Differences in Google SERPs for different countries

[fred9989]

I have a site on a particular type of holistic therapy training which shows up on page 1 (at 10 results per page) for the relevant search term in google.co.za (South Africa) but is on page 4 in Google.co.uk and page 6 in Google.com.

Apart from the volume of search queries for the relevant term in each country / region, what other factors might determine the placing of this site in the search results in different versions of Google?

The site is registered and hosted in the UK.

To put the question differently, for a site which is worldwide in relevance, what factors determine prominence in different versions of Google?

Thanks.....

Fred

[goodroi]

Let's take a step back. Just about no site is worldwide in relevance because each locality is different. A website with English content is not very helpful to Chinese speaking people in Asia. Even if you have an English language site it is not equally relevant to American & UK audiences because they speak a common but still different language. In the UK people eat crisps but Americans call them potato chips. 1/5/13 in South Africa is May 1st, 2013 and in America it is January 5th, 2013. Countries and even the regions within countries can have differences that makes it very hard for a site to be relevant worldwide. This is a big reason why Google tries to personalize the SERPS for each location.

If you want to attract a wider audience from around the world here are some tips to start with:
1) Go with .com, it is often seen as the most generic of tlds
2) Consider placing country specific content in country specific folders or subdomains
3) Develop backlinks from relevant sites in each country (if you can't convince those sites to link to you then you probably won't convince Google you are relevant either)
4) Double check your keywords and their synonyms. Biscuits can refer to cookies or bread rolls depending on your region. Google likes to see relevant content with the right keywords.

[HuskyPup]

Have you considered launching the site under each ccTLD you wish to target?

[piatkow]

Less locally relevant competition in ZA searches?

As an extreme example G.uk will return results for the East End of London in preference to the city in the Eastern Cape if you just search on the name.

[fred9989]

Thanks - most helpful. I will consider separate sites for each country. I see that as optimum but it is a question of workload and cost.

[Whitey]

I will consider separate sites for each country

Multiple/tld sites need more support and resources. Goodroi's advice looks sound to me.

[HuskyPup]

I see that as optimum but it is a question of workload and cost.

These days I honestly do not know how Google treats a network of several company sites targeted for each country. All mine seem to be fine however they have all been going several years therefore Google's had time to absorb them.

Cost wise, domains are cheap if you know where to buy them. Hosting, I actually do most of my hosting through London and Google has managed to separate the ccTLDs from each other pretty successfully, in fact they've done better with them than my .co.uk and .com

In my experience do not try and hide the fact that they are interlinked. My users can go from one region/continent to another with one click, whether that is of any use to you I do not know however within my industry it is important for volume trade purchasers to be able to source an alternative supply source if their original one is not able to ship for whatever reason.

[edited by: tedster at 12:17 pm (utc) on May 21, 2013]
[edit reason] removed some specifics [/edit]

[phranque]

hosting your site in the targeted country is also a strong signal.
if this is your intention, now or in the future you should use ccTLDs or subdomains in your url structure rather than subdirectories.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Working with multi-regional websites:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]