Hi everyone, I have a .com domainname and in the Webmasters Tools I can select my geographic target. What is exactly the use of this? I have now set 'Do not associate a geographic location with this site' The site is a Bahrain Property website, if I would set Bahrain for my website, what will the effect be? Thanks!
By selecting geographic targets your site rankings for your targeted keywords prioritized on the selected location. Geographic targets is only applicable to website that doesn't prioritized their rankings or targeted visitors from other country.
Ok thanks. So if I would set the geographic location for my website to Bahrain, would my rankings for other countries drop a lot? Most of my visitors are from Bahrain, but I don't want my rankings to drop big time in other countries (google.com, or google.co.uk) because I also get good and important traffic from them.
mmm... you will not dropped but other sites like .co.uk sites will get more priority in google.co.uk sites so your site will get be down in ranking. If you want to target whole world (even your 70% users are from your country) then dont target by country.
Be careful, you could hurt your site if you set your geographical location on a specific country and yet you don't provide location specific information. Google will think you are providing false information. In short, don't set US as your target if you'll be blogging about bolywood.
Thanks! I think I will leave it as it is, non country specific. Beter to try harder to get the ranking up to number 1, the ranking is already on position 6 or so.
Is there any "solid" info out there about setting geographic targets in Google. Seem that if you are specific about where you want to be seen, you stand to rank better for your target audience.