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.
For 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.