Google ranking my site abroad, how to stop?

[FDFPres]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a UK based ecommerce site, that sells only to the UK.  Over the last month Google has started ranking my site on foreign flavours of Google, so I keep getting traffic coming to my site from Europe, America and the far east that we could never sell to, and as a result bounce is going up and engagement is going down.

They are definitely coming to the site from google searches that relate to my product type, but in regions I do not service.

Is there a way to stop google doing this?  I have the target set to UK in WMT, but is there anything else I can do?  I worried about my UK ranking being damaged by an increasing overall bounce rate.

Thanks

[zeepartner]

Nope, you can't. But you can go to Webmaster Tools > Settings and set your geolocation to the UK. This won't stop your page being indexed in other countries, but might probably put the emphasis on UK results.

But I don't see what the problem is with ranking abroad. In general, it doesn't hurt to get traffic, even if it's non-converting. Or do you get too many requests that won't lead to sales?

[FDFPres]

Hi Philipp,

Thanks for your response. As I said already I have put UK as my target in WMT (web master tools).

The problem is that as soon as you arrive on my site it is pretty clearly UK only - and it is a furniture site, so who in their right mind would try to buy a 3 door wardrobe from over 1,000 miles away!  hence they leave almost immediately and my bounce is going up.

[zeepartner]

if the problem is that those visitors from abroad are making your analytics data less valid, try to make a filtered profile where only visitors from the UK are included.

But unfortunately, there is no "local type" robots.txt where you can block specific countries. you could ban certain IP ranges from accessing your site but i wouldn't recommend that...

[RobertFisher]

Andrew,

I can understand that you are concerned re the bounce rate, but you are likely over-concerned where you do not need to be. The reason is no site is losing ranking to bounce rate. Yes, there is a very low amount of debate on this, but I do not see it in the day to day and I look over a lot of sites. First, with your WMT settings as you have them, Google knows where your market is.

So, to help you feel better, do this: Take a look at your non UK traffic. Is the high bounce rate coming from there? If so and if the algorithm takes it into account (it does not), then the algorithm also takes into account the bounce is from other than your proclaimed market. (The increase in BR).

Worry about  your traffic in the UK - is it up or down? Is your time on site increasing or decreasing? How many page views are you getting over time? Have you gotten your content to a place where it is not the same descriptions and images as others selling the same furniture? Then, or before, how are you converting? Are your sales good? Increasing? Decreasing?

Last question is this. Assume for whatever reason, that a crazy Yank goes to your site and sees a lovely divan he wishes to purchase and is willing to pay $1,000 to ship it to Texas... Would you let him?

Best to you,

Robert

[irvingw]

You can add a couple of signals such as meta language tag globally

and also in the footer make sure you have your address listed globally on the site, UK, United Kingdom, Great Britain, whatever variations you can include are all hints to Google as to where your business is.

Also, I agree with Robert, worry about the behavior of your qualified regional traffic  and not cutting off traffic from other regions just because of bounce rate and time on site. I'd personally prefer the traffic and visibility.