Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)
-
Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust!
We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling.
Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there.
They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com?
Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
Lee. -
That's the answer I was hoping for, thanks Tom!
-
Tom,
This is very well stated. Thanks
Best
-
It certainly used to be a bigger factor. And the annoying thing is that Google still has older videos up saying as much.
However, with so many new TLDs, server locations and CDNs in particular, I think the impact of server location has diminished quite a lot. For example, on my UK sites I always try and use UK servers. However, I often use cloudflare on them, which will be either US or Central Europe based. It hasn't affected their performance. Google alludes to this:
“Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure; so, we try not to rely on the server location alone.”
So I wouldn't say a server's location will hinder a website's ability to rank in a certain country. The only way that it might would be related to speed. Obviously, the further away your user is from your server, the slower the website's response might be, and speed is considered to be a ranking factor. However, if you get any decent hosting solution, the speed difference would also be negligible.
-
Sorry Tom, forgot to ask.. will the fact that the website is hosted on a UK server (having a UK IP address) hinder the performance of the US campaign?
We could move it over to a US server however this may effect the (currently very good) UK rankings.
Thanks in advance, Lee.
-
No problem Lee!
This is also a good article from SearchEngineLand on international SEO, including some pros and cons on different approaches.
-
Many thanks Tom, great answer!
Yes, the client would like to rank in both UK and US.. so your suggestions sound ideal, and pretty easy to implement.
I'll read Aleyda's article tonight, sounds interesting.
Thanks again Tom, much appreciated.
Lee.
-
Hi Lee
Would I be right in saying that the client would like to rank in both UK and US?
If so, this is possible. What I would recommend is to create a new geo-location subfolder for the US site. Something as simple as website.com/us/ would do.
From there, you would set up the US subfolder as basically its own website. That starts with adding the right kind of hreflang schema code for the subfolder.
There is a fantastic guide here on Moz by Aleyda Solis on how to set up an international SEO structure. You can find it here.
This hreflang generator tool, also from Aleyda, can help you generate the right code to add to the subfolder.
From there, as mentioned you're basically treating the subfolder as it's own individual site. That means you can build new links to it, you should have unique content within it, and you can even set up its own individual GWT account - meaning you can set the geolocation settings in there too.
The benefit of this approach is that it would allow your client to keep the current site as-is, and not jeopardise it, while also setting up a site for the US audience. Of course, you could do exactly the same thing on a new TLD - but that might be difficult as you're using the .com already (and besides, I like global sites using a .com /country/ subfolder setup)
Hope this helps, let me know if you'd like anything clarified.
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 worth maintaining multiple international websites
Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US. The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand. The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain. What would you advise? Thanks.
International SEO | | fdl4712_aol.com2 -
Changing the language of the website meta title and description?
Hello, Moz community! I'm planning to change the language of my website title and description from English to rank better for queries on the local language. Do you think this would increase the local language ranking? And in case I need to switch back to English, let's say in 2021, would it be difficult to regain the current rankings? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thank you!
International SEO | | vhubert2 -
Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?
Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
International SEO | | lcourse
We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine. When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code). Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page. I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" /> canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page. Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?0 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
Two versions of a website with different languages - Best way to do it?
I'm working on a website for a Swedish artist and her page is in Swedish, everything is in Swedish on the site, even though it's not a lot of text on the site. We would like to have the site in English too, or another version of the site in English on a separate domain, what's the best way to proceed from here? The domain name is a .se (swedish domain), would it be better to create a another domain and host the english version of the site on a .com domain? Or will we bump into problems with duplicate content if we create a replica of the swedish site in english. We're using wordpress and I know that there's translation plugins out there, is that a good option? I'm a bit clueless on how to proceed and would love some help or guidance here.
International SEO | | Fisken0 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Country name displayed after domain name in google SERP
our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
Google US vs Google UK
I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.
International SEO | | journeybeyondtravel0