If you are a multinational corporation that is trying to attract customers in different countries, you cannot market your products in the same way in each country. A separate marketing and promotional plan needs to be created for each country with a message that is localized and unique. The same is applicable when you are marketing your products online. Even the search engine optimization process of your websites need to be performed differently for each of the countries.
A wide number of factors come into play when trying to rank your website in different countries. While some of those factors are more important than the other ones, it is important to develop a SEO plan that is both comprehensive and international in scale.
Google Has Different Versions
Google tends to target the location of the user and display the search results in the appropriate manner. This is performed via two different methods.
First and foremost, there are specific versions of Google for each country. For example, the domain Google.co.uk is meant to be used by the residents of the United Kingdom while Google.de is meant for Germany. These specific domains can show search results which will be of use to the people living in that particular country.
Secondly the domain, Google.com, itself has different versions. In short there are two versions of the domain. The users in the United States will view their version of Google.com while those living in other countries will have a different version of Google.com. If people living in a different country perform a search using Google.com, they will not get results from the United States. Instead, they will be getting what is a mixture of different international results which are filtered down to their location.
Factors That Influence the Ranking in Different Countries
If you are trying to get better rankings in different countries, you will need to take care of the rankings in different search engine result pages or SERPs. You will of course have to rank your website in the country specific versions of the search engine. At the same time, you will need to rank in the SERPs of the Google.com domain.
- Top Level Domains
The Top Level Domain is one of the first things that Google checks while it determines the relevance of a website in a particular geographic location is the Top Level Domain or TLD. In simple terms, it is the extension present after the name of a website like ‘.com’, ‘.edu’ and so on. A website is more likely to have a better rank in the various SERPs if the TLD happens to be relevant to that particular country.
- IP Address
Although not extremely important, the IP address can be helpful in determine whether a website is relevant to a particular region or not.
- Website Content
The content of the website needs to be developed in way which is suitable to that particular country. It needs to be optimized effectively just for the specific country.
- Backlinks
The backlinks present in your website should be of websites that have good ranks in the various SERPs. A strategy needs to be formulated for building links to and from your website to other localized websites of the region.