International Geo-Targeting Google

What's involved in targeting specific countries?

[sandpetra]

A large site hosted in one country. The owner wants to target specific countries.

Has anyone any experience they could share?

What's involved?

• What do you think about physically hosting mini websites in the target countries?

• Would a way to do it would be one main portal website in the main country, and mini sites all feeding off it? All would be unique content, and I have translated text to work with.

• I need links from websites located in that country, right, to rank in that countries specific Google?

• Am I missing something obvious?

[Robert Charlton]

It sounds like you have a generally good handle on things. I'd ask how mini are the mini-sites, though. If they're too small, they might simply be doorways that wouldn't have credibility as sites.

Many of the considerations discussed in this thread, and particularly in the threads it links to, also apply to your question...

Impact of a new regional site VS a global one
Creation of a .ca version of a site and its impact on .com
[webmasterworld.com...]

Am I missing something obvious?

Some countries have residency requirements for tld ownership, or may require that you have an actual business presence in their countries.

[idolw]

I'd go for building a big one, hosted in one place and get links from the target country.
Best way to do it is to build a site good enough to get link from the locals ;)
OK, if you don't feel like going natural just hire someone to buy links on your behalf.

Lasnik says it is better to build local sites on local tlds but that's pain in the back and good for big boys, who can afford local content and local staff.

[texasville]

I have a question that is similar to this. I have a client that wants to host a "mini-site" basically in each foreign country that would basically be a portal to the main site in the U.S.
His reasoning for this is he already ranks well in google in each of these countries but he wants the description in google to be in their language. (such as .it)
He actually wants to do a doorway page type setup. I think he will be drawing penalties for this but have no experience with it. Anyone know?

[glengara]

I'd wait and see how this new webmaster tools geographic designator actually works....

[webastronaut]

I create mini sites and specific landing pages for language purposes when targeting other countries because the keyword phrase searches are so different for each country (language).

[webastronaut]

Didn't know how to edit my last comment, but to add to it... The mini sites should be fine where ever they are hosted but just make sure you get linked in and out from the countries that you are promoting directly.

[johnser]

Lasnik says ...

Lasnik also says that getting links from for eg, Swedish sites is useless - at the moment - if you're targeting Google.se

However, having inbound anchor text like "Key Word Sweden" does help you massively on Google.se SERPs.

(& I can verify this from personal experience)
J

[klown]

I've had a fair bit of success tacking on small sections to my main site. With around 6 pages of content in the native language with a few incoming links from native language websites (relevant SEO friendly links of course) the site ranks fairly quickly. I've found that the keywords are very often incredibly uncompetitive compared to their English counterparts.

One tip I picked up from an SEO conference; Create a small site with a few pages of content in a target language. Your tld should be in the country along with your IP. After attracting links to this domain and having it indexed in google, 301 redirect this site to your own website's mini section on this language. This will Geotarget this section to the correct country.

[Robert Charlton]

One tip I picked up from an SEO conference; Create a small site with a few pages of content in a target language. Your tld should be in the country along with your IP. After attracting links to this domain and having it indexed in google, 301 redirect this site to your own website's mini section on this language. This will Geotarget this section to the correct country.

I tend not to trust this tip.

a) If you go to all the trouble of hosting on a foreign IP with a foreign TLD and attracting foreign links, why then redirect to your US website? Why not just host your website's foreign language content, with the foreign TLD, on that host in the first place. Then you'd have hosting, language, TLD, and foreign inbound links all going to your foreign "mini section."

b) Assuming you're talking about a 301 redirect... keep in mind that when you do a 301, your first domain ceases to exist. What you've got are the inbound links going to your foreign tld, and a rewrite to the url of the foreign language mini-section on your site. What Google "sees" in a 301 is this destination url.

If you do the redirect by changing the dns to address your domestic IP and do the rewrite on your US server, you won't have the foreign hosting any more.

If you keep the foreign hosting and do the rewrite on the foreign server, Google still sees the destination page of the 301 as part of the mini section on your site, which is hosted in the US. So, in the (b) scenario, you'd be paying for an extra hosting account and not getting any benefit from it.