Ranking a site in the USA

[SamCUK]

I'm UK based and looking at setting up a site to rank in the USA. As I understand it a .com TLD is best but these are used worldwide so do I simply need to set the geotargeting to USA in webmaster tools? Or is there a better domain to use?

With hosting the site in US and on page content related to US cities (I plan to create a page for each US city I operate in the the city name in the H1 tag) will that be enough for google to understand that the page should rank in the US version of google.

Also how can I view Google USA search results - when I go to google.com it automatically redirects to google.co.uk and I can only change the location on the left hand side to UK cities.

Any help much appreciated!

[Sangeeta]

Hi Samuel,

You've got most of the things right.

A .com domain works fine along with US hosting.

Just make sure you get links to your city pages from local US sites. Contribute to the local communities and get them talking about you online and Google will pick up the signal.

As for checking rankings, you can use Bright Local to set up your campaign. Its fairly accurate.

https://tools.brightlocal.com/seo-tools/local-search-rank-checker/tool

To check rankings manually, on the bottom right of your Google.co.uk screen you will see Google.com. Click that and the .com version opens. You can set your custom location in the left side panel.