A common challenge facing many global organisations is how to present and optimise content for local markets and to gain additional benefit without a substantial increase in costs.
While it may make business sense to centralize content in one data centre using a single Content Management System (CMS), doing so will make it more difficult to rank well in the geographic based search engines for each market.
- Domain name
- IP address of the web server
- Content
- links
If all of the content is hosted on one server using a single domain name, the search engine may ignore the content all together. Alternatively, if the search engines see that the geographic domain name is hosted in the same location as the other global sites (with country specific domain names) they may come to believe that the content is duplicate and ignore it all together.
Note: While the search engines have publicly stated that hosting in a local market is not necessary if you’re already using a local domain name, our experience shows otherwise. In cases where we have moved the website from a centralised server to a local host we have seen a significant improvement almost immediately.
To achieve success from an SEO standpoint we recommend the following steps be taken:
- Use a country specific domain name (i.e. www.domain.co.nz)
- Host in the local market – Doing so will ensure the content is delivered from an IP address in the geographic location.
- Optimise the content based on actual search terms used by the local market
- Acquire links from the market your website is targeting to help build a unique link profile for the website
- Setup a new Webmaster Tools account in Google and Bing for each country domain name and select your local market.
- Localise the content for the chosen market to ensure it sells and does not offend the audience
- Use different content on key pages of each website such as the home page and main category pages to ensure the content is not seen as duplicate
While these recommendations require additional resources and budgets we strongly believe the extra effort and investment will pay off. In fact, we have had great success using this methodology for businesses operating in multiple markets.
Contact Amplify to assist with your international SEO strategy.