How to target site to other countries?

do i have to have a .country domain and host it in the country?

[rfung]

I assume having a .country and hosting it in the country that I'd like to target would help, but if I have a .com and host it in the US, and have the site completely in say, French, would the SEs know that the sites are targetting french users?

What are some things I can do to help rank better on the french search engines?

[tedster]

This is a frequent concern - so much so that we have a section on it in our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

-- LOCAL SEARCH --
Multi-language Sites [webmasterworld.com] -and geolocation
Country TLDs [webmasterworld.com] - ranking and local domain extensions
Tell Google Your Site Location [webmasterworld.com] - with Webmaster Tools

Those three threads pretty much cover the current state of things, as far as I know. Especially note the third thread - you now can tell Google from your Webmaster Tools account how to geo-target your site.