One of things any webmaster should do when putting together a website or updating an existing one is think about how well optimised the site is for the location(s) the site is trying to target.
This article will explain the key identifiers the search engines look for when determining which search locations your site and content is relevant to (i.e., Google.es, Google.it, Google.com etc). This area has become even more important lately with the introduction of more local search results (also referred to as the Google 7 pack).
How does Google determine your websites location?
Google will look at 6 key areas when determining your websites location and deciding upon its relevance to different locations:
- The domain extension (i.e., .co.uk, .es, .com, .com.sg and so forth)
- The location of your server
- The language of the content (i.e., English, Spanish, Chinese)
- The location and language of websites linking to your site
- The settings selected in webmaster tools
- The address and phone number details on your website
I want to discuss one myth before I delve into each of these factors!
Myth – Geo Location and Language META tag
The latest craze is to add a geo location META tag into the head of page content. This tag allows you to define the location of your website and the language. Here is an example:
<meta name =”country” content=”singapore”>
<html lang=”ru”>
Now I mean no offence to those of you who are using this tag and by all means if you can easily implement it then go ahead and trial it, but its a bit naive to believe that an algorithm as advanced as Google’s (apparently using over 200 factors to determine rank) would utilise a single META tag, introduced by the webmaster to determine the location and language of a website.
The research I have done suggests that whilst this tag has shown some success for small websites targeting very specific, local terms it is generally completely ignored by the search engines because it is seen as a tag that can be easily manipulated. Just like the META keyword tag is completely ignored.
In summary if this is a recommendation that is being pushed at you as “game changing” then you are being fooled. Google in particular isn’t dumb, they can determine your sites language without you having to add a tag to tell them!
The domain extension
In an ideal world if you are targeting a specific country, you should buy the local TLD. Research has shown that in a lot of cases local TLD sites have an easier job ranking on their local country search engine than generic .com domains. For example see the study by Distilled.
Where this becomes difficult is if you are an international organisation targeting multiple locales. Usually it is not possible to host separate sites on local TLDs. In instances like this you are usually better utilising subdomains on a .com root domain. for example uk.clickitseo.com, de.clickitseo.com and so forth.
The location of your server
I don’t believe this is as important as it was previously, but it does play a role. If you are targeting the UK, then I would always advise you to locate your server in the UK to provide the search engines with one more flag about the location your website is trying to target.
location of server does appear to be a very critical factor in the Baidu ranking factors. If you choose to locate your server outside of mainland China, you are likely to struggle for rank in Baidu.
The Language of your content
This is the numero uno factor in ensuring your site ranks and targets the appropriate country. If you are targeting Spain or Italy for example, then localise your content into the relevant language.
Let me give you an example below of the relative impact. The graphs below show the increase in organic traffic after both an Italian and Spanish site were localised into the native language. I am sure you’d agree the results are quite profound.
localising spanish content
localising Italian content
The location and language of websites linking to your site
The basic idea is that if you are targeting lets say Germany, you should collect back links from sites that are both located in and in German. If you can procure links from German based sites, with German anchor text then your chances of improving your rank in the German search results will be improved.
The settings selected in webmaster tools
Its questionable in my mind how much emphasis Google places on this selection. In my opinion it is to open to manipulation and similar to the country META tag won’t really provide you with any great improvement. I think Google looks at it, but the other factors provide a lot more weighting.
To get to this option you need to login to webmaster tools -> site configuration -> settings -> geographic target
Note, if you have a local TLD then this is usually pre-selected for you based on the TLD.
The address and phone number details on your website
This might seem obvious, but not every website makes these details easily accessible to the spiders. I always recommend putting these details within the site footer and utilising the hCard technique.
hCard basically means you define in the class what each piece of information in your address references. Here is an example from the source code on ClickITSEO, do you see how each line of information is referenced in the class?
<span class=”street-address“>11 FORSTER LOFTS, FORSTER MEWS</span>, <span class=”locality“>LEEDS</span>, <span class=”region“>West Yorkshire</span>,<span class=”postal-code“> LS12 4EP</span>, <span class=”country-name“>United Kingdom</span> |<span class=”tel“> TEL: 0113 279 6670</span></p>
This is also a great technique for those local business listings.
I hope this has proven useful as a quick fire guide to optimising a website to target a specific geographic location. Please do share your thoughts below.