Geographical Targeting: Factors You Can’t Afford to Overlook

Have you ever wondered why an Australian website (yourdomain.com.au) physically hosted in Australia ranks higher when searched on Google.com.au than an evilcompetitor.com hosted in Europe? Or Does a country-specific domain name (TLD) (e.g., .co.uk) actually helps if someone is targeting a specific country market? These are some of the most common issues which many webmasters across the globe face when they are looking to rank a website at different country specific search engines (ie. Google.com/.co.uk/.com.au etc).

I recently wrote this guest post at seomoz.org, featuring the major issues that you must consider while Geographically Targeting a website for country specific search engines (without getting penalized for content duplication). You must read it, I know that it’s not all that comprehensive but I am quite sure that it will give you a good insight of ranking discrepancies in different geographies. Cheers !