ccTLDs, hreflang, and international rankings?

[Vimes]

Hi all,
ok looking for any one with previous knowledge of how Google handles a cc'TLD that has different language content than its country,
example.co.uk
on that site I’ve translated my content in to Japanese let’s say
example.co.uk/jp/
Will adding a Hreflang tag on the translated pages help them to break out of the geo-located targeting that example.co.uk locks into?
Anyone out there with any experience of whether Hreflangs help pages rank outside of the cc’TLD’s geo-location?
Vimes

[rainborick]

It's very unlikely. Geo-location is a very strong ranking factor - especially for a ccTLD, so pages from that site will rarely appear in the results for users outside the corresponding country, regardless of the language match.

[Vimes]

That's also my fear, this clients global domain variations, at least the ones they are interested in are already taken, so buying those is pretty much out of the question with the budget restraints they are under.

So i was hoping that the community might have tried something similar previously and tried out of the box solutions for expanding a CC'tld's audience outside of its geographical rankings.

Any other feed back would be grately appreciated.

Vimes

[rainborick]

A ccTLD locks you in to a single country so strongly that I think the only way to expand this client's online presence internationally is to buy at least one generic domain name that can be geo-targeted as desired. There are so many generic TLD's available now that you should be able to find an acceptable, attractive choice even if its not a '.com'. My inclination is to have one domain name for each geo-location, but you can have a single domain and use geo-targeted subdomains or subdirectories if you prefer to have a single parent/umbrella domain.