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country specific niche question

spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
edited January 2013 in Need Help
Hi all :) My website is for a country-specific website but with a .com domain, i.e. the content is only useful for those in Britain for example... Am I going to harm my SEO efforts by targeting non-UK search engines in SER? Per LeeG's advice and others, I just wanted to check before blasting it to 20+ different Googles in all manner of languages and countries... If it won't harm me, will I still get a benefit?

Comments

  • LeeGLeeG Eating your first bourne

    Part of it can depend on your keywords your after.

    Some like the word "football" get used by almost every country

     

  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    The keywords are quite specific to my country too as they are brand/goods that only sell here I think. So they wouldnt likely get someone from other countries looking for them....
  • LeeGLeeG Eating your first bourne

    Run a few tests, choose half a dozen random engines and do a test search on them to see the results returned

    If you know a site that already ranks for a term after, see where they come on the results as well.

    That way you can be sure

  • ronron SERLists.com

    @spunko2010 - If you want to improve your chances of ranking well for a specific country, you should: 1) Get a domain in that country's extension, like xxxxx.co.uk; 2) You should have the website hosting in that country. It really works and it really does help.

    Having said that, when I try ranking, it is pretty much inevitable that I will rank nicely in the other english speaking countries. It's just a by-product of creating links on domains in english speaking countries.

    So to answer your question, no, you will not hurt yourself. If anything, it helps to have an authority presence in other search engines in other countries. It helps to cement in the authority website concept when multiple search engines have you ranking - even if they all belong to google.

  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    edited January 2013
    I've got a .com domain for a country-specific market so I've set that up in Google Webmaster Tools to focus on that country. Now I'm just waiting for Google to update to see if it makes any difference.

    The country-level TLDs are all taken by domain squatters, I had to buy the .com from an aftermarket place

    Do you know if Google would value a country TLD over this country setting? I can switch domains at this early stage if necessary
  • ronron SERLists.com
    I pm'd you.
  • DunceDunce
    edited February 2013
    Haven't try that myself, so just answer it theoretically.
    1. Only select British search engines such as google GB under "How to target urls"
    2. Choose "Skip sites with the following word in URL/Domain" and add "!co.uk" in it without "", it is metioned in SER manual.
    Notice it will decrease your target sites list, maybe import list yourself could help.
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