Geotargeting in Webmaster Tools - Is there an expected ranking benefit in the geotargeted region ?

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

Is there an expected ranking benefit from geotargeting regional focused subfolders or domain mapped TLDs' in the target countries ? Or does it just prevent these pages from showing up in other regions search results ?

For example i have a client with a main .com site targeting english worldwide generally, then a /tr subfolder in turkish to target Turkey. Then another subfolder /de targeting german in germany (but the de has also been domain mapped to .de top level domain too). Im leaving the main .com site non geotargeted since its job is to achieve english language results wherever possible and wandering whether to geotarget the turkish subfolder & german tld

The Turkish regional subfolder & the German tld are achieving some ranking results already in their target countries googles, but also getting traffic from other countries too (which im happy to get, dont really want to stop this traffic unless there really is a local region ranking benefit for the main target country by gwt geotargeting).

So should I use GWT international targeting tool or not ? Since the tld site is clearly on a german domain with german language pages and the Turkish subfolder /tr site is in Turkish the i presume Googles got no probs working this out which is demonstrated by the regional & language ranking results

So I presume if achieving results in target countries already then no real need to set international taregt in GWT especially if it may stop traffic from other regions too. BUT if its likely to improve those rankings further in the main target countries googles significantly then i would happily cut off or reduce the other region traffic in favour of higher rankings and hence targeted traffic from the main target country

.All Best

Dan

[Toddfoster]

Hello Dan,

From what I understand of your post, I think you're on the right track as it stands. As far as I know, there is no staggering benefit to be had by making the change in GWT. The only way this might change would be if you were representing a local brick-and-mortar business in one of the above countries which was centered in a specific city or region (but not international).

If your client has a centralized location in Turkey or Germany (only in Istanbul or only in Berlin, for example), you might consider geo-targeting the regions surrounding those cities and see what results you get. I don't think this is a major factor, however, and it isn't likely to provide you with extremely advanced rankings. This is especially true if they service the country as a whole (instead of a single region).

As you pointed out, Google seems to have no problem understanding what your client is about in regards to Turkish and German rankings. If these rankings are moving in the direction you want them to, I would focus on that instead of altering your approach and risking losing what you have built up thus far. If you seem to hit a ceiling and can't reach the rankings you are gunning for, perhaps that would be the time to make small alterations to your approach and see what transpires.

For now, I would leave it be.

Best regards,

Rob

[Dan-Lawrence]

Once again Robert, Many thanks for confirming that !

All Best

Dan

[DirkC]

Hi Dan,

As far as I know geo targeting in Webmastertools in only possible on the domain level (and only for generic tld's like .net, .com,...etc). I agree with Robert, in your case I would certainly not do it, as you try to attract 3 different countries with one TLD.

For one of the Spanish sites I manage we tried the geo targeting in GWT, but it didn't seem to give specific benefits. The only measurable effect we noticed was that the traffic from S-America was decreasing (slightly) , but there was no increase in traffic from Spain. We didn't experience a significant increase in rankings in Spain either, so we removed the geo targeting (this site had quite generic content, so not really linked to a specific location in Spain).

We still have the geo targeting active on a shop specifically targeting the Spanish market, but we still get approx. 45% of our traffic from S-America (which from our perspective is useless traffic as we don't ship to these countries)

Dirk

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi Dirk

i had heard it was possible to geotarget sub domain and sub folders by setting up new profiles for them, but havnt tried to yet but pretty sure its possible

In this case its trying to attract 2 different regions/areas via one tld: worldwide english with the domain.com, then Turkey via domain.com/tr. Then there is a domain.com/de subfolder with German content but thats domain mapped to domain.de so is essentially a second TLD to target German language and region.

Thanks for sharing that interesting info, i think for the moment at least and as you and others have suggested not to tinker with geotargeting in GWT yet and see how things develop first

All Best

Dan