In your google webmaster - manage domain. There is this field Geographic Location. My Site is based in Singapore, should I put Singapore? What are the benefits of putting geo location? What are the disadvantages of putting it? What is I just leave it empty any pros or cons? Please advise thanks.
Does your website target Singapore? If it does, it's definitely worth to specify Singapore as your preferred location in Webmaster tools. This will send Google a signal that your website is relevant for users who search from Singapore. Other signals that Google reportedly uses to decide if a site is relevant for a particular location is: - whether the site is hosted in the country the searcher is searching from - if the regional domain matches the searcher location (.es for Spain, for example) - if the name of the country/city is mentioned in the site's copy (for instance, "mortgage deals Singapore"), - and others. I personally use SEO PowerSuite's Rank Tracker to see if a site is well-optimized for the region I need, since this tool has search location settings that one can play with when checking website rankings.
thanks for the Kianu42, if this the case i might rank good for Singapore right? but if the search is coming from US searching a Singapore site for keywords "Free Classified Ads in Singapore" google might not put me in first page. is this correct?
You cannot conclude that! Google states that using geolocation, websites ranking may improve for that location and also states that setting a geographic target won't impact your appearance in search results unless a user limits the scope of the search to a certain country May be useful -http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399
I agree with Kianu42, There is nothing official from Google to suggest that it will or wont effect other location searches BUT in Singapore it will help your website to have a stronger presence. If your business is targeted in Singapore, I would advise having the GEO targeting on. Also if your domain name a .com.sg, this will have more authority. If for example you are looking for from business abroad and the user is likely to type Singapore in the keyword because this is where they want a particular service or product from then this will also help to backup your website for the Singapore region. But for example you have a generic product or service that is for anyone in the world, then the geo targeting is not really so important as long as you have .com instead of com.sg (this is targeted to Singapore).
Yes,You want to focus on a target audience based in the United States, but you still want to receive traffic from other countries. In this case, you need to set United States as your geographic target by ‘ticking’ the check box and choosing ‘United States’ from the drop down menu. After that, you can focus on attracting backlinks from other geographic locations.But this is an exception and can only happen in certain cases where your business is targeting a global market, but most of your clients are from a particular country.
Yes, Geographic Location makes a positive effect on your keyword. And you can target people easily from Singapore.