How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country
-
How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)?
I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it.
Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.
-
Hi Miriam.
I agree with your gut feeling. What is wrong is wrong and one should not play games falsify facts and present them as true.... not at least with Google. They are smarter than everybody of us out here.
I'll stick with the following tactic:
-
Find a person or a partner in these countries who is ready to genuinely partner with me... or at least is willing to take calls, talk to leads and direct them to me. A local listing will be created for this/these guy/guys when we have genuine NAPs.
-
Focus on organically promoting my website for these locations without local listings.
Thanks for your help everybody.
KS__
-
-
Hi KS!
Unfortunately, that's not really a practice I would recommend to my clients at this point. There's been some indication in recent times that while Google is completely fine with a single-location home-based business, it's very easy for them these days to see that a string of houses is being used to indicate locations in more than one place. It's my gut feeling that they don't approve of this practice and that they would take action against Google+ Local listings created in this scenario. But, in any case, your lack of in-person contact with customers means that the business does not qualify for Google+ Local listings or local pack rankings, regardless of whether you have legitimate business offices or are using the addresses of your friends. So, this may be kind of a moot point. Virtual businesses need to compete organically and utilize PPC, social media, video marketing, etc. to earn visibility - but Local SEO is not the right marketing discipline for them.
Hope this helps!
-
Will it be fine if I add my friends' residential addresses in multiple cities across Country A in Google Places and buy toll free numbers for each of these addresses/cities? So all locations will have different NAP.
-
Hi KS!
Thanks for the clarification on this. So, if you are not making in-person contact with your customers, whether here or abroad, then this means that the business is not a 'local' business in the eyes of Google. Face-to-face transactions are the prerequisite of this particular type of marketing. So, as you would not be able to go the local business route of building a Google+ Local page for each location in hopes of ranking in Google's local packs of results, then your two options would be:
-
Building organic content on the website that showcases your virtual services in each of your target cities and countries.
-
Participating in PPC that enables you to pay for placement in your target cities and countries.
I'm afraid international SEO is not my area - the links Patrick has shared will be your best bet for learning about this marketing discipline. Wishing you best of luck!
-
-
Thanks Miriam.
Here are my answers:
- Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
Other countries, not counties.
- Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
No personal contact. I have international numbers listed on the website, so they just give me a call (I use VOIP and Magic Jack) or fill up the form. The conversation begins there.
Hope that answers you.
-
Thanks for all the help John.
-
Awesome links Patrick. Thanks.
-
Hi KS -
Got your note on my older post and so am popping by here. I have some questions.
-
Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
-
Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
-
-
Hi there
If you are trying to rank a certain location or country, you can look into hreflang attributes and language tags for your site.
You can also geo-target specific URL variations in Google Search Console. You can read more about International SEO here, as well as an International SEO Checklist.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better.
A website we instructed down this path is www.cottonon.com - It is more complicated - but that is a retailer that rolls out new shops in each country. Hence Australia is www.cottonon.com/au etc. Go to their website and from a practical perspective watch it operation, this may help in clearing it all up for you. Note the power CO is in the store finder - where you get to use google maps...
-
Ok. www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better or www.chicago.mywebsite.com? The only negative with the latter is that all pages (FAQ, How it works etc.) within the sub-domain website will have to be re-done with fresh new content while in the first option there's only one page for the location while other pages like FAQ etc stay the same for the root website as well location specific pages.
What say?
-
Yes, in a nutshell. That is one way - but Google maps for each location would save you alot of work.
The key ingredient missing on the above is on the pages you make - ensure your meta title reads "Flowers | New York | Mywebsite".
Then your H1 is also location keyword rich. Then find links preferable local. Maybe some local directories etc. I would also be trying to make a cracking page - with great user friendly content. Whatever you do do not duplicate content swapping location names - that is an easy way to "never be found on google"...
So it is hard work... for each location.
-
So if I want the website to rate well in Chicago, California and New York, the pages that I should create will be www.mywebsite.com/chicago, www.mywebsite.com/california and www.mywebsite.com/new-york. Is that right?
And when I'm done with that, I have to build location specific links like ' <keyword>in Chicago', ' <keyword>California' etc.?</keyword></keyword>
-
It can be complicated - and without alot more information & countries etc.all answers could be wrong. There are several paths depending on the answers. So everything I suggest is dependent on unknown factors.
Because of the weighting to google maps it is difficult if you do not have an address in each country. I would strongly urge you to change you outlook on this position. Then you could consider subdomains. If you only want to use one domain (which is what I recommend) and no subdomains - you could make a page for each country you are targeting. Have you considered that? Then you have to action each country page uniquely and obtain links and build DA to same. On the link building it should be page specific ie if targeting chicago get chicago based/centric links to that page.
I hope that gives you something to think about.
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
-
Site migration/ CMS/domain site structure change-no access to search console
Hi everyone, We are migrating an old site under a bigger umbrella (our main domain). As mentioned in the title, We'll perform CMS migration, domain change, and site structure change. Now, the major problem is that we can't get into google search console for the old site. The site still has old GA code, so google search console verification using this method is not possible, also there is no way developers will be able to add GTM or edit DNS setting (not to bother you with the reason why). Now, my dilemma is : 1. Do we need access to old search console to notify Google about the domain name change or this could be done from our main site (old site will become a part of) search console 2. We are setting up 301 redirects from old to the new domain (not perfect 1:1 redirect ). Once migration is done does anything else needs to be done with the old domain (it will become obsolete)? 3.The main site, Site-map... Should I create a new sitemap with newly added pages or update the current one. 4. if you have anything else please add:) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Why is this competitor ranking so high?
I have a competitor who consistently rans #1 or close in SERPS for keyword phrase "uncontested divorce lawyerser. in analyzing his site he doesn't seem to have anywhere near the links, domain authority or page authority that would justify this preeminence Is this a black hat situation or what? His site is www.uncontesteddivorceny.comhx thx Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diogenes0 -
Checking keyword rankings
I have 2 questions: 1. To check keyword rankings with firefox, i am choosing: Tools>Options>Privacy>"clear all current history" Timerange to clear: Everything Check Boxes: Browsing and download history, form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins Is there anything else I need to be doing? 2. Search results in my Niche are heavily localized. Is there any way to check rankings in another area? Ex: By default, our rankings are for Northeast NJ. Is there any way to check Baltimore, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Visited stats affecting rankings?
If visitor stats affect rankings should we be worried as we are making our website probably the most user friendly useful site in our field but this includes cutting down the time it takes for a user to order and our pages are also one page so all the information is there and easy to use the problem is this results in 1 page visits and probably one of the lowest visit times of our industry. Say for example a user sees all of the information and and gets a quote another website has 5 pages the users spends more time and visits more pages to find how to order but they eventually leave after they have give up would this site win via Google user stats?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Authorship/Ranking when 2 separate authors
Hello, We've got a pdf with, on the front page "by author 1 and author 2" Author one published the PDF and sits at rank 3 Author 2 is us (on a completely different website than author 1) How can we rank highest, and can we use google authorship? Can we get our picture next to the article? Let me know if we need to convert to html for (1) and/or (2)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
How to rank for difficult terms
I am helping launch a new business venture that sells oak furniture in the UK. The key product terms are along the lines of; oak bed
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pretige12
oak dining table
oak chairs etc which are very popular search terms. Im used to being able to hang of local or branded search which arent available in this project. The domain is around 12 months old, it has few inbound links which we are working on now with an overseas freelancer (keeping an eye on them). The pages of the site are unique-content rich and the titles and other meta boxes are ticked. What else would the experts recommend?0 -
Google Places - How do we rank
So, google places showing up on search results is great feature . . . But how can we get our results to the top? I mean I can see some terrible websites appearing at the top of the google places with their places page having no activity whatsoever. Is there a trick to this at all? What can we do to increase our ranking on Google Places because our old GOOD rankings are now appearing BELOW the map results Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayweb0