So, you’re doing SEO and getting good rankings in Google.co.uk. Great.
But your target audience is also based in Australia – how can you start ranking well in the Australian version of Google as well?
For these examples, let’s say the website you have that ranks well in Google UK is mysite.com and is hosted in the UK.
Option 1: Set up a .com.au website (most effective)
For maximum impact, set up a mysite.com.au website. And then host it in Australia.
The IP address and top-level domain (TLD) will tell the search engines that the site is based in Australia and that it will probably be targeted at an Australian audience.
If you set up a .com.au website, you’ll need to make sure that the content is substantially different from any other sites you have so you don’t have any duplicate content issues. So treat them as separate websites, even though Google and the other search engines say they won’t get the .com and.com.au sites mixed up (they sometimes do).
You should also target other.com.au sites in your link-building efforts – another signal to the search engines that your site is aimed at Australia.
Addresses, postcodes, city names, country names, telephone numbers etc can help tell the search engines where a site is located and aimed at. So mysite.com.au would have a Australian address on the footers of the page and in the contact us section and vice versa for mysite.com site.
Option 2: Set up targeted directories on mysite.com
This is a bit like setting up a new site, but less hassle. Although it won’t have such a good impact on rankings.
Set up a new directory, for example at mysite.com/aus.
You can then set up a separate Google Webmaster Tools account for this directory, and then set the geographic target as Australia. But note that you can’t do this for .co.uk sites.
Then follow the link-building and address, postcode etc guidelines from option 1 for all content in this directory.
But make sure content isn’t duplicated with content on other parts of the site.
Option 3: Further optimise mysite.com (least effective)
If you don’t have the resources to write new (unduplicated) content and set up a new domain or directory, you can make some amends to your current .com site.
Just make sure your changes don’t affect your rankings in Google.co.uk, and don’t alienate your UK users.
For example, you could mention your Australian office address on your contact us page, or in the footers across the whole site.
You could also mention across the site that you serve customers in the UK and in Australia and make sure some your links come from Australian sites – anything that gives a hint to the search engines (and your users and potentially links) that you should rank in the UK and in Australia.
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