How To Target Country-Specific Website Traffic

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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.

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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

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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:

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.

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.

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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:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

111 thoughts on “How To Target Country-Specific Website Traffic”

  1. Amit Kumar

    Hi, what we need to know in details is how to geo-target particular “blog post” or “Page” (as I have learnt that creating the post in page ranks faster). While writing Post in blogger can we use the location part and change the country, will that help? What If I want to work only on the Post and target particular country and Also can we target the specific number of countries (like US and Aus) simultaneously in a post? Pardon my ignorance if you already have an article on this particular topic, but am unable to find it in your website.

    Thanks.

  2. Deepak

    Hey, harsh,
    can I give competition to other countries like the USA through my .in domain, did it make me hard to rank in the USA with a .in domain.

    1. Shukhwant

      It’s better to use .com domain extension to rank in other countries like USA.

    2. Khaja

      Hi, Harsh, as you have .in domain, its India ccTLD you can not target to the USA location but you can target to any geo-location in India. For USA location you need to have .com domain.

    3. Chukwuka Solomon

      They have said it all. It is better to use a TLD extension like .com, .net or .org

  3. Sulav+Sapkota

    I was confused if I should Geo-target specific country in the google webmaster tool or not. That video you put definitely helped cure my confusions a bit.
    She said , we can geo-target not only the root domain but any specific pages only. That latter part was new to me. Do you have blogs showing how we can target individual pages to specific geography?If so , please do share.
    All in all , thank you for this blog.

  4. Pankaj Sarma

    I purchased a country specific domain with the extension .us ( I wanted to target US traffic)
    My friends are saying that my domain will get banned as I am not a resident of the United States. Being an Indian will I face any problem in future?

  5. Ravi Kant Jha

    I have been following Neil Patel Blog since long time ago to learn something unique. But after reading this blog I become a fan of you.
    Many many Thanks, Harsh Agrawal Sir.

  6. Jesal

    Hi Harsh,

    Thanks for the valuable information!!

    Just wanted to check that from google.co.in how do we search topic like “best camera” for the specific country like US. I have also tried to search it with google.as or google.ca, but it is still showing India results.

    Appreciate your help on it.

  7. Dhanpat

    Harash,

    You have listed out all the great things. I am doing SEO for an inbound travel agency based in India. Target country is US but business is based in India. I find it difficult to get listed in local business in US. Similar way the google places listing is also on India based address as company is based in India. What is the best way in your opinion in situation like this ?

  8. Dev Bambhnaiya

    Hi harsh
    Thanks for this amazing post. My blog on tech niche please suggest me usa or india , which is best target country for tech niche.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Dev
      If your target is also to make money, you should target USA. However, you could find a perfect balance where you get traffic from both the countries.
      Suggestions:

      Android apps popular in India
      iOS Apps popular in USA

  9. Nishant

    Hello, Harsh. Thanks for the article.

    I was in this turmoil of how to customise my online strategy based on the target geography. I believe that there are a couple of takeaways from this article. Mainly, getting backlinks from Indian sites (sounds challenging), and changing the settings in search console, need to try how it’s going to help.

  10. Erez

    what a great post. Thanks for sharing.

    I have a question: how do you set Google webmaster tool to target multiple countries?
    It only give you an option to target one country.

    1. Erez

      I skipped the YouTube video earlier. I just watched it and I got my answer.

    2. Harsh Agrawal

      @Erez
      You can set only one country as main country & if your domain is not geo specific & relevant to other geo’s, you would also rank on other Geo location.

  11. Dev Shankar Ganguly

    Hello Harsh,
    After reading the blog I realize that I made few mistakes in the past, so thank you for your concerned advice to us for the improvement in near future. I found the blog is helpful to me.

  12. Sachin Rathore

    Hi Harsh it was great information. But i need information about How to Create back links to a website.

  13. Rahul Chaudhari

    Hey Harsh, Thank you for this detailed information, I am planning to start a website for affiliate marketing which should target only USA visitors as I am signed up to couple of USA based affiliate programs and I am sure this guide will help me in setting up the things. I am also using the facebook ads to target audience.

    Thank you again.

  14. Harikrishna Kundariya

    Hello Harsh,
    I read your Article…..Really Great work
    but, harsh problem with my website is that my website is top in India and I want to top in the USA, My website domain is .com

    Big confusion is that My keyword(Website Design Company & Website Development Company) is top in India, but even not show in USA SERP,

    please give me some suggestion…

    awaiting for your valuable feedback

    Thanks

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Harikrishna
      Generate backlinks from U.S. based sites. Also, make sure your site language is written in the native American style. However, you should do this with caution as making major changes may lead you to lose your existing ranking in India.

  15. Vishal

    Hi harsh
    Thanks for this amazing post. My blog on tech niche please suggest me usa or india , which is best target country for tech niche.
    And also tell, …..in shoutmetech which target country you use in search console…

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Vishal
      USA is any time better.

  16. Diandra Ayu

    I have a lot of reading and implementing SEO techniques, I hope to use this way can increase traffic on my blog which is located in Indonesia.

  17. Junaid Shahid

    Hey thanks for this amazing informative post, I like to implement your all advise. Now I’m using the webmaster target feature and move on the google trends to increased the traffic from the US, you can see that in my alexa I have set my rank status to US but not getting enough traffic to be ranked in that country.

  18. Dhivian

    Excellent article. I have been searching for this information for a while now. I am in South Africa and want to target the U.S with a new blog. Is a .com domain appropriate, or should I get something else? If I use the methods in the article, will my website only be visible in the u.s ? Thank you !

  19. anikate

    great sir its been quite a long time that i started reading your blogs,they are really helpful

  20. Zahid Ahmed

    Think a topic related to blogging and Harsh is ready with the answer. The best part about your blog posts is that they are easy to understand. I always enjoy reading your posts on blogging.

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