Let's talk about Geographic targeting you website for a specific google engine

I'm a little shocked to what I just came across. Here's a short run down on a site I have.

I own this site that gets about 60,000UV per month. Mostly US and Canada traffic.
The main keyword I've been fighting for gets 5,000,000 global searches says adwords keyword tool.
I've got a about 12 other keywords that I'm dominating on the top 5 for, but the 5Million global search keyword is my main ticket.
I'm ranked currently in 6th for it and get around 7,000UV per month from it.

I've taken a break from seo for a bit and have been messing around with other ways to increase my traffic and the sites' value. I was talking to my friend in UK and asked him to check what serp I was for that main keyword with the google uk search. He said I'm on page 7.
WHAT THE HECK? I'm 6th in us and ca but 77th on uk.
I looked in google webmaster tools and found that in the settings my site was listed to target "Us".

I've just turned it off 10 minutes ago.

Now to my ultimate question to everyone.

Who thinks this is greatly effect my traffic. Am I going to launch in better keywords globally and double or even triple my traffic?

 

Hmm and finally what i understand is you've configured the target audience to US in webmaster tools. Not a problem now that you've said you've turned it off (so you're not targeting any specific region or country). So, just insert a meta tag on all of your website pages (i.e. content distribution = global).

It may help you!

 

Google is becoming more dynamic in showing results and it become more personalized, especially in geographic location where filtering which sites should are appropriate on that particular place. Very logical for Google not to show sites they think would not interest people on the other side of the world and spare the positions to locally available sites.

 

The OP is talking about Google searches, and as Google ignores the "distribution" content tag there is no point in using it. Here is a short list of the only tags Google understands:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

 

I agree with the comment from WishBone, Google is going to return results that are relevant to the locality of the searcher, I don't think you can expect a leap in your traffic.

 

Why you ask people to check your website in other countries? Google created page for every country and all you need to do is use their extension - .co.uk
For your question, you just turned it off, so it won't be ignoring your backlinks and you'll move forward. Try building some backlink on .co.uk websites and you'll get better ranking in UK.

 

Oh right. I forgot about that. I already have that meta for global. Its been like that for 5yrs now. does that mean that the google webmaster tools function is not really going to make a good effect?

 

Please read my earlier posting - Google does not take any notice of the meta global tag. But it does take notice of the geo targeting you set in Webmaster Tools.
It stands to reason doesn't it, that Google is going to look at something that is set by its own tools rather than something (a meta tag) you use that it tells you it will ignore?

 

It won't make a big difference because you first preferred to go with US only and now if you want your site to rank high as well for UK. It is possible by promoting your site over UK channels locally and to use directories from UK.

 

See, geotargeting helps you when you set a geographic location. Otherwise, you have to beat the competition at global level in order to get good ranking in SERP results.

 

Wow, as you can tell, I can be a little confused.
In your last post you say you agree with what this guy said:

So basically what you two are saying is that when you set in google webmaster tools to direct only "Enter Country" then google will consider that but still will rank you local anyway. Also you say that the Meta tag <distribution=global> doesn't really work anymore.

Ok, so I get that but the thing is a lot of Niches are a global topic. Ummm....Here's an example "Toilet seats"lol. Everyone has them but for some reason I'm ranking really high in CA and US but not other countries that are english like the UK. Ironically I accidentally set in Gwebtools to target "US".
While you say that google will still rank you in any country just as it feels it should be ranked regardless what you target, the fact that google has chosen that a site about toilet seats is only for the us and canada makes little to no sense at all.
Exspecially considering I have more backlinks you can shake a stick at from several countries all over the world anyway. Technically since I have a global information site it should rank close or even in ALL english territories, but it doesn't....
You say its not from the gwebtools setting mistake I made. I know its not from the backlinks.

So where the heck is it from? lol

 

Well it depends on the competition in each country. In one there could be ten good sites all trying to sell the same product, in another
there might only be one.
The point is that Google is trying to return results that it believes are most relevant to the browser, and as this process becomes more
personalized then so will individual search results vary more.
Even if you do get high SERP in a country it doesn't necessarilymean it will bring you any traffic. For example my site is at No1 on Google
Mexico for my main keyword, but no real surprise there because no-one in Mexico is trying to sell real estate in this part of Turkey!
Equally it is extremely unlikely that anyone using Google Mexico will ever search for it, especially as it is in English and not Spanish,
so my rank means nothing really.
But if there is a location where you feel or know that there is business you are missing out on, one thing you could consider is having
a page for another country within your website (or a number of pages for more countries), that you could tailor for that country and
build local links to. Obviously you would have to be careful to avoid duplicated content. You can then set an individual geo target for
that page. You may even have an existing page that you could target in this way.

 

Right, but I'm not talking about a niche specific to an area unlike real estate.

I'm talking about a worldwide niche such as for example "Babies".
If you rank good in US for Babies then you should rank good in UK for babies too.

 

You are looking at this from the point of view of someone who wants their website to rank the same in every country.
But Google isn't out to please you, they are out to please the browser, and their aim is to provide them with results that are relevant to them,
so that the reults you are seeing for your site are not accidental or an error, it is deliberate.
To use "Babies" as the example, the top UK search position goes to babies.co.uk, and in the US it is focusfeatures.com
The point here is that would you, if you were in the US, be interested in a store selling baby goods in the UK? It is unlikely,
and if you were interested you would more likely search for something more exact than just "babies" anyway and would specify the UK.
So if we expand that a little to "baby clothes" which is more descriptive but still not country specific, the top UK position
goes to a UK store, in the US it is a US store.


Using your earlier example of toilet seats, you could ask why would someone in the UK want to look at US sites for a product that is readily available
in a huge variety in the UK? If they did want to, they aren't prevented from it, they can switch from Google.co.uk to Google.com
or change their search e.g. toilet seats USA.


That's how it is and like or not it is what we have to deal with.

 

Ugh, your killing me.

You've changed my example to a country targeted niche. Because "Stuff about babies" didn't really work since its good for pretty much all countries you changed it to SELLING so that you can explain the basics of how google targets a niche to a country.

The only valid thing you said there is the co.uk but they are not ALL the same extensions for each country. There is niches that cannot be more or less qualified to rank in certain countries. My niche is exactly that. Actually its so much that, that within the site it talks about specific locations and things going on in there from Canada to Japan. There will be a full part of the site all about something within UK and other countries.

 

Hi Lacey,

Your server location must be close to those 3 countries. I think you should move your site to the east coast, New York or near places should resolve your problem. You will get better rankings in the UK and Europe while keeping the existing rankings in the US and Canada.

 

I'm hosted with gator. Who knows where their servers are? Chicago?

 

they are in dallas as far as i know and a server in dallas should not affect the rankings in the UK negatively. so the server location is not an answer for your problem. there should be a different reason. at least you have eliminated one possibility.

 

Sorry - only trying to help
The very first example I gave was just for "babies", i.e. a UK search had a UK site at No1 and a US search had a US site. The UK site
was for a store, but the US one was about a movie called Babies.
I din't pick the second example because it was about selling, but simply because baby clothes was the first thing I thought of.

I don't really understand what you mean there.

But with respect that is how you want it to be, but Google apparently disagrees.

That's ok then, because you can geo target those individual pages to the countries concerned, it isn't something you can only do for
the entire site.

 

lol, I'm not stressed about the topic. I just repeated myself a few times.

The only valid thing you said there is the co.uk but they are not ALL the same extensions for each
country.
It means that co.uk are going to rank better in uk, but when you search on uk they are not all co.uk which means that normal .coms can rank as well.