How to Rank Website in Specific Country?: Ever thought, how some of your business rivals are getting 5X ROIs or at least doubled conversions?
Well, maybe they have just learned the secret of tapping into the SEO marketplace of the target country or specific region…
Or, to dominate the local SERPs of that specific country.
Country-Specific Localised SEO = Faster Lead Conversion
Did you know?
Local or country-specific SEO has a very high conversion rate compared to global SEO, primarily due to the specific search intent of the local users.
Studies and research show that almost 80% of local searches lead to conversions, and approximately 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases.
Now, imagine the SEO success for your website if you can make it secure the top spot on the SERPs of a specific country/region that you target.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to today’s blog, where you will be learning how to rank website in specific country so that your brand/website can reach the right audience and result in a powerful lead conversion game.
Why Geo SEO Matters More Than You Think!
Ok…so, let’s simplify this first.
Imagine the Search Engine Result Page as an industry marketplace, full of tough competition and business rivalries between leading brands.
Now, getting your site featured on the global SERPs is like turning the corner because your business website’s gonna fight against the top-rated industry giants, already securing the top spots.
But country-specific SEO can turn the tables for you!
Country/Region-Specific Strategy➡️SEO Success Unlocked
By targeting a specific country or region, you already narrow down the vast global competitive marketplace to a few selected audiences. Now, your site’s ranking potential is already much higher as the number of competitors is reduced significantly.
Adopting a country-specific SEO approach will not only help you to reach a specific and qualified audience, but also allow you to tap into their emotions and consumer psyche, resulting in more traffic generation and lead conversion.
✔️Increased visibility
✔️Enhanced user experience
✔️Improved audience trust
✔️Stronger brand reputation
✔️Competitive advantage
✔️Improved conversions
✔️Long-term SEO growth
This country-specific approach will bring your brand closer to the residents as you will communicate with them directly, in their own language, address their unique needs just the way they want, and offer them a personalised solution that aligns with their cultural identity, beliefs, contexts, norms, & reference.
This is way more than just a generic SEO approach…
This is specific, relatable, relevant, and effective.
9 Ways To Rank Your Website In Specific Countries
👉Start with Understanding Country-Specific Search Intent
For a wider and more effective brand reach to the target audience in a specific country or region, you need to understand the search intent of the country-specific users.
A thorough industry niche & market research and tracking the country-specific search engine queries will help your brand navigate cultural nuances, set the pricing structure according to local economic factors, identify the competition gaps & implement SEO strategies accordingly, and run your SEO campaigns while following the legal and regulatory framework.
So, identify what the users are searching for and try to analyse how their search queries differ from the global ones. This alone will help you optimise your website to get it featured on country-specific SERPs.
Note: Use specific tools to get better insights into the types and patterns of the country-specific search engine queries, such as Google Trends, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Advanced Web Ranking tools, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, etc.
👉Practice Country-Focused Keyword Research
Frankly speaking, basic word-to-word translation of the target keywords won’t help you much!
So what’s the drill?
You need to localise your target keywords in a way that they match the native language of the target country and the search behaviours of the target audience.
Need quick tips? Here they are:
✔️Identify the target markets/countries/regions
✔️Understand local search behavior & cultural nuances
✔️ Analyse competitor websites within your target country/region
✔️ Select localised long-tail keywords with low competition & high conversion rates
If you track the performance of the localised keywords using analytics tools, you will get a clear idea of what’s going for you and what’s going against your site.
Be prepared to adjust your keyword strategy because more experimentation with the keywords will help your site get ranked on country-specific SERPs. The local trends are evolving every single day. So, make sure your SEO strategies are on par with the local SEO guidelines.
👉 Optimise Your Website for Country-Specific SEO Signals
The best way is to use country-specific domains (ccTLDs), subdomains, and subfolders because they strongly signal your site’s geographic relevance to the search engine. This results in higher rankings on the country-specific Search Engine results.
…and what else do you get?
✔️Increased user trust
✔️ Localised branding/website promotion
✔️Protection from domain impersonation
Also, choose a clear URL structure for your website that clearly indicates the specific country/region you are targeting. Once Google identifies your URL domain, it will start indexing your webpages faster, making it visible specifically to the SERPs of the target country.
👉 Optimise Your Content Strategies Accordingly
If you have a target country in mind, then you must implement a country-specific content marketing strategy that aligns with the cultural cues, buying habits, website navigation patterns, audience preferences, and legal rules & guidelines of that specific country/region.
The content marketing strategies that work in your country might fail completely in your target country. So, you need to adopt a different marketing approach so that your website and its content relate to your target audience and speak to them directly, and present the information just the way they want.
✔️Research the cultural and local norms in your target country
✔️Stay informed about their festive seasons or holidays
✔️Adapt design layouts for language expansion or RTL formats
✔️Understand the local search intent
✔️Decode the local symbollisms & adapt to their communication style
✔️Research regional keywords and try to incorporate them in your content
✔️Try to be active on the popular users’ platforms as much as you can
✔️Align your content formats according to the local buyers’ journeys & behaviour
By optimising your marketing strategies this way, your website not only gets featured on the country-specific SERPs but also helps you stay search relevant, resulting in increased audience engagement and organic traffic.
👉Create Content Relevant to the Target Country
This is way easier than it sounds…trust us!
All you need to do is develop a clear understanding of the local culture and audience, their search preferences, intent, pain points, and the type of content they are looking for.
So, when you draft content targeting the specific audience of the target country, it will be much more localised. Not only will the local audience relate to your site’s content faster, but it will also align with the cultural nuances way more effectively, increasing the possibilities of getting ranked at the top of the SERPs.
Wanna Check Out The Steps: Here They Are
✔️ Analyse your competitors’ site
✔️Identify the most popular type of content in your target country
✔️Track the local hashtags/conversations
✔️Understand the sentiment of the audience
✔️Opt for localised surveys, interviews, & group discussions for direct feedback
✔️Research the country-specific niche-oriented keywords/phrases
Once you do these, you will get a rough idea of the crucial metrics you need to keep in mind while drafting your site’s content. Next, try to adapt your content’s style & tone accordingly, use local references, expressions, and incorporate local keywords in your content. To make it even more relatable, add visuals, images, videos, or infographics relevant to the country-specific search intent.
However, make sure that your site’s content is not a literal translation of the original copy and stay away from discussing culturally sensitive topics.
👉Implement Technical SEO for Country Targeting
Most of the things we have already done before.
So, now the first thing you need to do is to implement an hreflang tag to specific webpages. This will signal the search engine about the particular language-speaking audience you are targeting within a specific country/region.
This is more like an easy way to tell Google that you want to show a specific version of your webpages to specific audiences, based on their native language, cultural nuances, or regional guidelines.
What else?
Well, focus on page speed optimisation according to the most-used device of the users in your target country and the network speed and quality available there.
👉Build Country-Specific Backlinks
We can’t stress this enough!
These backlinks can literally skyrocket your website’s SEO score and trust us on this…
All you need to do is acquire high-quality backlinks from external resources or websites within your target country. They will signal the search engine that your website contains valuable information for your users and, hence, is reliable, authentic, authoritative, and worthy to get featured on the country-specific SERPs!
✔️Grab link-building opportunities from country-specific news portals/directories
✔️Get your website listed in country-specific directories/resource pages
✔️Reach out to the local media publications to get PR backlinks
✔️Perform targeted outreach to the bloggers/influencers popular in your target country via emails
✔️Never miss out on a chance to collaborate with local site owners/industry leaders
However, consider using a local hosting because this will significantly improve your search engine performance in that particular country or region. Building country-specific backlinks not just enhances your site’s local relevance, but also builds niche credibility and increases traffic generation to your site from that specific country.
Don’t know where to start?
👉Be All over The Country-Specific Social Platforms
Now, here it’s gonna be a little tricky for you!
By ‘social media platforms’, we don’t mean just the global platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
…and, we want you to be a bit more ‘country-specific’ here!
Start by identifying and researching the most relevant social platforms that are popular in your target country/region. You can use tools to find out the local preferences and try to get an idea of the type of content that creates maximum engagement on those platforms.
Also, try to engage in local communities as much as you can and participate in forums and group discussions. This will ensure a wider brand exposure and improved brand awareness, resulting in increased organic impressions and response from the audience.
👉 Country-Specific Citations for Ultimate Local SEO Wins
This is crucial, especially if you own a business…
Reaching your target audience in a different country is now even easier if you learn to build country-specific citations.
These basically refer to online mentions of your business’s Name, Address, & Phone number (NAP) placed on country-specific business listings and online directories. So, getting your business details listed in country-specific directories, Google Business Profile, and other business pages will help you build site authority & credibility, and improve your site’s visibility on the SERPs of your target country.
✔️Write a compelling business description that will be visible on the local listings
✔️Get ready with your brand logo, images, or any other visuals you want to add
✔️Decide on one specific NAP format & maintain that consistency across all platforms
✔️Claim & verify listings on major directories within your target country
✔️Target the industry-specific directories
✔️Do not ignore the local Chamber of Commerce website, new publications, & community blogs
✔️Keep a track of the directories where your competitors are listed & target those
✔️Use citation-building tools for a streamlined submission process
Each country has its own trusted online directories or business listing resources. Since the search engine relies heavily on these platforms to validate the online presence of a specific business, securing citations from such country-specific platforms will help your website reach a particular consumer market, resulting in increased search engine trust and local ranking accuracy.
…and once you earn the search engine’s trust, it will feature your site on country-specific SERPs.
Almost Wrapped? LOL, No, We Guess!
So, now you’re almost sorted, no?
You know all the nitti-gritties about how to rank a website in a specific country.
…and, we know you can’t wait to try these out and see your website at the top of the SERPs.
But wait!
Did you know?
Some of the costly mistakes can actually ruin your website’s SEO score forever.
Common Slip-Ups for Today’s Site Owners
❌Translating your site’s content directly
❌Neglecting the local keyword research
❌Inability to modify their SEO approach according to cultural relevance
❌Implementing incorrect hreflang tags
❌Choosing an inappropriate URL structure
❌Not using a local hosting
❌Redirecting the users automatically to a specific country’s page by IP address
❌Overlooking the local branding/marketing guidelines
Ranking a website in a target country and region requires a tailored SEO approach and strategic implementation. However, a tiny error might completely ruin your journey and prove to be fatal to your SEO efforts.
So, be aware of all these on-page, off-page, technical, design, marketing, and legal errors while optimising your website for country-specific search engines.
Rank It Now Or Regret It Later
Tell us one thing honestly!
Do you want to scale up your business?
Then, it’s time to get your website ranked on the Search Engine Result Pages and connect with your targeted local audience.
…because it’s either now or never.
Since you already know how to rank website in specific country, start implementing the proven techniques.
With thorough research of country-specific keywords, analysing the behaviour analytics of the local users, their search and engagement patterns, preferences & actions, and tracking the country-level analytics, you can optimise your website’s structure, content, layout, and all based on the cultural and legal guidelines of your target country.
So, it’s high time that you secure the top spot on the relevant search engines in your target country through a deeper user understanding, technical accuracy, and local trust-building.
Also, if you have any doubts, please feel free to comment below. We will revert back for sure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How to view a website in a different country?
Ans: The common way to do this is to use a VPN and change your IP address. VPN routes your internet traffic through a reliable server in another country, and you can navigate through all the websites in your target country. Also, you can change your browser’s location settings or use browser extensions for easier access.
Q2. How do I change search results to a different country?
Ans: Simply open the Google app on your mobile, desktop, or laptop, and click on “Settings” at the bottom right corner. Click on “Search settings” and then on “other settings”. Click on the arrow visible beside the option “Language and region”. Now you can choose your target country from the “Region Settings” and then click on “confirm” to save your settings on that device.
Q3. What is international SEO?
Ans: This is the process of optimising a particular website in a way that it ranks in the Search Engine Result Pages in different countries or regions. In short, international SEO helps your site reach a specific audience residing in a different country/region. The process involves rigorous localisation of the content, URL and site structure, layout, technical aspects, and more.
Q4. How do I reset my Google search region?
Ans: You cannot reset the Google search region, but you can choose your target country or region. Open the Google app on your device and click on “Settings”. Now, again click on “Search settings’ and then on the “other settings” option.
Click on the arrow found right beside the option “Language and region” and select “Results region.” Now, you can select the country that you want Google to show you results from and then click on “confirm.” Now, the search engine will show you country-specific results only.
Q5. Do Google search results vary on the basis of the target country?
Ans: Yes.
The search engine, Google, tracks a user’s location, language settings and shows specific results according to local relevance. By doing so, Google wants to ensure that the search results are specific to the user’s target country, valuable, and relevant.
