Targeting Asia Pacific region with .com.au
-
Hi folks
What are your thoughts on targeting Singapore and Hong Kong ( and Australia ) with a .com.au domain with subfolder example.com.au/singapore and example.com.au/hong-kong with relevant hreflang tags. Has anyone does this successfully or come across any case studies for this?
The content will be in English on all those pages but they will have local numbers and office in each location. The team and content will also be different on those pages.
If I could I would use .com BUT that is NOT an option in this particular case.
-
Hi Aleyda
thanks for confirming that I look fwd to meeting you in person at BigDigital Adelaide
-
Hi there Saijo,
The .com.au ccTLD is by default already geolocated to Australia so unfortunately it's not recommended to be used to target other countries. Please see Google's ccTLDs treatment here where it says: "These are tied to a specific country (for example .de for Germany, .cn for China), and therefore are a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country.".
So if you want to use only one property to target many countries then you should use a gTLD with subdirectories for each country and geolocate them with the Google Search Console. You can also use hreflang annotations to avoid international search misalignments issues too but this can't "override" the ccTLD geolocation preference (in fact, if you go to Google Search Console with a ccTLD you'll see is already targeted to its specific country and cannot be changed).
The other option is to set specific ccTLDs for each country, but not using one ccTLD to target other or many countries for which is not targeted by default as you suggest. Sorry it doesn't work that way!
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
-
Novice SEO Question - UK & COM Results
Would someone please explain to me why when doing this search https://www.google.co.uk/search?pws=0&q=online+texas+hold+em there are uk and com pages ranking in the results for pokerstars & how do I fix it? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | charliegirlcontent1 -
Are local business directories worth the effort? Eg. White pages, Yell.com, Local.com?
Hi Guys, Im new to Moz and very keen to do SEO right without upsetting Mr. Google too much. Are local business directories worth the effort? Its a laborious job, but happy to do it, if its effective and won't be considered spammy by Google? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Fetseun0 -
Areaserved json-ld schema markup for a local business that targets national tourism
If there is a local business that thrives on ranking nationally for people searching for their services in that location, do you target the business's actual service areas or target nationally? For instance, a hotel in Denver, Colorado. Would the areaserved markup be: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"}] Or "areaserved":"USA" The "geographic area where a service or offered item is provided" would be denver, colorado. But we would be looking to target all people nationally looking to travel to denver, colorado. Or would it be best to target it all, like: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"},"USA"]
Local Website Optimization | | SEOdub0 -
Australian local business website on a dot.com - how do I ensure its indexed/ranked by Google.com/au as priority
look forward to your advice My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US. We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting. I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content. How can I tell google its a site for people in australia? I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url? Thanks for your recommendations
Local Website Optimization | | bisibee10 -
How to handle clients who want to target far away from their location?
In general, How do you recommend handling clients that are persistent about targeting a location that is very far away from their physical location, i.e. the client is in Providence, RI, but wants to target Boston, MA. I typically give them a discussion about how they will not rank in the 7 packs, particularly post pigeon, but wanted to know if the Moz community had any other tips since this seems to come up so frequently. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive1 -
Do you need exact match geographically targeted keywords for ranking within a specified city limit?
For example, I have a personal injury law firm in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I only care about potential clients searching within the city limits of Sheboygan (and not within the state of Wisconsin or on a national level). Do the following elements need to contain an exact match geographically targeted keyword if I only care about ranking locally in Sheboygan, Wisconcsin? (The type of keyword phrase I'm referring to would be Sheboygan Personal Injury Lawyers, Sheboygan Car Accident Lawyers, etc.) Title Tag Meta Description Main Headline Body Content Should I not include an exact match geographically targeted keyword in my content and trust that Google can make the association with where I'm located by other factors on the website? Website factors: Google local business page is setup linking to my website Other local listings have been claimed and setup properly My contact page contains our full address and phone number My footer contains our full address and phone number on every page
Local Website Optimization | | peteboyd0 -
International site, be visible on both .com and .co.uk?
Do you guys have any tips to increase the visibility in both Google.com and Google.co.uk? The site today, have good visibility in USA, but its poor in the UK... Information: The server is based in US. No region is set in the Google Webmaster Tools. Incoming links are from global regions, mostly US. Do we need to add a specific section for the UK (uk.site.com or site.com/uk/) and specify region in GWT to make sure Google handle this the right way? Its a lot of work, rewrite all the content for another section, which also is in english...
Local Website Optimization | | Vivamedia0 -
How can I do a Geo-targeted SEO for a lawncare services client?
Hi All! I am managing an SEO project for a new client, http://1800lawncaredallas.com and the optimization is yet to begin. It is a brand new website. The client serves only in particular locations in Texas. How can I optimize the site for these cities without making it look spammy or over-optimized? Is there a checklist that I can follow to optimize these pages? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | wealthyminds
Rk0