The easiest way to boost your search traffic and tell Google that your site target a specific country is using a country domain such as “.us” or “.jp” and all the others. That way, Google understands that you want a specific country to see your posts, simply because it interests them.
When you use a top-level domain like “.com” or “.net”, Google will find extra ways to understand the best geographical locations that your blogs want to rank for. Search engines can use your server IP or other factors inside the articles like mentioning a country, your Google plus page or adding your address, and so on.
However, if you want to help Google to understand that you want to rank only for a specific country, then, use your Webmaster tools, but first, log in and find the “International Targeting” under the link “Search Traffic” as the following screenshot.
Please make sure to select the country tab next to the language one. Then select your exact country from the list and check the box to target users. Save the changes and all things will be saved in your account. In general, you will notice the changes in the next days.
Country targeting for a website search in Google is not hard, crawlers can see what country your site wants to rank for if you follow some basic recommendations. However, if you have a neutral top-level domain like “.com” then please don’t try to target your site for a specific country like the United States just to boost your traffic, the only case that you need to target your content is when you really offer exclusive content for this or that country. In some cases, Geo-targeting can bring lots of problems instead of improving your search appearance.
Remember that the main goal is to help the algorithm shows your site to the right people. For example, if you have a restaurant site in Rome, then, target your traffic to Italy and that’s will be better if the majority of your customers come from that country. On the other side, if you have a business website that works globally, then make sure to never touch the option of targeting and make your site-neutral for all countries.
For Bing, you can Geo-target your post or a specific URL in your webmaster tools. Just follow the previous link and you will learn how to set the option correctly.
Another good way to optimize your site for local search is to use the Google maps and all the other related services like Google plus for business and more. Add your real address on your contact page and the phone with your area code. This simple information will help your site to appear in the local search better than before. The only thing to consider is the quality of your website and follow the Google guidelines to protect yourself from spam content and so on. Then, you need to use your location at least once in your articles if they’re exclusive to that location.
Thus, you can help your site to get listed better in Google search and all the other search engines who use your site content data to rank it in the right place.
