most important factors.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is key when targeting links for certain keywords but when it comes to being in the right region they loose their importance simple because its so hard to keyword target an entire region (they are still really great for Local search though!). However as when used with other factors here they could be the tipping point and using terms like the UK within anchor text will help your keyword results (“UK SEO Forum” for example) so well worth doing even if it will have little impact in deciding which engine your site shows in. Anchor Text: 1/5 – Hard to target a region with keywords.