My client is a UK based company but the sell items worldwide. Their current website gets quite a bit of traffic from the UK, US, India and so on. However, now they want to get much more exposure to the US market. How would I SEO or market the website to US internet users? Would I create an American version of the website (with American spellings) - in which case Ild get slammed by Google for duplicate content. Would I host a minisite on a server based physically in America? How do the blue chip companies SEO their website for overseas markets?
Ild appreciate your comments. Thanks.
We don’t have physical locations there, however, we do have distributors. These distributors/suppliers, are listed on the website. (Although we would rather people came to us direct than use one of our distributors - hence why we want to get the site well ranked on other country-specific versions of Google).
If we were just targeting the US, then it would make sense to display prices in dollars and pounds. But we want to target many different countries, so it woudl be unfeasible to display prices in all currencies.
On average, our site displays around 5 positions down for each keyword than what it displays on google.co.uk. That’s a rough guide. Other sites that display above us in google.us are a 50/50 split between UK companies selling to the US and US companies. The UK company websites dont display prices in dollars, and its not immediately obvious that they sell to the US. In fact, they dont seem to do anything to show that they sell internationally. The landing pages displayed are the same landing pages displayed in google.co.uk.
On our website, we have a ‘How to buy’ button on each product. When the user clicks this they are taken to a page of countries that we supply to. The user can then click on that country to see all of our suppliers in that country. This is more than what our competitors seem to do.
So in conclusion, there doesnt seem to be any ideas I can glean from competitor websites. I suppose on each product page I could list the countries that we supply to.
I’m assuming that you don’t have physical locations there, but you just ship internationally from your HQ? The first thing is to make sure your text makes it clear that you sell in the US, quote prices in US$, that kind of thing.
Apart from that … what are your competitors doing? If you search from google.us, where does your site appear in the rankings? Are the sites that appear above yours equally relevant to the query? Are they principally based in the US rather than just selling in the US?
They design and manufacture specialist electronic weighing devices which are used in civil engineering projects. They currently supply companies in the US, India and Asia. The current website is in English, but they want to target US companies and encourage greater online traffic from the US. They will then want to target India and encourage more online traffic from India etc…
How best to do this? The content doesnt need to change (they offer the same products to every country), but how can I tailor the website for each of these countries?
First off, what kind of industry are you involved in? Is it:
[list][]one where you provide services online (in a completely global market)
[]one where you provide services online (but they are specific to certain countries)
[]mail order sales
[]other?[/list]
Trying to follow these steps which are given below
Keyword Research : Find perfect keywords which are searchable in locally .
Submit your website to local search engine, local directories, yellow pages and local classified.
Get listed on local listening like Google maps, Yahoo! local search etc
Target US People only, Use GEO Process & Top quality inbound links to create top quality traffic.
Submit your site to right category.
This is easy, find websites related to your niche, ask them for link partnership (free), or do paid advertising. It’s not hard, just need tons of work, are you willing to do it?
Speaking about advertising, try approaching ad online agencies and networks clearly stating your target geo and demo and niche, they may offer some valuable resources for you to advertise on.