Ok one very important thing in SEO is targeting a specific country, so how do you do it, a lot of SEO’s will rarely even think about it because it can come naturally but sometime you can do all the optimisation that you want and find that instead of getting listings in Google UK your actually getting listings in Google.com, so what play a part.
1) Your .TLD ending: if you have .co.uk, .fr, etc. Then you will automatically come into results from that location, BUT i hear you ask what about if i have a .com, .net, .biz, .uk.com etc. well then you need to pay attention to the following.
2) Hosting: If you don’t have a geographic specific domain then you should try and host in the respective country, when approaching a hosting company ask where their server is based. (You’ll find a lot of hosting companies didn’t even realise this played a part in Search.) Companies like 1and1 offer very cheap hosting but the servers are in Germany, so you’ll be limited as you might not appear in Uk results only pages in Google.co.uk.
3) Language: If you write your website in Spanish then Google will generally try and rank your site in google.es
4) Your Address: It’s always useful to include your address in either a footer or header on your website as spiders can read this.
5) Webmaster tools: Use Google’s own tool if you register with Webmaster tools (Formally sitemaps) not only is it plain just useful, you have the choice to choose your designed Geographic region.
6) Local Listings: Google, Yahoo and MSN all offer local listings where you can submit your business, I suggest you do this, not only can you appear at the top of some search results by the Google map it will also help prove where you are located.
7) Links: If you are targeting France, then try and get links from French websites, this adds another realm of relevance toward your site being related to that region.
8) Domain Registrar: Often people will purchase domains from the US, then host in the UK, this is simply another factor which if your having trouble ranking in a specific region you should look at.
8 simple but effective tip for Geographic targeting of your website, this can help greatly within SEO, so if your having trouble, TRY them out!
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Thanks very much. I have implemented several of your tips and they are already having a positive effect.
the forth point of Address, if i use it for adding my other non relevant sites, will it effect in the PR of those websites?, if it is legal in case of GOOGLE.
I think another small factor that might be related to this is the location from which links are being built. It may be helpful to use proxies in the country you are trying to rank for when building links.