Australian local business website on a dot.com - how do I ensure its indexed/ranked by Google.com/au as priority
-
look forward to your advice
My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US. We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting.
I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content.
How can I tell google its a site for people in australia?
I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url?
Thanks for your recommendations
-
I've got a client in a similar situation. They have a .com domain but they only offer services in Australia.
The good news is they rank just fine for the search terms that are relevant to their business (these are primarily queries with local intent).
In Webmaster Tools, you'll want to tell Google that your site is targeted to an AU audience. There's an option to set this under "Search Traffic" -> "International Targeting". Click the "Country" tab and then you can choose to target users in a particular country.
We also made sure that it was very clear from the content on the site that the business was based in Australia paying particular attention to local search optimisation (See: http://moz.com/learn/local ) - getting local business listings in reputable, authoritative directories etc.
It's best to think of it from a visitors point of view - what are the on-page signals you need to provide to give them confidence that they are dealing with an Australian site. (Local address, Australian phone number, mentions of relevant places / people / events, associations/badges/certifications from relevant Australian bodies etc...)
Hope this helps - Good Luck!
Doug.
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
-
Can High Traffic and Bounce Rate Hurt Local Rankings?
I just began working on a campaign for a dental office who happened to rank really well for some general search terms around post-op care. They received a ton of traffic for a small local site-- 26k organic visits YTD-- but since they focus on providing services locally, their conversion rate for organic search is pretty abysmal. On top of that, a couple of their high-traffic pages are contributing to a 90%+ average bounce rate on the site. Clearly the goal of the website doesn't involve attracting a national audience, but tons of traffic couldn't possibly be a bad thing... right? On the flip side of the coin, their local visibility is terrible. Their DA is comparable to their competitors, but in local SERPs they're nowhere to be found. Could one of these factors be affecting the other? Could their high visibility, but lack of conversions, from a bunch of organic traffic be hurting their visibility locally? I'd be interested hearing from other SEOs who may have faced similar situations in the past.
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency0 -
GMB Website Create Competition That Can Hurt Your Own Site?
Hello, Does anyone know if creating a Google My Business website for a business using the GMB builder creates competition for that business's main, non-GMB website? Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | lawfather0 -
Multilanguage Website
Hi, I am responsible for managing a multilingual website. I have two questions regarding SEO, based on the structure of the website. Question 1. At the moment we have one website for UK English and one for US English .com/en-gb/ .com/en-us/ Which would be the pros and cons of merging the two website in one? Question 2. For the German website they moved it under .de dominion, I think it would be better from an SEO perspective to have it as the Italian and French, under .com/de Which would be the pros and cons of migrating German website under .com/de? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | albertoalchieriefficio0 -
Rebranding with the same website
Hello, I like to rebrand my site for the same URL - How can i do this?
Local Website Optimization | | signsny
Example: My site URL is www.signsny.com and i used "SignsNY" as brand name and citations and after the website redesign, i decide to go with "Signs NY" so i change the citations and pick the word as Signs NY to use but in google i lost the site links and knowledge graph on **Signs NY **keyword.......... Can you suggest me what to do and how to change the things for better results? Thanks,
Abie0 -
Building a new site and want to be found in both Google.co.uk and Goolge.ie. What is the best practice?
We are building a new site which is a .com site and the client would like to be found in both Google.co.uk and Goolge.ie. What is the best practice to go about this? Can you geo-target two countries with the one site?
Local Website Optimization | | WSIDW0 -
.com vs .com/language ?
Hello Moooooooooz ! We're currently working on a new website http://www.globalmetal.fr/ which deep SEO issues. The problematic is as always in this case: 1 company + different subsidiaries + different markets + different languages The companies is handling different domains: http://www.globalmetal.fr/
Local Website Optimization | | JoomGeek
www.globalmetalbroker.ch
www.globalmetalbroker.com
and so on. Until recently I was totally convinced (there is no magic solution I know) that it was better for a SME to focus on 1 domain (.com) and get the other websites per language .com/fr .com/es etc. But in their case their TLD is pretty new: www.globalmetalbroker.com (DA 1) vs globalmetal.fr (DA 15) So I'm wondering: 1- Does Google know understand that globalmetal.fr is the french website of globalmetalbroker.com (maybe via webmaster tool) ?
2- Does it make senss to move all the (new) language websites into .com/[folders] and once the .com DA is doing better redirecting the .fr to.com/fr ?
3- Is it better to focus on .com .fr (but french speakers are not just in france) .ru and so on or to keep the .com/[languages] Hope someone got the same issue recently 😛0 -
Google plus page multiple domains
Hi I have had a .com domain for many years linked to my google plus page and local verified to my UK office address. This site sells and advertises my products, some of them are uk only like the school and computers I sell and the rest are digital and world wide. I decided to start a .co.uk domain to be more targeted to the uk and advertise only the school and computers which I sell to the uk and just link to the .com for digital products. I want the .com domain to attract world wide customers and the .co.uk for uk customers. What do I do, does it make sense to connect my google plus business page to the .co.uk site? Should I still have a google plus page for the .com site? I only have 1 office and thats in the uk. Not sure what to do here. I dont want to lose rankings or do anything negative. Thoughts? Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | theindic0 -
Yoast Local SEO Reviews/Would it work for me?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on Yoast Local SEO, and if you think it'd work for our site. www.kempruge.com. Our site is a wordpress site, and there's nothing about it, off the top of my head, that makes me think it wouldn't work, but I've been wrong before. We do use All-In-One SEO, not the Yoast plugin, so I'm not sure if that's compatible.or would cause a problem? (The reason we use All-In-One and not Yoast is because that's what we had when I got here, and I'm worried what would happen if we switched). Also, we have three offices, and I need to be able to do local seo for all three. I know Yoast says it supports multiple offices, but I'd feel more comfortable if someone on here let me know from his/her experience that it did. Anything else you want to add about Yoast Local, I'm all ears! Thanks, Ruben
Local Website Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0