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[daracreative]

Hi guys,We built 2 sites for a client called Kilsaran. 1. Kilsaran.ie targeting Ireland2. Kilsaraninternational.co.uk targeting the ukThe issue is with the uk version of the site is not appearing where it used to be on the SERPs on google.co.uk when you serach for either "Kilsaran" or "Kilsaran International". The Irish version kilsaran.ie now appears first.

• We have set the GEO targeting for the respective Countries.
• The .ie site is the original site with the longer History and much more domain authority, links etc
• There is no manual penalty appearing

So my questions is how do I get the English version to appear no.1on google.co.uk? Is it a case of building some local links? or should I implement geo ip detection?Another related question. What is the geo targeting tools function in GWT used for?ThanksRob

[Vizergy]

I think you need to set up some rel=alternate tags to let Google know that you have two versions of the same website because of 'language' differences (at least dialect differences).  I think Google may be seeing duplicate content in the newer website and just placing the older website in the serps in its place.

[PaddyDisplays]

"We have set the GEO targeting for the respective Countries"  I'm guessing you mean in WMTs.  Normally that is enough, but I think considering that the .ie is very strong compared the the .co.uk backlink wise, google is deciding that the .ie is a better result.

Just to be clear for me the .ie Is no.1 and .co.uk is no.2

I haven't looked at your backline profile but if you have alot of links from the UK pointing to the .ie domain, that could be working against your .co.uk ranking higher than .ie in the surps.  changing or adding local links to the uk site might swing to the No.1 spot.

You could use geo ip to auto redirect or maybe a light box popup asking if they want the uk or ireland site.  Note that alot of N.Ireland IPs register as London (thanks virgin media), and I have also heard some some UK ips registering as Dublin (isp servers in dublin),

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Hawk...

what you are describing is quite a common situation, one I see - for instance - in Google.es with South American Spanish sites outranking .es Spanish sites.

That happens when of two sites in the same language one has a much stronger link profile than the other. In those cases, the first site, even if it is clearly a different Country Level Domain Name (.ie in your case), will quite always outrank the local domain with a weaker link profile (the .co.uk in your case).

The only solution, apart strengthening the .co.uk site's link profile, is using the rel="alternate" hreflang="x-X".

That mark-up suggests to Google, on a URL by URL base, what URL to show to users depending on their language and location, so to exactly avoid, using your case, that an URL of  the Irish site will be shown instead of the UK one for UK searchers.

So, it's not a penalization problem, is just that your .ie site is too strong respect the .co.uk and because both sites are not technically optimized for International SEO.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Hawk,

I'm pinging in for knowing if you consider your question answered or not, so we can decide to close the question or ask more people in the community to offer their answers.

Ciao