SEOing a site from another Country

[bigcat1967]

This is the first time I'll be optimizing a website outside of the states. It is .co.uk - so I'm wondering how I go about doing this. If he wants to rank high in the states - as far as backlinking is concerned - where should I backlink from? Sites from here (.com, .org, .edu, .etc)? Also - if he wants to rank high in the UK google - do I backlink from sites in the UK? Will backlinking from sites like EZineArticles and Hubpages help as well?

 

[PeterPanMetha]

If you want to rank top in US, you can do the normal way which you are doing. Getting links from .com,.org and etc. - That will work for a site even with .co.uk

If you want to rank top in UK, you have to do the normal way as same as you work to rank in US + you have to get backlinks from .uk domains too, That will help you to rank top in UK.

 

[djbaxter]

Where the backlinks come from is not, as far as I know, a factor.

For general SEO, regardless of whether you want to rank in Google.com or in a regional Google, the factors don't change:

1. good content clearly targeting your primary serach terms
2. page title matching the primary search terms
3. incoming links containing those search terms

Ranking well in a specific regional Google is based largely on what information Google has to determine location of the site, including:

1. the top level domain (co.uk vs. .com, .ca. .de, .in, etc.)
2. the geographical location of the server used for hosting
3. the language of the website
4. the address given for the registered owner of the domain

Of these, #1 and #2 are dominant.

 

[adbox]

yes, I imagine backlink ip (region targeting) is a factor.

 

[djbaxter]

yes, I imagine backlink ip (region targeting) is a factor.

I just posted to say I'm aware of no evidence that the geo-origins of the incoming links are a factor. However, in searching to back up that statement, I find myself having to admit that it's possible I'm wrong.

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch, who is generally pretty knowledgeable about these things, writes:

Google Results Different Outside The US has lots of info to review, and I'll summarize the key tips that help Google decide if something is going to be country-specific:

+ Host in a particular country, you'll almost certainly be seen as related to that country. So put your .com or .au site physically in Australia, and you should be seen as Australian

+ Have a country-specific domain. Got .au? Then even if you host in the US, you should still seem like an Australian site to Google. But what if you are an Australian site using .com? Then unfortunately, you're stuck -- the .com part doesn't expressly say Australian, so chances are if you host in the US, you won't be seen as Australian.

+ Write in a country-specific language. Write in French, you may be seen as a French-based site, maybe. You'll definitely be seen as a French-language site.

+ Links. If you have many links from major country-specific sites, then that might help you seem related. IE, get sites that are known to be seen as Australian to link to your site, and it might be seen as Australian.

Mind you, that was posted in 2005.

This is from Vanessa Fox, a Google employee, in 2006 - no mention of incoming links:

Inside Google Sitemaps: Tips for Non-U.S. Sites Your source for product news and developments
7/07/2006
by Vanessa Fox

If you want your site to show up for country-restricted searches, make sure it uses a country-specific domain (such as www.example.com.br). If you use a domain that isn't country specific (such as .com), make sure that the IP address of the site is located in that country.

Two more from Google, again with no mention of incoming links:

Server location, cross-linking, and Web 2.0 technology thoughts
by Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur, Google Search Quality Team
Thursday, August 02, 2007

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.
In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, ".co.uk " domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server's IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

Google Information for Webmasters

I would like my site to return for pages from a specific country.

While all sites in our index return for searches restricted to "the web," we draw on a relevant subset of sites for each country restrict. Our crawlers may identify the country for a site by factors such as the physical location at which the site is hosted, the site's IP address, the WHOIS information for a domain, and its top-level domain.

That said, your site's top-level domain does not need to match the country domain for which you would like it to return. It is also important to keep in mind that our crawlers do not index duplicate content, so creating identical sites at several domains will probably not result in their returning for many country restricts. If you do create duplicate domains, we suggest using a robots.txt file to block our crawler from accessing all but your preferred one.

Bottom line
I remain of the opinion that IP addresses of incoming links is unlikely to be a factor, partly because it would make no sense to do it that way. For example, I operate some directories, two of which are geographically organized. Links from those directories point to sites/business which are in the geographical location identified in the categories in which they are listed (e.g., London, England; New York, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Now as the owner, I live in Canada and the directories are hosted in Florida, but clearly the link identifies and points to the location of the business, not the origin of the link pointing to that business.

The second and more important reason for my conclusion is that my search reveals some speculation that origin of incoming links MIGHT be important coming from non-Google employees (sample above) and no mention of origin of incoming links by any Google employees or in any official Google statements.

If link origin is a factor at all, my guess is it has a pretty minimal impact.