Over time, I have shared many different ways to drive traffic to your website, but as most of us know, traffic from countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. convert better in terms of advertising and affiliate sales.
This is because of the “purchasing power” of users from these countries.
For many businesses, it makes sense to target traffic from specific countries.
But, how do we do that?
There are many factors that can help you to get country-specific traffic. For example, ShoutMeLoud is a popular blog in India & also globally.
I could actually work on targeting more U.S.-based traffic, but whenever I iterate my blogging business plan, I realize that it’s better to target an Indian audience as it provides less competition and a better supply: demand ratio.
There are very few blogs in India that teach how to make money from blogging in a practical manner. Being in this niche for several years, ShoutMeLoud has an advantage.
This reflects my particular case, but I’m sure there are many of you who are blogging for money, and you may want to target traffic from specific countries (like the U.S.A.).
In this post, I will share some ideas that will help you improve the traffic from your target country.
There is, of course, the easy solution of buying country-specific traffic, which can work in the case of commercial and e-commerce sites.
But for a blog, going natural is the best way.
7 Ways Of Driving Country-Specific Website Traffic:
1. Domain Name Extension
Top-level domain extensions like .com and .org usually rank higher on global search engines, but in order to have your blog or website target a specific country, buying a country-specific domain is always a good idea.
You may notice that most Aussie bloggers use the .au domain extension, ranking pretty high in Australian Google.
Similarly, for India, you can target .in as your domain extensions with good results in India. For traffic from the U.K. (United Kingdom), grab a .co.uk domain extension for the best results.
To preserve your brand, you can also buy other TLDs like .com or .org. But one major disadvantage of this idea is that you will find it very hard to rank on other country-specific search engines.
So, if your goal is clear and you know your target audience, a country-specific domain extension is your best bet.
- Here you can find a list of generic TLDs.
You can buy domains from NameSilo or Namecheap.
Also see: Where to buy cheap domain names from?
2. Google Search console Geo-Targeting
Update: Google team has removed this feature in August 2022.
Google search console, a free tool from Google for bloggers and webmasters, will be very helpful to a blogger or webmaster seeking country-specific traffic. This tool allows you to set which country your website is targeted to, which helps you get traffic from that targeted country.
Here is to use the country targeting feature of search console.
Login to Google search console
Click on international targeting under legacy tools and reports
3. Web Hosting Server Location
Another significant factor in driving geo-targeted traffic is your server location. If your target country for traffic is the U.S. (United States), you will want to host your website on U.S.-based servers. If you’re targeting traffic from Australia, host your website on Australian servers.
Example:
- U.S.-based servers: Bluehost, SiteGround
- India-based servers: A2Hosting
- Europe server: SiteGround, Kinsta
Other factors like CDNs also help to speed up your website in different countries, but to remain focused on your target, host your website only in the country whose traffic you’re targeting.
This will ensure that your website will load faster in that country due to the server’s IP, and search engines bots will be able to determine the location of your server.
All of this will help your site to rank higher in your target country.
4. Backlinks
When Google Search was launched, it used backlinks to determine the popularity of content. Much has changed over time, but the importance of backlinks remains significant. For this reason, it is a good idea to target country-specific backlinks.
For example, if your target audience is in the U.K., try to get more backlinks from U.K.-based websites.
You can get country-based backlinks by taking advantage of guest blogging opportunities, or by spending some time learning the art of blog commenting. Both methods are proven and Penguin-safe… if done properly.
5. Content Level Targeting
Your content is the main signal that Google uses to determine which country you are targeting. If you are targeting multiple countries with your generic domain name extension (.com, .org), add the country’s name in your posts’ meta titles and descriptions. This will not only make your content more keyword-targeted, but it will also give a clear signal that you are targeting a specific country.
Additionally, the kind of content and language you are using in your articles will also determine the ranking of your website.
We all know that readability is a known SEO factor, and if your language is following Indian standards, targeting U.S. traffic will be very difficult. For this reason, you need to be sure to improve your language for the specific country whose traffic you’re targeting.
You can also hire writers or editors from that specific country who have excellent writing and grammatical skills in that country’s language.
6. Local SEO Using Google my business
This may not apply to a generic blog, but if you are running a service blog or an e-commerce website, Google business is going to be very handy.
Claim your business in Google business, and add all related information such as an address, phone number, etc.
This will help Google to determine the location of your business.
You can also create social media profiles on various websites, and fill out the information in an effort to help you to get more local citations. You can use Knowem to check the availability of social media profiles.
7. Submit Website To Local Search Engines & Directories
I have previously shared a list of places to submit your website that are targeted to a global audience.
For country-based traffic, you should submit your website to local search engines and local web directories.
This will eventually become a very useful tool for getting country-specific backlinks, which will become a significant factor in determining the geo-location of your traffic.
8. Use Google Trends
As I mentioned previously, you should target your blog’s content toward keywords that are popular in a specific country whose traffic you are targeting.
For example, the keyword Bitcoin is very popular in India, but not in the rest of the world.
Try to find keywords that are popular with the audience in your target country, and craft a content strategy based on that.
For example, most iPhone blogs will have large chunks of traffic from the U.S. or the U.K, as the iPhone is more popular in those countries when compared to Asian countries.
Track Keyword Progress In Country-Specific Searches:
So far we have discussed techniques that you can use to target your website traffic for specific countries.
Next, you will need to keep track of the keyword’s progress in your target country. This will help you to find out which strategies are working and which are not.
When you identify a strategy that works, you can focus on that strategy and work on it to push it to the next level.
You can use SEMrush to check keyword rankings in particular countries.
Whenever you are writing a business plan for your blog, your targeted country should be at the top of your priority list. This will help you to efficiently plan your content marketing and guest blogging campaigns.
Do you follow any other methods to target website traffic for a particular country? Let me know in the comments section below!
If you find this article useful, do consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!
Here are a few hand-picked articles for you to read next:
- How to Remove Effect of Spam Backlinks Using Google Disavow links Tool
- 5 Mobile SEO Mistakes That Are Sabotaging Your Mobile Marketing Efforts
- The Ultimate Guide to Google Search Console
- How to Submit Your Blog’s Sitemap to Google Search Console
Although DNS settings and Geo-Targeting are great features in providing readily available content to your target audience, in your target region and Country etc., keep in mind of the number of HOPS.
Definition:
“An intermediate connection in a string of connections linking two network devices. On the Internet, for example, most data packets need to go through several routers before they reach their final destination. Each time the packet is forwarded to the next router, a hop occurs. The more hops, the longer it takes for data to go from source to destination. You can see how many hops it takes to get to another Internet host by using the PING or trace route utilities.
Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) advertise how many hops away from Internet backbone they are. Theoretically, the fewer hops it takes to get your data onto the backbone, the faster your access will be.”
Source: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/hop.html
The Content is really helpful for my website. I really worried about my traffic, because my website is based in INDIA but most of the traffic come from U.S. After Reading This Blog I decided to change my server. I will be happy if my website receive more traffic from india. If that happens 100% credit goes to you.
Thanks,
Ganesh
I was searching about targeted traffic and again your page on top. I have always come to ur page via Google search. Always helpful articles but today this particular article answered so many questions which were directly related to my website traffic and some other things like local listings and google trends and use of language etc etc. Thanks
I’ve been looking for ways to increase my US based traffic in order to meet requirements for certain ad agencies. This article is super helpful. Thank you!
But really, it seem to me that if you want to make money from online forum and blogging, you should consider targeting USA, UK and your local traffic comes without much work.
Yes I second that! but when you blog to a bigger audience, the competition becomes intense and it gets difficult to fetch money out of that!
If I am Target my Traffic USA then this is effect my indian visitors or my traffic
I really love your site, though your site taget is India as you said but I found that there are many keys of your site are in page 1-3.
I often come to your site because I can learn more and more from it.
Today I want to drive traffric from UK. so I lern from you again.
Thanks for very good work.
Hello
Looks like I have found another website owner with a lot of useful strategies for better website rankings. I have gained a higher proportion of my backlinks from India, hence more traffic. Today I have just geo targeted India in Google webmaster tools from UK, as looking for more visitors from India. With hosting in the UK, .com domain and a good lot of pages without country specific information I will experiment over time. Will be adding 30-40 pages of education related pages or other specifically using India content, hence India in the title. Will see how it goes. Thanks for all the good website information.
@harsh is new domains like .today .club . Guru all new domains introduced in 2014 are equivalent to .com and.in domain. Is there is any difficulty to rank them, please give your suggestion.
Actually the answer is No. Extensions doesn’t affect your website ranking.But your website’s SEO & Articles does.
Hi Harsh, I was Reading all your posts and I got stuck in this Post. I have Just started blogging with .in domain. As I read We can generate Good money If our targeted visitors from US or UK. From .in domain , Can I get traffic from US or not. If Answer is Not than Should I switch to .com domain and put my all posts on that domain or any other solution ???
hello Mr. RAJKUMAR thank you for stopping here to type a comment . it’s pretty difficult to get traffic from the USA with a .in domain.because .In domain is meant to get rank in the Indian search results . according to my, experience I am suggesting you for an upgrade from .in into a .com Domain and work smarter to rank in global search so that you will get a huge amount of traffic from countries such as USA,UK,CANADA etc
thanks Harsh for giving such an amazing piece of information here :*
This is one write up that has really made the traffic target much simpler for me. while reading, your post was like I am attending a seminar. Thanks
Is there any difference between .in and .co.in domain, when the focus of my web site only on India
Geo targeting is always works for country specific traffic. But comment and GP are new ideas. I didn’t know them ,
can a .co domain is batter then .in domain with use of webmaster tp Target Country Specific Website Traffic
Hi Harsh
Please answer my Question is .co domain with country target to India vs .in domain domain compete ?
@Rakesh
I’m unsure about it.. as I have never tried or read about .co domain experiment. For other domain extension, a .com domain with country target set as India can outrank .in domaine extension.
You have answered exactly my question what I was thinking. You are saying webmaster country targeting is more effective than country specific domain? Thanks Harsh…
This is an impressive stuff shared by you.
As I know, people do love to attract more traffic from the other countries like US, UK and Australia, because they are giving much better CPC than Asian countries.
Thanks for sharing this stuff. 🙂
I agree too….But is it good to target such country whose cpc valu is low as well as the comepetetion?
Harsh, i spoke to Bigrock recently about their server location and they told me even though its an indian company the server is actually in US but hostgator india have their servers in hyderabad and mumbai. Also how important do you think the server location is as a factor to get targeted traffic. my website has got country specific domain. Should i shift to an Indian server or does it suffice to have a .in domain to ensure my website lists in local search results.
@Swapnil
Thanks for letting me know about it, and I will remove Bigrock from the list, Server location is one of the factor, and it’s hard to determine how much weight-age Google will give to server location. I believe backlinks plays major role, as my site is hosted on U.S. server, but again a good chunk of traffic is from India.
You can ignore the server part for a while, and focus on other tips which I shared, and they should work for you.
Harsh, Google gives a significant weightage to server location. I had shifted to India based server and the traffic got doubled. Dont think twice before doing this experiment.
Hello; Thanks for a very thorough approach to this important topic. I do very well in the u s, u k, canada, and australia; but i need to do much better in china, latin america, and the former soviet union. do you have any specific suggestions for this problem? what is your opinion of offering different language versions of your site? do you have a particular wordpress plug in that i could use for this? take care, max
Wow, these are really great ideas! I noticed that the country where I get most visits from gets higher rank in that country. I’ll start these strategies from easier steps.
Thank so much for sharing!
Best,
Anup
That’a really nice post explaining how to get traffic from specific countrys and it is really useful for people using PPC model for blog monetization
as we know that the CTR also depends on the country from the the person who has clicked on the ad belongs to
I am not a big PPC publisher but some of friends who are getting most of their traffic from the US are making thousands of dollars and on the other hand others who get 2 times more the pagesviews are not able to earn much just because they are getting most of the traffic from India and other countries
Hi Harsh,
Thanks for the great tips. We can also use social media to bring in country specific traffic . For example : One can use Twitter to drive country specific traffic using #country & some other stuff too.
Works great in CPA for high epc offers.
Hey Harsh,
I am thinking I have got something new reading your blog. Thanks a lot for your researching writing. 🙂