Rel=alternate to help localize sites

[DRSearchEngOpt]

I am wondering about the efficiency of the rel=alternate tag and how well it works at specifically localizing content.

Example:

I have a website on a few ccTLD's but for some reason my .com shows up on Google.co.uk before my .co.uk version of my page.  Some people have mentioned using rel=alternate but in my research this only seems to be applicable for duplicate content in another language.  If I am wrong here can somebody please help me better understand this application of the rel=alternate tag.  All my research leads me to rel=alternate hreflang= and I am not sure that is what I want.

Thanks,
Chris Birkholm

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Thomas,

actually the rel="alternate" "hreflang" can be used also to define the region, apart the language.

That means that in your specific case you could use en-US (English version for USA users) - en-GB (English version for British users) - en-AU (English version for Australian users) and so on.

Then, in order to not have the .com site I suggest you to use the rel="alternate". More over, if the .com site is meant specifically for USA market, it would be also better to specify to Google that USA is the market in Google Webmaster Tools, because the contrary will mean that you are asking to it rank also in every regional Google, the .co.uk one too.

Others things that help search engines understand what site to present first in case like yours are the use of the local currency, address and phone numbers, but I don't know if it's your case. Also, your UK site maybe need a stronger link profile, especially rich in links by local authoritative sites.

Another "add on" is sometimes the use of the rel="canonical", but your doesn't seem the case where to use it

Finally, I give you a few links that could be helpful for you:

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/advanced-international-seo-rel-alternate-hreflang-x/13122011/ << A post by Adam Audette, of which I suggest you read also the comments;

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2137882/Newest-International-SEO-Challenge-Hreflang-Canonical-Tags << An interesting overview done in Search Engine Watch

[DRSearchEngOpt]

Gianluca,

Really appreciate the feedback here.  So the one thing I have a question of then is how this rel=alternate tag would look on my .com as this is where I am apparently getting a little confused.  I would basically  list my other English versions there correct and the same for my co.uk, etc...?

[gfiorelli1]

Not really so. In fact you need to use also the rel="canonical".

In order to not get you confused, I really suggest you to follow the implementations steps presented by Tim Grice in this post published on SEOWizz:

http://www.seowizz.net/2012/02/consolidating-link-signals-international-link-building-just-got-easier-maybe.html