Regional targeting with Google Webmaster Tools

This week Google added a new option to its Webmaster Tools allowing you to set regional targeting for your website. This is very useful because it answers the problem of having a non regional specific TLD hosted abroad still being able to rank for a regional search.

Google Webmaster ToolsFor example, the website featured in the screenshot is a .com hosted in Germany, but by allowing regional targeting as I’ve just done it will rank for a UK search.

Obviously you need to be very careful when making changes like this as you can affect your global rankings. For example the website WhatDVD.Net is also hosted in Germany but I won’t be regionally targeting that to the UK because I want it to rank for US based users as well.

Regional targeting is a great and welcome tool, but don’t shut out wider, potentially more profitable markets for it.

Darren Jamieson

Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.

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