Users may reach your website from anywhere globally, thanks to the power of the internet and Geo-targeting. A modest eCommerce site in Florida may get a business person in India just as readily as a family in South Carolina. Even if you have an English-only “.com” website, you may be a worldwide business by default. What’s the issue? The issue is that Those individuals lead quite diverse lifestyles.
How will you leverage your current infrastructure and marketing efforts to reach such a vast audience? How do you ensure that your traffic receives the most relevant information that will lead to a conversion? Geo-targeting is the solution.
See Also: Geotargeting Can Affect Search Rankings in Google Search Console
Contents
What is Geo-Targeting?
Geotargeting delivers different information to users based on their geolocation in Geomarketing and Internet marketing. This contains parameters such as nation, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP, and others.
Through the intelligent use of URL subdirectories, websites may optimize content to target searchers in various nations.
Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, shows how websites may strategically employ subdirectories to optimize search results in certain regions. This was the topic of a recent Google Search Central SEO office hours hangout.
In addition to requesting hreflang implementation, Hazel Wwrong attends the webinar to ask Mueller how Google determines whether page content is geo-targeted. Mueller explains how Google looks for patterns in URLs that indicate the country meant for which a page is designed.
You may use this data to create a website that targets many countries while utilizing the same domain. Continue reading the section after this one for more details.
See Also: Google’s John Mueller On Brand Mentions
How to Use Subdirectories to Target Numerous Countries With the Same Domain
This is what Mueller responds when asked what signs Google looks for to determine whether material is tailored for a specific country:
We aim to categorize URLs based on recognizable patterns. This can be possible, for example, through a subdomain or subfolder.
So, if the nation is in a subdirectory, higher up in the route, it’s much simple for us to tell, “Everything under this path is for this country. Everything on the other route is for a different country.”
Furthermore, you can validate particular pathways in Search Console and clearly state this path is for this nation or this path is for another country, which makes things a little simpler for us. – John Mueller
In practice, the URL pattern Mueller describes may seem something like this.
Imagine you run a business in the United States that distributes items to countries all over the world. Here’s an illustration of a URL pattern.:
United States: your-website.com/products
Canada: http://www.your-website.com/canada/products
UK: http://www.your-website.com/uk/products
And so forth.
Mueller points out that employing subdirectories won’t make much of a difference if you’re already utilizing hreflang and Search Console to target certain nations.
So, if your website isn’t already set up in this manner, you don’t have to replace everything.
It’s just one more indication that Google searches for alongside other geo-targeting signals.