Does Keyword and Location Matter?
-
Hi Everyone,
I'm always learning, but here's a question. I would like to know if keyword and location truly matter. For example, I've been trying to rank my website for a LONG time for a UK English term. My site is hosted in the US. My site has great content and internal and external links using the keyword. I cannot seem to climb the SERPs although my "American" keywords do fine and I see results.
If anyone wants to take a look, that would be great. My website is JourneyBeyondTravel.com and I wish to rank for "Morocco Holidays" (I am at about #20 currently). I am also having trouble with "Morocco travel" although I have continuously ranked well for "Morocco tours" and "trips."
Along this same line, I've been doing some quality guest posting and blogging. I've used longer phrase-type keywords (3-5 words) in the article text that have keyword terms in them. Should keywords be varied like this? How long until I see results? And, should I look for blogs in different countries to keep things balanced (such as blogging on .co.uk sites so that I can get link juice for UK keywords).
Thanks again!
Thomas
-
Superb! This really opens up a huge discussion and is very interesting. We are a small-medium sized company, so I don't think I will go with different domains, although I own them. I have redirected them for now.
I have gone into Google Webmasters and changed my preference from US to 'unlisted.' This might help and give it that international understanding. Not sure.
I may very well set up a UK homepage, an AU one, and perhaps South Africa or Canadian one. But, that will be in the future. I just don't want to lose the links I already have. It seems that getting links from these countries to your homepage would help saying to Google, "Hey, this is an international site in English and is appealing to all of these countries." It may not make me #1 in the SERPS, but it cannot hurt.
Thanks again!
Thomas
-
Thomas, I've been doing a little research trying to support my hypothesis that the location of your hosting company can effect your SERP results and I found this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
This is probably a great starting point.
-
Wow - thanks for the response : )
Actually, most of our customers are from the US and Canada. We are hosted in the US and one of our offices is based in the US. Our other office is based in Morocco. We have an apparent UK base since we have a UK phone number (as well as US and Toll Free). I would consider UK hosting for another site, like our site ending in co.uk but I am not sure that makes a difference.
I do think where you are located is probably a factor, but I just don't know how much. Competitors are based in the US and rank well for the term. Perhaps I have some links that are not liked?
Thanks!
Thomas
-
Hi Thomas,
I am always learning too and am very interested by your question. Are you based in the UK but hosted in the US? Or are you based and hosted in the US? The reason I ask, is that if you are based in the US, I presume that your target market is US. If you are based in the UK I presume your target market is UK-Europe. If the latter is true, have you considered changing to UK hosting? Although I don't know the whole story, it seems from looking at your site that you are indeed UK based.
I am thinking that you are having a bit of trouble ranking for a more British term because you are USA hosted. I do think the location of your host is a factor in ranking for certain terms. The problem is, I can't point to any proof to support that opinion. I am interested to hear what others have to say about this.
Thanks Thomas!
Dana
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Getting accurate Geo Location traffic stats in Google Analytics - HELP
One of our clients services the US and the UK, but having looked at the report over an extended period of time we can still see that the vast majority of traffic is coming from the US. I.e. our last report for March indicated that there were over 3,000 users in the US but only 6 in the UK. We know that Google Analytics works out a user’s location based on where their IP is located and not their physical location, and that this means that the data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it won’t always represent what you expect. That being said, we know that the traffic figures for Europe are largely inaccurate and would like to get some more accurate stats to report on. Is there a way to do so at all within Google Analytics?
International SEO | | Wagada1 -
Currency versus location
Hi Mozzers, I have a client that is rebuilding their eCommerce store. We are deliberating how to map the URL structure. My advice is and has always been to have language as the structure so the UK and US markets in English but separate pages with href=lang tags so the engines rank the correct page, the French page in French and tagged correct, German in German etc etc This way we have a clear page to optimise and build links into and the users select the currency ($ / £ / € or Ruble) They may want to have it by Currency, so rather than /UK or /US it would be /dollar, /sterling etc etc Have you any experience with both structures and what are the pros and cons as it seems clear to me language should be the way foreward They are using Magento 2 as well if that influences anything. Thanks Gareth This presents are tougher landscape to optimise for I feel and less clear for users
International SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
How is Google determining location for geotargeting
Hello, I have a question related to Geotargeting.
International SEO | | Lvet
Let's suppose I have a website: mysite.co.uk
As far as I understand Google will consider this site targeted for the UK and will appear on searches preferentially from the UK. What happen now if I have a person located in Spain (with a Spanish IP) and searching in Google.co.uk. Will mysite.co.uk still appear in searches? What are the factors that Google takes into account for Geotargeting? Thank you0 -
Legitimatly handeling simmilar keywords without appearing to be keyword stuffing.
I'm running a sports supplement store in Brazil. Brazil (Portuguese) has absorbed allot of English, even when a very similar word is already in Portuguese. When a person searches for a product on google, the chanches are about 60/25/15 in terms of if they will use English / Portuguese, or a mix. For example: Soy Protein / Proteina de Soja / Soy Proteina I'm setting up the categories / bread crumbs etc in the store. Ideally I'd like to cover all these cases, but I don't want to appear spammy. How would you go about this? I don't really want seperate pages for the different languages, as it's all only targeted towrds portuguese speakers. The english just happens to show up in a portuguese language search. The problem is exacorbated, becase about 30% of the products are imported from the U.S. and these products have more of a 60/40 percent ratio of English / Portuguese searches. Should I just stick to Portuguese, and trust in google to be aware that 'Proteina de Soja' and 'Soy Protein' have a high correlation? Thanks in advance, -Eric
International SEO | | ForForce1 -
Changing server location for a global targetted site
Hi, I am just in the process of purchasing a site from someone. The site has a global target audience (well global English speaking anyway). The site is on a .info domain and is currently hosted in Germany. Checking on SemRush it looks like 70% of traffic comes from English speaking countries (US, Australia, Canada, UK). Now I need to move the hosting to one of my own when I change ownership of the site. Now does it overly matter where I choose my hosting as currently it is hosted in Germany (around 4% of visitors from Germany) but I want to do my best not to knock any rankings but I was thinking of moving it to a UK or US based host but still want to keep a general worldwide userbase. As the US accounts for the largest part of traffic (39%) would I be best choosing hosting based over in the US or does it not overly matter too much (I am in the UK so most hosting I use is UK based). I have read a number of posts on server location but most seem to be for site which have a country specific target audience. Thanks for your help! 🙂
International SEO | | Wardy0 -
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO?
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO? For example, if my hosting company is in the U.S., but the domain registrar is overseas. Also, is it better to have both services be met by one company?
International SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Keyword Difficulty on Local Searches
I have got a site targeted for a New Zealand audience. The site is about property in Australia. The SERP for the keyword "real estate australia" is dominated by .com.au domains which are obviously set for Australia. Does google give .co.nz domains priority in the SERPs for New Zealand or are .com.au and .co.nz domains treated evenly for New Zealand based searches? http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=real+estate+australia&pws=0&gl=NZ Would a .co.nz domain have higher priority in this SERP?
International SEO | | OnPage10 -
Does it matter whether you use /en vs /uk
I have a global site targeting many countries including the UK which is the only English language site. Does it matter whether I use /en or /uk for the UK sub-folder? If I already have /en in place, but my Google UK listings are struggling, will it benefit me to switch to /uk? I honestly don't think it matters too much, but given the choice would've gone for the /uk I'm trying to weigh up whether it is worth the effort of changing it.
International SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0