Optimising for two countries
-
I have a UK-based client, with a global product, who wants his website optimised for the same keywords in Google US and Google UK.
Should I treat this as two separate jobs in any way or does it make no difference? I'm particularly wondering about link building and onsite optimisation
-
Hello!
Unfortunately, the answer is very much "it depends"; on the client, their product, their market, and to a degree, how your commercial relationship with them is set up.
Let's explore some key elements, and hopefully, you can factor some of that back into a decision on how you'd like to proceed with them.
- The UK and US are different markets, with different demand, different consumer behaviours, sizes, and competitors. The same keyword in both territories might have a very different competitive landscape, depending on all of these factors.
- Furthermore, your link profile (vs your competitors') likely varies similarly; if you've no local relevance, you're likely going to struggle. You'll be competing against specific local competitors, as well as larger global companies, on multiple fronts.
- Real-world factors will affect you, too. If your product/service is in the UK, how well does it compete against local offerings - particularly in terms of delivery (time, costs), availability (opening hours, response time), etc?
- How well-supported is international targeting on the website? Do you have a different section for each territory (e.g., example.com/us/), and is the website set up with correct hreflang tagging?
In a nutshell, it'll definitely take more work and time to get everything set up, to scale any monitoring and reporting you're doing, and to grow your competitive footprint in both territories.
However, there are economies of scale; you'll have a better understanding of the marketplace overall, and any content or marketing you do could (in some scenarios) benefit both territories. From a billing perspective, I'd expect it to make more sense to run it as a single, large project, rather than as multiple projects.
Hopefully this is helpful; let me know if youve any questions which we haven't explored!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
Two A Records or one CNAME and one A Record for www / naked domain?
What's the best way to point a domain to an IP address? Two A records one with host @ and the other with host www ? One A record pointing to the naked domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aj613
One CNAME record with host www pointing to nakeddomain.com Something else? Thanks so much! This seems so basic, but always seems to stump me. I'm using WordPress, if it makes difference.0 -
Site Structure - Is it ok to Keep current flat architecture of existing site pages and use silo structure on two new categories only?
Hi there, I have a site structure flat like this it ranks quite well for its niche site.com/red-apples.html site.com/blue-apples.html The site is branching out into a new but related lines of business is it ok to keep existing site architecture as above while using a silo structure just for the two new different but related business? site.com/meat/red-meat.html site.com/fish/oceant-trout.html Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | servetea0 -
Question about optimising an inner pages apposed to the homepage
Hi Everyone, I'm currently looking to optimise the inner page of a website opposed to the homepage itself. I was wondering if I should stick to some kind of link distribution? For instance, say my website is about widgets and the url is http://www.widgets.com, I want to optimise for a much easier "blue widgets" term on an inner page with the url: http://www.widgets.com/blue-widgets. Does google discriminate against a website with a higher number of links pointing to an inner page than the homepage? If so, what would you recommend a safe distribution between the two? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated, Peter.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoyalBlueCoffee0 -
Should I disallow via robots.txt for my sub folder country TLD's?
Hello, My website is in default English and Spanish as a sub folder TLD. Because of my Joomla platform, Google is listing hundreds of soft 404 links of French, Chinese, German etc. sub TLD's. Again, i never created these country sub folder url's, but Google is crawling them. Is it best to just "Disallow" these sub folder TLD's like the example below, then "mark as fixed" in my crawl errors section in Google Webmaster tools?: User-agent: * Disallow: /de/ Disallow: /fr/ Disallow: /cn/ Thank you, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
How to Best Target Two Keyword Phrases for a Business Directory
Our client has medical centers all over the US and we rank really well for the term "DIALYSIS CENTER" as well as all the major markets "DIALYSIS CENTER LOS ANGELES", etc. We need to add in a Second Keyword Phrase of "CKD CENTER" (which is an alternate term for the same medical center). Should we change all the TITLE, H1, etc that we have done to a COMBINED term of "CKD DIALYSIS CENTER" or "DIALYSIS CKD CENTER" and all the local market variations? We can't create 2 pages for one business in the directory, but we're not sure the right way to make sure that the pages are now targeted for 2 terms. Thanks in advance for any help & advice!!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ErnieB0 -
Two pages on same domain - Is this a proper use of the canonical tag?
I have a domain with two pages in question--one is an article with 2,000 words and the other is a FAQ with 300 words. The 300 word FAQ is copied, word-for-word and pasted inside of the 2,000 word article. Would it be a proper use of the canonical tag to point the smaller, 300 word FAQ at the 2,000 word article? Since the 300 word article is identical to a portion of the 2,000 word article, will Google see this as duplicate content? Thanks in advance for any helpful insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
GeoIP - Redirect all but target country
My client would like to redirect all non UK traffic from their UK site to their main group site. I am intending to use a .htaccess redirect, like this: RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} !^GB$
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.group.com$1 [R,L] I have tested the redirect at it works fine. My question is if I put this in place would it have any negative SEO impact on the UK site?0