Simsi - 10:49 am on Jul 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've been trying to determine the best strategy for targetting beyond the USA market through Google SERPs. I've read a few articles that tend to relay the suggestion that multiple domains, seperate hosting by country, relevant TLD's and IBL's from local websites are the way to go. However, most of these threads were a year or more old and I wanted to see if anything has changed.

For background: I am after English speaking markets only. My content is the same no matter where I target. The site ranks well in google.com for the terms I am after but what I want to achieve is better rankings in local markets.

Having multiple domains provides issues. Firstly, I won't be able to standardise the names for branding purposes as several ccTLD variants are registered. Plus, maintaining multiple sites sounds not only like a logistical nightmare, but also potentially leads to dupe content issues.

What I ideally want to achieve is centralisation so I am wondering if subdomains might be the answer? I know it is possible to set up a subdomain for each country and host it in that market (if indeed this is still an important aspect). So 3 questions arise: 1) can I remap subdomain URLs to the relevant pages on the www domain, 2) can I geo-target each subdomain in WMT to let Google know where I am aiming each subdomain and finally 3) would that lead to dupe content issues?

The other (potentially simpler) option, if it's effective, would be to attract inbound links from websites that are in the local markets I am targetting, but my gut tells me that longer term this would be dangerous to rely on exclusively.

Can anyone shed any light or opinions on the best strategy in the current climate?

Many thanks,

Simsi