GEO targetting in Europe

[kservik]

I have a site: www.eurofind.biz that I have been hosting in Norway since I started it.

I am going to move it to a server in the EU (UK, Germany or Netherlands) or to the US, but not sure what will be best in regard to ranking isues.

Germany and UK are great countries since they got a high population and a good pool to get rthe extra traffic that comes with GEO targetting in these countries.

The thing is that this site´s main theme is "Europe". And logically it would be a smart move to have it in Europe I guess, but SEs dont really understand that the theme "europe" is a region that include all the 25 - 50 countries in Europe?

Wouldnt it infact be easier to get rankings in all those countries if the site was sitting on a server in the US?

[badz]

To be in the local listings, for example google.co.UK pages from the UK you website needs to be either a.co.UK domain name or hosted in the UK.

if you wanted to be in the local listings for a selection of googles different countries then you could just subdomain up your website and host the subdomains in countries respective to the google local results you want to rank in.

If you are happy with web results on each of these googles then all you need is links from domains hosted in that country.

[kservik]

If you are happy with web results on each of these googles then all you need is links from domains hosted in that country.

I have been wondering if that might be true too.

Discussion took off a bit more here:

http://forums.seochat.com/t56534/s.html

[badz]

haha i read the first 4 posts on that seo chat thread. What a lot of crap.

[kservik]

Elaborate plz?

[badz]

I am not going into details, you maybe found it usefull I just find forums funny sometimes.

[CaseyC]

I am not trying to hijack your thread, but I have a similar question with regards to targeting other countries and hosting a domain. I work for a company that operates a guest/horseranch. Our site does pretty well traffic wise, especially in our area, but we would like to try and target some of the UK travelers since we have learned that these types of vacations or growing in popularity. We have had guests from Sweden and Germany. Would it be a smart move to set up a .co.uk domain and host it in the UK to try and get in front of this market better. Currently we get some international traffic, but like I said we are trying to target them.

Again, I am sorry of my question is too off topic from what you were asking.

[badz]

I have always wanted to be hijacked :)

I told how to do it in my last post. If it was me I would go with the subdomain option hosted on different ips respective to the country you want to rank in. This also gets you with in the UK results and the web results of the Google in question.

If you want to know anything specific to the UK then msg me. There a lot of other things you can do to promote your company than search engines, if you dont know the country it can be tricky. :)

[kservik]

Setting up a site in the UK will clearly improve your rankings in that country, but it might be easier to try with some AdWords advertising first?

SEO is slow and painfull for a new site.

[CaseyC]

Our hosting provider sent us this and it seems to contradict what I am being told. They are telling us that we dont need to be hosted in the country in question (UK) to get listed there, we just need to get a domain names that identifies the country we are trying to target and just host it in the US and the search engines will figure it out based on the domain name who we are targeting. Does this work also?

"Google, Yahoo, and Altavista, as examples, all have "uk." domain names (uk.google.com, uk.yahoo.com, and uk.altavista.com). All of these subdomains are hosting in the United States, not in the UK. For example, uk.altavista.com is hosted by Yahoo in California. These search engines target the UK market, but are not hosted in the UK.

You don't necessarily need to host a domain name with a provider in the UK in order to be listed in UK search engines. Simply targeting that market with a name like uk.deerlakecabins.com and having a section of your current web site dedicated to that market area would bring traffic to the site. Search engines are world-wide. In addition, you might consider registering the domain name deerlakecabins.co.uk and host it as a subdirectory on your current web site, then submit this name to UK-based search engines. Basically, it's not where the site is hosted, it's what market you are targeting.

Another option, depending on your needs, is to open a second web site to host the UK domain or subdomain (aka: canonical name).

Some countries require that you have a physical location in the country in order to be listed in local directories, but it doesn't matter where the web site is hosted. Some of our UK-based customers lease dedicated servers from us here in the US. They, in turn, host web sites for others in the UK.

In conclusion, if the goal is to get listed with Google's UK directory and others like it, the name matters more than where it is hosted."

[kservik]

To be sure to be found in the UK you need a UK IP adress on your web hosting.

If not you can try to get in on as one of the global results shown to UK searchers.

[badz]

uk domain names work.

I tend to use subdomains as its easier to market + brand an already established domain name.

If this is all you would need to do how could google determine between a united states.com and a uk com.

I am sure you will see booth listed in local results in any google.

Mabye you should ask your hosting company if ip geo location has nothing to do with it, how this works?

[kservik]

I dont think the hosting company would be an expert on this.

:)

[CaseyC]

Our hosing company's explanation is that if we used a sub domain like uk.domain.com that since we have the uk in the subdomain that the engines would know we are a uk site and would put us in the UK directory accordingly. However, I am of the opinion like you guys that if that is all we do, the engines still would not know what country we are in.

I guess I am still a little befuddled. Any idea what web hosting in the UK runs...in dollars?

[badz]

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

Will convert money for you.

Also the last thing I am going to post on this thread is this:

I suggested subdomain on uk ip - this works.
.co.uk domain name hosted anywhere- this works
.com domain name hosted in uk - this works.

Whatever one of the three you choose from above will work. google for more information and find what best suits you.

I notice a lot of companys in the states using ip geo location well. What they do is register a .com and host it in canada.

This allows then to rank in google.ca(local results) and google.com.

Hosted simply in the states would restrict them to google.com

To find out the location of a website based on ip geo then all you have do is this:

I am not a windows user but I am guessing you are.

From my knowlege this is how to do:

click start
click run
type cmd - press enter
type host domain.com - at black screen press enter
** this will return an ip address
type whois ip (replacing ip with the ip address returned)



Good luck :)

[kservik]

.co.uk domain name hosted anywhere- this works


I disagree.

(-:
Kim

[badz]

trust you :)

i am to lazy to go find a .co.uk in local results hosted on the moon.

i can assure you this is fact not fiction.

[CaseyC]

Regardless of whether we do a subdomain or a new .co.uk domain, will we also have to develop a new site? As I mentioned, our .com site ranks pretty well for the keywords we target, but for a new domain would we have to re-develop this or could we do some sort of a re-direct?

[badz]

There is things you can do redirects etc but there not worth it for long term. I tend to keep it clean neat and tidy.

What you can do is contact all the people who currently link to your other domain and explain that you now have a new domain and exchange links.

[ronsard]

badz is correct.

subdomain on uk ip - this works.
.co.uk domain name hosted anywhere- this works
.com domain name hosted in uk - this works.

kim is wrong.

getting the new domain started will be the sandbox and the whole deal. you might want to continue to run some of the UK stuff on .com and some of it (note not the same) on your .co.uk new domain as otherwise you won't rank on that material at all.

give the new domain a year to gather momentum of its own. or the easy solution is to just host the whole thing in the UK, if the UK will be an important market for you.

[kservik]

Well, you are both wrong. Google doesnt look at domain names to tell where it is relevant, they look at IP.

You can easily get visible in UK with a co.uk adress in the UK as part of the global index.

That is different than country specific GEO targetting for a country.

[ronsard]

All of the above variants work.

Google accepts country domain as evidence of being in-country regardless of actual location of hosting.

If you are hosted within a country with a top-level domain, your home market will automatically be considered the country of hosting.

If you disagree Kim, please provide exact site details.

I do a lot of work with Canadian clients with top-level domain names. We had to move the sites to Canada to be included within the Canadian index.

Here is an example site: Toronto Mortgages (http://calumross.com) . Do a search within Google Canada's results (http://www.google.ca/search?num=100&hs=zqp&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=toronto+mortgages&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryCA).

What do you see?

This is a .com hosted in Canada.

When it was hosted outside Canada it didn't show up in the Canadian SERPs.

Lots more examples where this one came from...

[ronsard]

Kim,

I just noticed you were the one who started this thread with your question. Badz takes the time to reply to you, I take the time to reply to you and now you tell us peremptorily we are wrong.

Really why did you bother asking if you don't want the information or already have the information?

I'm out of here.

[CaseyC]

I thinkwe are going to set up a subdomain and host that with a UK service. No point in paying for a new domain if we dont have to. This new site will be similar our current .com in design, but feature more information and grammar that might be appropriate and relevant for the UK market. I understand that since it will be considered a new site, it could take some time before we start showing up prominently in the search engines, so we are looking into trying country specific Google ads to get us by and see if we appeal to this market.

Does this sound like a sound strategy?

[ronsard]

The subdomain may not be considered a new domain (or at least not completely new). You might want to query others on that (I don't use them much for SEO parts of my sites).

It sounds like a very good strategy to get the most effect for the least trouble.

Good luck.