Country Specific Serps Affected by Title Tags?

[Tom_Cash]

A quick question relating to international SEO primarily on Google...

Note: South Africa is just an example country - we plan to target approx. 36 different countries.

To put it simply:

Will "Widgets South Africa" provail over "Widgets" in South Africa?

We have the .co.za ccTLD and we do everything else by the book.

So, will adding the words "South Africa" provide any benefit to local search resaults, even if the user does not search for "widgets south africa" and just searches "widgets"?

I hope this is clear.

Thanks in advance,
Tom.

[tedster]

The .co.za TLD is already specific to South Africa and geo-targeted to that country, same as .co.uk for the UK, etc.

You may find some ranking advantage to including the country name in the title element - but only for those queries that explicitly include the country name. Depending on the specific niche, you might draw more clicks on other phrases that rank well, too. But I don't think there would be any advantage for geo-targeting local results. In fact, if you include the country for every title in the domain, it might seem very artificial and awkward.

[edited by: tedster at 2:48 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2011]

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Adding country name would not benefit when cctld is aligned and your target is whole country and NOT a specific territory within the county.

[Tom_Cash]

Thanks for replies guys!

Okay, that makes clear sense. I was going to leave it out and did a few quick searchs:

Toyota - Do
Fiat - Do
McDonalds - Don't
Coca Cola - Do
FedEx - Do
UPS - In one place
TNT - Do
Peugeot - Do
Volkswagen - Do
Mercedes - Do
BMW - Do
DELL - Do
HP - Do
Apple - Do
Microsoft - Do

I'm a little on the "Hmmm - shall we?" bridge now...

I guess it can't hurt?

[aakk9999]

I think that global brands that include country name in the title do it more for CTR rather than for ranking. If I was in South Africa and was searching for "Toyota", and I am offered two results:

"Toyota" and "Toyota - South Africa", I would more likely click on the "Toyota - South Africa".

The thought behind it that the "Toyota" domain may be a generic corporate site where I would have to find my way around and perhaps drill down to find my country, whereas "Toyota - South Africa" would take me straight where I want to be.

[Tom_Cash]

Yeah - that's what I was thinking too. I think this is a route I am going down.

Cheers for the input! :)