How to target specific geographic locations?

Anelly · Apr 23, 2009

Hi, i have a website that i want to promote in other countries. For example in France. I have a french version of the website but i don't know what i have to do. I don't want to spend the money hiring someone to do this. I would rather invest the money in buying some advertising packages.
Any suggestions?

bcmedia · Apr 23, 2009

Put it on a French domain and host it in France would be my first advice. Google adds weight to a local search based on server location and domain name (so you would be penalised slightly if its hosted on a London based server on a .co.uk name).

The logic for this is blindingly simple - if its relevant content to a country then chances are its hosted in that country!

Then do some keyword research for the French Market and implement a french SEO campaign! You also should consider other means of targeting the french markets by traditional means to support your online marketing efforts.

For Adwords advice on geo-targeting you can try my adwords training subscription, adwords traininghttp://www.bc-media.co.uk/Marketing-Online/adwords-training.htm

driansmith · Apr 24, 2009

Excellent summation of the situation. Good advice.

ukperson1 · Apr 26, 2009

Some quick comments:

- @bcmedia: Google local search actually requires registration using a french postal address and telephone no.

- Using a .fr domain name would not be a bad idea generally but I would view it more as a marketing thing. It will not make a huge difference.

- 'Advertising packages' as you call them will only be beneficial only if you advertise in websites relevant to your business sector. Anything else would not do much different I think.

- The best thing to do would be to a) translate your website in french b) do some seo research and c) optimise your website for search engines used the most in France. Of course this will cost, but it will also get you long term results without ongoing fees.

That's what I think. I hope the above help. Now, if you do decide to go down the french seo route I would actually recommend naxtech (www.naxtech.com). They're not cheap though.

bcmedia · Apr 26, 2009

You have to be a French resident to get a .fr domain in the first place so I was taking it as a given that you would been registered in France anyway (or know someone who can assist).

My old house mate made two guys millions of pounds buy up French domains & the reason they held such a monopoly on it was because none of the competition (from outside France) could get into the game due to these restrictions.

Pab · Apr 28, 2009

We recently decided to start promoting our services on the continent and started driving traffic via pay per click.

As well as having a properly translated website (machine translated websites are not good enough if you want your campaign and site to stand out) you need to get someone to conduct some keyword research (in french) for you.

We listed all of our keywords in English and identified the commonly used equivalents in the target language. Some translations were just literal and not relevant, others were somewhat colloquial but 100% relevant to our service. We then wrote ads with a native speaker, optimised our landing page and put the ads live.

We're lucky that we're a language company so we have the resources to do all of this in house. If you're not able to do this, but in some linguistic expertise. It's one of the best way to increase your chances of success in foreign markets.

nancy_18am · Apr 29, 2009

bcmedia said:
Put it on a French domain and host it in France would be my first advice. Google adds weight to a local search based on server location and domain name (so you would be penalised slightly if its hosted on a London based server on a .co.uk name).

The logic for this is blindingly simple - if its relevant content to a country then chances are its hosted in that country!

Then do some keyword research for the French Market and implement a french SEO campaign! You also should consider other means of targeting the french markets by traditional means to support your online marketing efforts.

For Adwords advice on geo-targeting you can try my adwords training subscription, adwords training

thanks alot i really got abenefit from that

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