How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country
-
How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)?
I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it.
Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.
-
Hi Miriam.
I agree with your gut feeling. What is wrong is wrong and one should not play games falsify facts and present them as true.... not at least with Google. They are smarter than everybody of us out here.
I'll stick with the following tactic:
-
Find a person or a partner in these countries who is ready to genuinely partner with me... or at least is willing to take calls, talk to leads and direct them to me. A local listing will be created for this/these guy/guys when we have genuine NAPs.
-
Focus on organically promoting my website for these locations without local listings.
Thanks for your help everybody.
KS__
-
-
Hi KS!
Unfortunately, that's not really a practice I would recommend to my clients at this point. There's been some indication in recent times that while Google is completely fine with a single-location home-based business, it's very easy for them these days to see that a string of houses is being used to indicate locations in more than one place. It's my gut feeling that they don't approve of this practice and that they would take action against Google+ Local listings created in this scenario. But, in any case, your lack of in-person contact with customers means that the business does not qualify for Google+ Local listings or local pack rankings, regardless of whether you have legitimate business offices or are using the addresses of your friends. So, this may be kind of a moot point. Virtual businesses need to compete organically and utilize PPC, social media, video marketing, etc. to earn visibility - but Local SEO is not the right marketing discipline for them.
Hope this helps!
-
Will it be fine if I add my friends' residential addresses in multiple cities across Country A in Google Places and buy toll free numbers for each of these addresses/cities? So all locations will have different NAP.
-
Hi KS!
Thanks for the clarification on this. So, if you are not making in-person contact with your customers, whether here or abroad, then this means that the business is not a 'local' business in the eyes of Google. Face-to-face transactions are the prerequisite of this particular type of marketing. So, as you would not be able to go the local business route of building a Google+ Local page for each location in hopes of ranking in Google's local packs of results, then your two options would be:
-
Building organic content on the website that showcases your virtual services in each of your target cities and countries.
-
Participating in PPC that enables you to pay for placement in your target cities and countries.
I'm afraid international SEO is not my area - the links Patrick has shared will be your best bet for learning about this marketing discipline. Wishing you best of luck!
-
-
Thanks Miriam.
Here are my answers:
- Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
Other countries, not counties.
- Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
No personal contact. I have international numbers listed on the website, so they just give me a call (I use VOIP and Magic Jack) or fill up the form. The conversation begins there.
Hope that answers you.
-
Thanks for all the help John.
-
Awesome links Patrick. Thanks.
-
Hi KS -
Got your note on my older post and so am popping by here. I have some questions.
-
Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.
-
Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?
-
-
Hi there
If you are trying to rank a certain location or country, you can look into hreflang attributes and language tags for your site.
You can also geo-target specific URL variations in Google Search Console. You can read more about International SEO here, as well as an International SEO Checklist.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better.
A website we instructed down this path is www.cottonon.com - It is more complicated - but that is a retailer that rolls out new shops in each country. Hence Australia is www.cottonon.com/au etc. Go to their website and from a practical perspective watch it operation, this may help in clearing it all up for you. Note the power CO is in the store finder - where you get to use google maps...
-
Ok. www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better or www.chicago.mywebsite.com? The only negative with the latter is that all pages (FAQ, How it works etc.) within the sub-domain website will have to be re-done with fresh new content while in the first option there's only one page for the location while other pages like FAQ etc stay the same for the root website as well location specific pages.
What say?
-
Yes, in a nutshell. That is one way - but Google maps for each location would save you alot of work.
The key ingredient missing on the above is on the pages you make - ensure your meta title reads "Flowers | New York | Mywebsite".
Then your H1 is also location keyword rich. Then find links preferable local. Maybe some local directories etc. I would also be trying to make a cracking page - with great user friendly content. Whatever you do do not duplicate content swapping location names - that is an easy way to "never be found on google"...
So it is hard work... for each location.
-
So if I want the website to rate well in Chicago, California and New York, the pages that I should create will be www.mywebsite.com/chicago, www.mywebsite.com/california and www.mywebsite.com/new-york. Is that right?
And when I'm done with that, I have to build location specific links like ' <keyword>in Chicago', ' <keyword>California' etc.?</keyword></keyword>
-
It can be complicated - and without alot more information & countries etc.all answers could be wrong. There are several paths depending on the answers. So everything I suggest is dependent on unknown factors.
Because of the weighting to google maps it is difficult if you do not have an address in each country. I would strongly urge you to change you outlook on this position. Then you could consider subdomains. If you only want to use one domain (which is what I recommend) and no subdomains - you could make a page for each country you are targeting. Have you considered that? Then you have to action each country page uniquely and obtain links and build DA to same. On the link building it should be page specific ie if targeting chicago get chicago based/centric links to that page.
I hope that gives you something to think about.
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
-
Ranking issue for new website
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
How to rank for a keyword
Hi guys, I'm looking to rank a new blog for a search term which we currently already rank #1 for. I want to create a blog which provides a better solution to a searchers query and knock our current #1 page for this new one. Is there a way to do this simply without losing the real-estate the currently ranked #1 page has already accumulated? Or is just a matter of working on this new blog to find it's own way to the top? Thanks in advance, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameseacott0 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
How correcttly redirect to http://m.mobile.com website
Hi everyone, I will appreciate if you will drop here a piece of script ( or link to ) for CORRECT redirection for our http://m.mobile.com website. We are confused what type of redirection should we use java script, htaccess, php, 301, 302....? in order not to damage any rankings and etc... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
webdeal0 -
Rank drop in June
Since fixing a major duplicate content issue in Dec 2012, our traffic saw steady and dramatic growth through the summer. It has started to settle down now and rankings have started to decline. I have a bad feeling that something is wrong but for the life of me I cannot figure it out. Our Moz rank is pretty high but some of our biggest keywords have gone from #2 to #9 in a fairly short time period which makes me very nervous. I am not even sure where to look at this point. Any suggestions are welcomed as I am kind of at a loss now but worry I am missing something basic. www.threeguysgolf.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astaelin0 -
Why is my blog out-ranking my main site?
Please see attached ranking history chart. On June 5th the chart shows that my main site is not coming up under our main keyword "door hangers" From then on, our blog took over. Any ideas why? Thanks Andrea lpEBciu.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
My site still out of rank
Hello, I am working on a site for past 3 months, here are the problems with this site, 1. It had a forum full of spam becuase initially captcha was not included, 10000 spam backlinks 2. Affiliate page was also hit by spam about 4000 spam backlinks which were either not existing or porn etc.... 3. Too many internal links which were indexed, these additional links were generated due to tags, ids, filters etc. Existing SEO team decided to remove the forum and after 30 days they blocked it in robots. But within 30 days the site moved from 3rd page to no where. Now after few days lator internal links are also cleaned by putting following in the robots, Dissallow: / *? Dissallow: / *id Dissallow: / *tag Links are now cleaning up, all the spam and bad links are now put into disavow file and sent to google via disavow tool. On daily bases good quality links are been produced such as through content, article submission, profile linking, Bookmarks etc. The site is still not any where on top 50 results. The impressions are decreasing, traffic also do not rise as much. How do you see all this situation. What do you suggest and how long do you think it will take to return to top 10 when good linking is being done and all preventive measures are being taken. I would appreciate any feedback on it. Thank you. Site URL: http://www.creativethemes.net keywords: magento themes, magento templates
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0