This is probably a really stupid question but anyway. I have some .in domains that I am thinking of developing. And I want the results to show up locally to people searching on google.in, I dont really care about position on google.com. Would I need hosting that is based in India to achieve this? When I search on google.in for pages located in India there are global sites eg .com .biz so I assume the reason it knows they are Indian is that they are hosted there. How would a .in domain hosted elsewhere be handled? I realise this could have gone in a hosting forum but I considered experts on seo would be better informed on the matter. Thanks.
It's a factor - but a small one. The biggest help in geo-targeting is simply telling google what country you are targeting by registering with Google WebMaster Tools. Other than that, having a country specific tld is a big help, and getting backlinks from sites with country specific tlds.
You hit the nail on the head with that. I am currently geo targeting visitors from one country for a website that I am developing, and the end goal is to get the thing indexed to start, and make sure that when you list your site in webmaster tools, be sure to choose to target visitors in India (in your example). From my understanding, I cant see it mattering too much where you are hosted, just so long as you have relevant backlinks with the right anchor text and so on. I would recommend targeting forums in india that relate to the same product, and as a side bonus to try and get some people in regularly, start using Google Buzz, as those people who use that and follow you will in turn see your websites and pages that you share using Buzz coming through in their social search results as a preference. Good luck!
Thanks alot for your replies. Very much appreciate it. I have another question, I'll ask it in here rather than spam the forum. If I have a selection of domain names that are about the same subject and I basically want to use them all for the same website, to help improve different keyword focus, should I have them all pointing to a main site or a copy of my site hosted seperately for each of them. EG. mydomain1.in mydomain2.in all pointing to mymaindomain.in, or a copy of the site on each mydomain1.in etc. This might be a stupid question but I'm new to seo and I'm trying to learn as much as I can before I get started. Thanks again
I think there is no need for .in site to register only for geo-targetting, because the .in is already use for India and google understand it. It is clearly mentioned in webmaster.