The Netpreneur Blog

Are you an Aussie online business owner with a site targeted to people in Australia? Do you have non-.com.au domain name extension and is your site hosted on a server outside Australia?

If so – are you having trouble ranking on Google.com.au search, or perhaps even just getting listed, yet you’ve observed all the basics of good optimization techniques?

It’s a common problem; but a feature provided by Google may help you improve your rankings – totally legitimate, no shady SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics involved.

My own example of tanked Australian rankings

I’m based in Australia (Adelaide), but  my site; TamingTheBeast.net, is a non-Australian domain name and it’s hosted on a server in the USA.

If you run a search on Google.com using this keyword set:

web marketing adelaide

..my site should be listed on the first page where it’s been for years; well – let me clarify that – it was still there at the time of writing – Google giveth and Google taketh away and perhaps it’s done the latter by the time you read this article .

Now try the same search via Google.com.au, selecting the “pages from within Australia” radio button. My site is not in the top ten results, not even in the first 100 results. If I was depending on search engine traffic from the local market; I would have been toast a long time ago and certainly wouldn’t be able to work full time from home as I have done for the last 6 or so years. A first page ranking is so crucial for generating appreciable traffic.

So why such a difference? Why is it that I rank so highly for exactly the same term on a list of results double the size of the local results; yet on the local search results I’m nowhere near a ranking that would provide me any benefit?

It’s partly, and predominantly in my opinion, because Google weighs the domain name country extension and where a site is physically hosted as part of calculating ranking in Australia-specific searches. The term “adelaide” just doesn’t have any real ranking power in this type of search unless it’s associated with a local domain name (.com.au) or the server is located here.

Previously when this occurred to site owners, they’d usually have to redo their site with a new .com.au domain name, new content and host it on an Australian based server – basically starting from scratch. Thankfully, Google last year decided to provide an easy to use tool so you can manually flag which country your site should be associated with; regardless of extension and server location.

To make the geographic association, you’ll need to log into/register with Google Webmaster Tools, then click on the “tools” tab, select “set geographic target” and select your country from the list. Nice and easy – then it’s just a matter of crossing your fingers and waiting.

If you haven’t come across Google Webmaster Tools before, it’s a free service provided by Google to assist webmasters in diagnosing potential site problems, monitor how Google crawls and indexes your site and to gain some insight regarding the visitors who arrive on your site via the search engine.

Important points to consider

Only apply this feature site-wide if your online business caters primarily to the Australian market as it may have a negative effect on rankings in the general Google results. Notice I stated “site-wide”. More on that in a moment.

An issue to certainly consider before taking this action is how many people might be using the Australian specific Google search currently; i.e.; does your target market use the general Google search first and then only switches to the “pages from within Australia” if they can’t locate what they want?

If you have solid rankings for a chosen term in the general Google search, you may do yourself a rankings injury as you’re not guaranteed the same placement in the “pages from within” results. It’s important to bear in mind that the search engines will do as they wish; constantly changing and tweaking their ranking algorithms; so what works today, may not work tomorrow..

In my opinion, you should only do this if you aren’t ranking well on either search and Australia is your primary market – consider it a near last ditch effort if all else has failed before you start your site from scratch with a .com.au domain name, fresh content and hosting on an Australian server.

.. but there’s another great feature in Google Webmaster Tools that may help you if you don’t want to risk your general Google search rankings, yet want to try and boost your Australian traffic.

While specifying more than one country for a site isn’t possible in Google Webmaster Tools, you can choose a different country for each subdomain or folder. This being the case, an alternative and safer approach may be to create some fresh, totally unique and very Australian targeted content in a new folder within your web site; then flag with Google that folder as being Australia specific.

Switching web hosts

Geographic association is something you need to be very conscious of when moving to another web host if the local market is your primary interest. Just because a web hosting company may have an office in Australia, it doesn’t mean the servers are located here – in fact, you’ll often find the host’s servers are based in the USA.

While this is worth checking into before making a change of hosting provider; Google’s safety net of being able to manually associate a site with a geographic region provides somewhat of a safety net.