Very different serp rankings for different countries

[JHultqvist]

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

[JonoAlderson]

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.

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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!

[Igor.Go]

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.