How do I get my site to rank in the right country?
-
I work with an organization in the United States that purchased a 3 letter .com domain from another company based in the Netherlands. After transferring the domain and setting up the new site we've completed the following:
- Registered the site in Webmaster Tools and selected the United States as the international target target
- Used Schema Markup on the US business address
- Built links from US based websites
- Setup a Google My Business site and verified the address
- All site content is in english
- Requested removal of links from sites in the Netherlands that were linking to the old website
- Disavowed all links from the Netherlands that refused to remove links to the old website
Despite these actions, our website rarely shows up in Google.com search results. However, we're in the top 10 for many of the same queries when performing searches at Google.nl - Interestingly enough, if we set our location for the US and do a search in Google.nl we do not show up in the search results.
It has been about 18 months since we've completed these actions and Google still assumes our website is best served and targeted towards people in the Netherlands. Is there anything else we can do to fix this?Thanks! -
Was the previous site in the your same niche?
That would explain its "stubborn" high visibility in Google.nl, because you should also consider all the not linked mentions the site may have had in its history.
Hreflang surely would be of help, but sincerely I don't know how you can implement it, because it was not thought for sites targeting only one country, but for multilingual and multi-country, hence Google Webmaster Tool could see it as a mistake and won't consider it.
-
Thanks for taking a look and the tips.
Link removal request and disavow was recommended by our contacts at Bing and Google.
Server is not hosted in the Netherlands, however, the old company did host it there.
I understand ranking in the US is more difficult, but the only difference in the search results between the two countries is that we show up in the Netherlands and we don't in the US. every other site ranking is the same.
I'll take a look at the hreflang tab.
Thanks!
-
The last two points seemed a bit drastic:
- Requested removal of links from sites in the Netherlands that were linking to the old website
- Disavowed all links from the Netherlands that refused to remove links to the old website
The US is a much bigger market than the Netherlands so it's more difficult to rank for anything. Your issue could just be that.
You seem to have covered most things but you haven't mentioned the rel hreflang tag: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Is your server hosted in the Netherlands? I'm thinking out loud, but it shouldn't matter if everything else is set up correctly. How about a US-based phone number? Every signal you can send should help. Are there any customer reviews on the Google page?
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
-
Top-10 ranked site dropping in/out of Google index?
I work for a company that makes an important product in a category. The company has a website (www.company.org); the product is at www.company.org/product. We recently (early May) redesigned and rearchitected the product site for SEO purposes. The company site talks about the category a bit (imagine the Colgate site; it talks about "toothpaste" a bit). The blog (blog.company.org/product) also talks about the category quite a bit (and links to the company site of course). The product is a major product in the category, among the top 3. The site and blog have been around for 15+ years. The site has appx. a billion backlinks, most branded links to the product. It's in the top 50 highest ranked sites among all sites on the internet in the ahrefs rank index. Imagine you are searching for our product category, "category". If you search for "category" in Bing today, my company's site is the 3rd result, and it's the 1st result from a company that makes a product in this category. If you search for "category" in Google today, our site is not in the top 150 results. In fact, the site keeps dropping out of Google's index. (See attached for what that looks like in the search console.) What might cause a site to jump from "ranked in top 10" to "not ranked" in Google -- back and forth every couple of days? Penalties? Our recent (early May) site rearchitecture? We're not making giant, index-shifting changes every day. wE0Bn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hoosteeno0 -
Best way to do site seals for clients to have on their sites
I am about to help release a product which also gives people a site seal for them to place on their website. Just like the geotrust, comodo, symantec, rapidssl and other web security providers do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ssltrustpaul
I have notices all these siteseals by these companies never have nofollow on their seals that link back to their websites. So i am wondering what is the best way to do this. Should i have a nofollow on the site seal that links back to domain or is it safe to not have the nofollow.
It wont be doing any keyword stuffing or anything, it will probly just have our domain in the link and that is all. The problem is too, we wont have any control of where customers place these site seals. From experience i would say they will mostly likely always be placed in the footer on every page of the clients website. I would like to hear any and all thoughts on this. As i can't get a proper answer anywhere i have asked.0 -
Block a country, will affect my ranking?
Dear Mozzers, I intend to block some certain countries from viewing my website (including proxy), will it affect my Google ranking? Thank you for your help. BR/Tran
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveTran20130 -
City or country name get the exact domain name devauation ?
Will using a city or country name be devalued with the exact domain name update. I want to make a new website about my favourite vacation spot. I was thinking www.specificislandactivities.com or www.bestincityname.com The site will focus on all the best things to do in that vacation spot, best dining, beaches, watersports ect. I will be writing all the content based on my experience of travelling there for over 20 years... If the site is going to be all about things to do in that city or island, how else could i name the site. www.islandtravelactivities.com Wouldn't that be using the keywords island + travel + activities in the domain ? I am so confused right now, what would be devalued in the exact domain match and what would not. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Ranking a site in the USA
I'm UK based and looking at setting up a site to rank in the USA. As I understand it a .com TLD is best but these are used worldwide so do I simply need to set the geotargeting to USA in webmaster tools? Or is there a better domain to use? With hosting the site in US and on page content related to US cities (I plan to create a page for each US city I operate in the the city name in the H1 tag) will that be enough for google to understand that the page should rank in the US version of google. Also how can I view Google USA search results - when I go to google.com it automatically redirects to google.co.uk and I can only change the location on the left hand side to UK cities. Any help much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Rank went up, But?
ok, I have been optimizing a sit for a while and decided to drop the flash site build an HTML site instead for obvious reasons. But, as I was building the new site, BANG! a big jump in Google rank? How can this be, I thought out loud. Must be all my anchor text kicking in...So, I am left with this question...Or did google pick up on my new site as I was building it. I build it on a new DNS, then revert back to the main DNS... Drop the HTML site and continue my link getting with the main site? Or chalk it up under something else and roll with new site. I hope that was not to confusing
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0 -
Our site has been up almost 2 months and no rankings yet?
Our site is www.AkinsSeptic.com. We spent a lot of time on the site and have not received any rankings yet. Can you advise as to what we can do to get this site ranked at all. I know it needs a lot of SEO work and some links, however, it should rank mildly due to the low competition of keywords we are using. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormz0 -
Could adding canonical tags to large Ecommerce site ever hurt rankings? Temporarily?
We have a really large site we're working on who's product pages rank well for the most part but also have multiple products listed in different categories with different URL's. I'm assuming there's no downside to adding canonical tags to these right? Its peak season so I don't want to do anything that could, even temporarily, bring down their rankings. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0