Targeting multiple geo locations with single site

[rahul11]

I am working on a project for three countries , i have geotargeted the the root directory to one location , and 2 sub directories  to the other 2 locations, its been more than a month but i dont see google acknowledging the same for the 2 sub directories while its has updated for root domain. Additional can you please share some tips for ranking a domain in gulf countries like UAE , saudi etc . because the regular stuff like directory submission doesnt seem to be working.

Would really appreciate ya suggestions & ideas

Thanks

[simon_realbuzz]

Have you created a site map for each of your sub-directories and set a geographic target for each in GWT? In addition, depending on your content, and if you are duplicating it across the three countries, this may be an opportunity to make use of hreflang in order that you can tell Google which pages are alternatives of one another in order that the correct ones in served in SERPs.

[rahul11]

Subdirectories for all locations are in the same language i.e English so , in this hreflang tag applicable for this .Will this also eliminate the content duplicacy issue as I tried rel= canonical tag , But I believe doing so stop indexing of the canonicalized pages , which I do not want .Thanks.....

[simon_realbuzz]

Using hreflang is ideal for your situation with all your sites are in English.  You may wish have have one site as a the default english language site and the other two targeted to specific countries (in this example UK and US).

Here's example of hreflang implementation to place in the head of your pages.

I would tread very carefully if using canonical with hreflang as Google no longer recommends it, although it doesn't rule it out comepletely either! Take a look at [this link](http://www.ingenuitydigital.co.uk/News/google-no-longer-recommends-relcanonical-hreflang-tags-1820.aspx) to find out more.