Very different serp rankings for different countries
-
Hi!
A client of mine has a global presence and we are therefore tracking serp rankings for multiple Google domains; google.com, google.ie, google.co.uk for example.
One page is ranking quite well in Google.ie (position 11 right now) while at the same time ranking extremely bad in both Google.com and Google.co.uk (position 100+). How can that be??
I did do some optimization (for example Title and Desc) before the rankings in .com and .co.uk went really bad (they were higher before (pos 30-40)). But it is the same page Google indexes...but the results are very different. How can this be? What can be done?
Thanks!
Jesper -
Hello!
There are three parts to this answer.
Firstly, your technical setup.
Are you confident that the website's SEO and technical configuration is appropriate and correct? For example, are you using hreflang tagging to map out the relationships between your pages, languages and territories - and if so, is it implemented completely and correctly (and, in conjunction with correct canonical tag behaviours), etc?
Are you also using Google Search Console to manage your international targeting?
Secondly, the markets themselves.
As Igor hints at, it's important to understand that these territories, markets and search results are all very different.
Your competitors are likely to vary by market, in terms of their physical presence, their marketing efforts and effectiveness, and their own international SEO + targeting strategies.
More significantly, the users and markets themselves are different - user behaviour, preference, market demands, price sensitivity, and a myriad of other factors can affect how well a brand performs in one locale vs another.
I'd spend some time looking at who's beating you, and to try to understand (from the perspective of a prospective consumer from the market in question) what might be better about their proposition, pricing or other factors.
Thirdly, your linking and promotion strategies.
Is your website naturally acquiring links, citation and social coverage in each of the territories you're competing in? And, what tactics and strategies are you using to grow their authority and footprint? The way in which Google might assess links and these kinds of signals is likely to vary by country, in comparison to what your competitors are doing, and in relation to how narrow or broad your international coverage is.
I'd spend some time assessing - again, from the perspective of a prospective consumer for the regions in question - how well-represented and cited your brand is from reputable sources in those territories.
Sorry that there isn't a simple, easy answer - but there are plenty of places to explore, and I'd be happy to help you probe further!
-
Without knowing details, I assume that competition in UK and US is higher than it is in Ireland. And you may have changed your titles to target keywords which are even more competitive than the ones you used before.
Check the top of the SERP for your keywords in each region and make sure to check the number of backlinks on pages in these SERPs.
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
-
So weird sudden drop in rankings
Hi All, ok so at the beginning of July we launched our new website, SEVEN weeks later we have dropped completly off all rankings what-so-ever, (except brand) but weirdly if i pan between browsers we dont use (for saved searches/cookies etc) sometimes the rankings show up where they used to be. Whats strange is we get crawled daily but it took seven weeks for our rankings to drop, ive done all testing i can - no manual actions, no updates when we dropped (15th Aug) no real differences in webmaster tools, no crawl errors, no massive rise in 404s, 500s etc etc, im really a bit stumped! Any help would be mucho appreciated in diagnosing this stumper!
Technical SEO | | Kennelstore0 -
SERP - Sitelinks but not sitelinks and not clickable
We have a rather large site. On SERP, a page is seeing snippet with top navigation links captured. But they are not active links on SERP although on the live site they are. And there are 6 sitelinks showing up as well. Has anyone experienced this before? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | b.digi0 -
Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS
I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive. It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile. Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product. My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content? Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
Bug in Competitor Rankings Report?
I am looking at the report called: Rankings Report for [Competitor XXX] For all keywords in the report, the rankings on the main page say "Not in Top 50"... however when I drill down I can see that this is not true... there is a graph with valid rankings which were gathered as recently as March 20, 2013 (2 days ago) is this a known bug? Regards Jim Donovan
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Multiple (different) domains and canonicalisation
Hello, We've had experience with canonical tags for various domains before, such as tidying up product categories etc... However, can anyone point me to any guidelines about different domains using canonicalisation. For example: If I had the following sites, all with identical content - exampledomain.com completelydifferentdomain.net anothertotallydifferentdomain.com With canonical tags pointing to the first one (exampledomain.com), could this be harmful? Is it better to 301 redirect the other sites? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sarbs0 -
Domain authority and rankings?
I have a site that sits in #1 position for its keywords right now. But it only got there about 1mth ago. The site is only about 6mths old with lots of link building. I check the domain authority and its only 37/100 with the #2, #3 sites having domain authority of 57 and 82 respectively. This site has like 800+ backlinks. While the #2 and #3 sites have 20,000+ backlinks. Does it mean that my site will LIKELY drop in rankings very soon? I know there is no certainty but wld you say that it is highly probable my site will drop?
Technical SEO | | jl2550 -
Lost page rank, am I in the sandbox?
Hi, Our page rank was 5 for the last 3 months. Before it was 4 for a long time. Today our page rank dropped to 0 and I have no idea why.. We didn't buy any links or did anything wrong.. I also checked every keyword rankings we are on but we didn't loose our spot in any keyword.. Is it a short term thing, or am I in the sandbox? How can I fix this problem or avoid from a worse situation..? www.gourmetmarketing.net We just changed the site template few times in last two months.. Thanks
Technical SEO | | onurkiyak0 -
Why sudden change in rankings?
I have been working on a domain for site which has only been up for a few months. I have mainly been working on building trust and authority for the site, with only a few links to my keyword phrases, which I was saving for the end, and concentrating on good quality non-spammy type links. It was progressing nicely until last weekend when I went from the first page on Google to the 3rd and 4th pages. Was there some kind of update?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0