Geolocation Questions

[TroyCarlson]

I'm looking to combine my company's US web presence and its United Kingdoms web presence under one common look-feel and company name.  Seeing as how we are fairly small, I'm thinking the best way to do this would be to simply create a "uk" folder and creating UK specific content in there. I would also like to have some geolocation on the site to make sure users receive the content that is relevant to them.

With that in mind, here my questions:

1. Would creating a "locations" page with links between the UK and the US versions of the site, be enough so that Google is sure to crawl all content?  (As I understand it, Google would appear as an American visitor to my geolocation script, and wouldn't see UK content unless there was a page that would explicitly direct it in that direction, correct?)

2. I've read elsewhere that I can target specific folders to a specific geographic target using Google Webmaster Tools.  However, if the "main" site is US specific (there would not be a "us" folder)  Setting the geographic target for JUST the "uk" folder would still work?

3. Finally, there will unfortunately be some duplicate content between the two sites.  (we have a catalog of courses, for example, that contain different groupings of courses between the two sites, but the individual courses will appear with the same descriptions within the sites)  What would be the best way to deal with something like that?  I would hate to point all canonical links back to the US "main" site on every instance of duplicates, but I'm not sure how else to deal with it?

Thanks for any help you can give.  I know this is all a bit top level, but I'm a bit paralyzed with fear of starting, seeing as how I've never had to deal with these questions before...

[THB]

OK - off the bat, in my opinion, it would be worth setting up a .com for your US site and a .co.uk for your UK site.  Although, I'm not sure .co.uk's can be purchased without proof of business within the UK.  Might want to look into that.

Doing that would make each of your sections geographically relevant and would benefit your site much better as you would be able to show up in the appropriate serp's.

1. Google will find all your content as long as it's linked internally.  Making sure Google knows the difference between what is US content and what is UK content will be the challenge.  Your title/meta/H1 tags will need to reflect that, ie. My Product - UK - My Company, and so on.  This is why it's easier to just have it setup on its own .co.uk

2. As far as I know, you cannot specify geo-locations on folders within Webmaster Tools (WMT).  You can only set the root directory as you already stated.  Therefore, if you have a website that accommodates several geographic locations, you're best to leave the "Target location" as blank.  Specifying it to US, or any country for that matter, will hinder your chances of UK getting recognized to its full potential.

3. I wouldn't use a canonical to point UK back to US.  That would throw search engines off I could only imagine.

Summary: if you can, take advantage of a .com and .co.uk, and that way, you can setup WMT to accommodate each as specific geo-locations and hopefully reap the benefits of proper geo-location.

Hope this helps a bit.

• Marc

[TroyCarlson]

Thanks for the reply, Marc!   Unfortunately, the .co.uk version of the site has been purchased by someone else and is currently in use, so that path isn't possible.

As far as adding folders to WMT, I found this while poking through the documentation (https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399&hl=en), and it does appear as if geographically targeting a folder is possible.  I'm still concerned it might be a bit weak, but there seems to be some indication elsewhere throughout the forums that others have had success.  Still a bit nervous about leaning too heavily on that as the main indication that the content in that folder is "UK-centric", but not 100% I have much choice.

I think I agree with your advice re:canonical tags, but I'm still not sure if I'll get penalized due to duplicates.

[THB]

While I didn't watch the provided video, I don't see anything about geo-targeting specific folders.

Not to dwell on grabbing a .co.uk, but I know of many company's that have altered their domain name slightly because somebody else already had their domain name.  For example, you could have domain.com and domain-uk.com, or something along those lines.  Just a thought.

And another thing to consider would be to instead of using a folder to separate the countries, I would strongly recommend using a subdomain, ie. uk.domain.com as it will be easier to keep track of in terms of analytics and such.

[TroyCarlson]

Heh...yeah, it was in the video.

There is more info here, for those who are interested: http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-a-slash-just-as-good-as-buying-a-country-specific-domain-com-de-vs-de

Again, thanks for the response, though!  

[SEOKeith]

FYI, anyone can buy a co.uk just like anyone can buy a .com

[Alex-Harford]

You can geotarget folders in Google WMT, you just need to set up a new site for each folder. Duplicate content is not a problem, as long as the two separate areas of the site are geotargeted properly. Be aware of the language differences between the two countries and if you're from the US get a native-UK speaker to check the UK part of the site or vice-versa. UK-based links to the relevant UK pages will help a lot - and an advantage of having both locations on one .com is that all links will help towards it, rather than getting less benefit by link-building to two completely separate sites.

The one thing I'm not sure of is the potential issue you mention of setting the .com (with no sub-folder) to target the US, and .com/uk to the UK - it might be worth using your private question for the month if you haven't already to see what the SEOmoz folk know. Another option for the UK would be a sub-domain, like  uk.somewebsite.com

I made a post here with some links that will help you if you haven't seen them already: http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-country-site-versions-and-hosting

[TroyCarlson]

Thank you Alex, appreciate the feedback.  Very pleased to hear about the duplicate content not being an issue, I was sweating that.  I think I'll also take your advice on using my private question to investigate the effects of having the top level be US based, and what that would mean to geotargeting a folder.

Also, for those interested in this subject and who stumble upon this thread, I'll also submit this link: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-website-s-country-and-language.aspx on how to help target Bing.  The only thing it really convinced me to do is to add the "content-language" meta tag to the top of all my pages to help differentiate the sites even more.

[THB]

"an advantage of having both locations on one .com is that all links will help towards it, rather than getting less benefit by link-building to two completely separate sites"

I disagree.

There is no better way to geo-target your site than to adhere to the appropriate top-level domain.  If your site has UK product, it belongs on a .co.uk, hosted on a server in the UK.  That way, search engines know that you are specific to that region.  Same goes for US, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, you name it.  You want to be relevant, you need to take the right measures.

And link-building is just part of the game.  Link building on two sites is nothing considering many people, including myself, operate 5+ websites on a regular basis, so that's not a valid reason/excuse.  If you have thousands of US-based links pointing to your site, then your site will be ranked for US content.  There is an equal amount of link building necessary whether you have US and UK content on one domain, or two, as either way you will still have to gather UK-based backlinks for your UK content, and US-based backlins for your US content.  The benefits of two domains far outweigh any benefits of one as it's cleaner, and more specific to your product.  You will show up in the correct SERP's (google.co.uk for UK, google.com for US).

It's just important to get it right the first time, that's all.  Changing your mind 10 months from now to make a switch can take you down a few notches in the serp's.

If OP insists on staying on one domain, use a subdomain, and not a folder structure.  Will at least give it some separation from the US content.

[Alex-Harford]

With regards to geotargeting, server location is irrelevant if you have the top-level domain - Google say so themselves (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html) - and there are plenty of UK businesses that successfully use a .com or other international domain, so a UK product doesn't have to belong on a .co.uk.

Links (follow, at least) pass juice whatever country they're from, so having 100 US-based links will still help the overall authority of a website whether it's hosted in the UK, France, or anywhere. Are you saying the thousands of foreign links SEOmoz has, or the BBC, for example, don't help them rank so highly worldwide? Yes, country specific links are very useful to rank in that country, but other links help too. I think Rand mentions this as a pro in the video from the link in my previous post.

There are plenty of companies who struggle to maintain one website, without even thinking about link building, so it's definitely a valid reason to consider keeping the one website.

It is important to get it right first time. Weighing up the pros and cons can depend on a number of factors we haven't even mentioned, such as whether the site is e-commerce or not, for example. E.g. if someone from France sees a .it in the SERPs they might not click the link if other .fr links are there, due to the increased chance a .it might not ship to France.