Can Google penalize a country keyword

[LeanneSEO]

Hello again guys

Thank you for your previous help with www.kids-academy.co.uk - we are slowly getting there! I wanted to ask something I cannot seem to find an answer to, can Google penalize you by country? By this I mean;

Search term
Nursery franchise UAE           Page 1
Nursery franchise UK             Nowhere to be found!

The page in question (well a section of the site) has been optimised for UK, however, as they do have a sister site in the UAE, it mentions those areas too. The pages I have been working on are now ranking reasonably well to say there is a long way to go, but for long tailed keywords NOT including anything to do with the UK.

There are no naughty backlinks with the anchor text to do with the UK, the server is hosted in the UK, it is a .co.uk URL (no geotagging but I would like to know if this is of any use with this type of URL, everything says no, but it cant harm can it?) - is it possible Google due to bad practices in the past have slapped a penalty on the specific keyword area?

Not something I have come across previously but I am scratching my head over here! Time for a brew break

Thanks in advance guys!

Leanne

[MikeRoberts]

One oddity I did notice, you have <meta property="<a class="attribute-value">og:locale</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">en_US</a>" /> listed in the page source which i believe should be en_GB for a UK specific website.

[LeanneSEO]

Oh thank you for that! I had instructed for code errors to be rectified but this one seems to have slipped the net with them. I will assume however this would not cause the blanket ban on the word UK though should it?

Thanks again Mike

[Asjad]

Hey Leanne,

If I understand it, you are pointing to http://www.kids-academy.co.uk and trying to compare it with http://www.kids-academy.ae/.

l have reviewed both. It's not about keyword rather general or country one, rankings depend upon many factors (On Page, Link Building, Social Quotient etc)

Let's try to compare both websites

http://www.kids-academy.co.uk

• 202 Pages (Content Seems to be unique, so no real worries here)
• Meta Tags Seems to be fine
• Overall back-links have been dropped to 12k to 1.3k within 1 year. Seems to be point of worry: http://screencast.com/t/zVG9PiMtxGA
• More than 60% Money Anchors. Lots of worries here:http://screencast.com/t/ck0kx9OK
• Global V/s Local: If its UK site, i love to see more than 50% UK Links, but this website hardly have any: http://screencast.com/t/b3fuPbjYT
• 90% Links on Home Page. Its better to have 50% Home + 50% Inner Pages
• Hardly any social sharing which is king at moment

http://www.kids-academy.ae/

• 50 Pages (No Content Issues)
• Meta Tags seems to be fine
• 4k to 1.7k: http://screencast.com/t/RTLk8i1yK
• More than 50% Money anchors. Situation is bad here as well: http://screencast.com/t/OiNVVXXW
• 90% Home Page Links
• No Social Sharing

Comments On UK Site

• It's clear victim of Penguin 2/2.1. No sure around Penguin 1. You need to check Webmaster Tools
• More Than 50% Money Anchors, No Local Links and others are clear signs
• Plz remove money anchors either manually or use disavow link tool
• Focus on Social Sharing (Google PLus, Facebook, Twitter)
• Build UK Links
• Add a blog and keep on adding new content consistently
• This will take time to recover

Comments on AE Site

• It seems to be tanked as well. It must be ranking page 1 but now mostly ranking Page 2, 3 or more
• Ranking page 1 as Google Place for some keywords
• Above Practices should be done here as well
• And its ranking Page 2 not 1 for Nursery franchise UAE on both google.com & google.ae

You need to work harder on both sites to make them recover real time. Feel free to ask if any question!

Happy New Year!

Regards

[MikeRoberts]

Nope, that wouldn't cause a blanket penalty on the term. Just didn't have the time that ImWaqas had to go over things in-depth but wanted to at least point that out since I had the chance. Take a look at all the things ImWaqas stated to help fix your major site issues.

[LeanneSEO]

Thanks for that! Very detailed and much appreciated.

Manual link removal began last month with little luck (no replies / email bounce backs) disavow was issued at the same time but who knows when that would happen! I know the links are a major issue but it is very much a waiting game.

Good thinking about the UK links, they have spent a lot of time developing the UAE but I am taking the linking strategy slow due to the issues.

Social media is also underway, we have just started the UAE campaign and will be on to the UK next week so, hopefully see some movement there too soon.

There is also a blog on the UK site which is updated usually twice a week, but I feel there are cross issues with that too which I will be looking into. But the fresh content is there weekly.

Nursery franchise UAE was in reference to the .co.uk site which within Google.co.uk is page 1, not for the .ae site which is why I wondered about the initial question.

Seems we are doing all we can so far!

[Asjad]

Welcome Leanne!

Try to remove manually and disavow which you could't remove! This certainly takes time. Even after removal and disavow, it will take some time to get things going!

Try local UK Links. Starting with Top UK directories like Yell, Yelp & others, you can move to few guest posts possibly! No Money Anchor Text Just a reminder!

Social Media is going to help in big time! Use Hash tags to get real time shares & like of pages!

Ok with content but try to make it more frequent!

Regards