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A common but difficult question was asked at HighRanking Forums about the issue of targeting different countries.
My advice for when it comes to targeting different countries is almost always to have two different sites on TLDs (top level domains) that match that country. So if you want to target the US and the UK, have one US site on the .com and one UK site on the co.uk and make sure your content is localized for that market. It might help to also host each site in that region, plus it is always good to set the geographic target for the UK site in Google Webmaster Tools (I would leave the US version untargeted in webmaster tools).
High Rankings administrator, Randy, adds:
When you're using a .com domain name you're not really targeting the US market. You're targeting the entire world. It's one of those double-edged swords we Murcans get/have to deal with. In that .com is a Worldwide competition. Not a US one.The good edge of the sword being that since pretty much all US based sites use .com (as opposed to the almost never used .us) you end up with decent worldwide rankings if you get good rankings you can see from your PC from a US location. The bad edge of the sword being that if you can't compete in a worldwide market, you're basically screwed. Then the only thing left to you is your very, very localized market.
Forum discussion at HighRanking Forums.
Comments:
SEO Question
02/11/2009 03:15 pm
If you have two sites, in two different countries, that have different languages then could duplicate content a problem? By this I mean if you have an English site and translate it exactly into French site then will duplicate content an issue?
Barry Schwartz
02/11/2009 03:33 pm
SEO Question, I am pretty sure that won't be a duplicate content issue.
Olinda Luksen
03/18/2010 01:40 pm
Question: If I have a German website .de and I am launching a Swiss website .ch and host it in Switzerland but the content is the same. Will that be seen as duplicate content?
No Name
07/12/2010 05:02 pm
Olinda, is the content being translated from German to Swiss? If so, then the content will NOT be seen as duplicate. Just make sure you translate it by hand and not by software -- check out: http://www.seobywebmechanix.com/international-seo-does-translating-content-make-it-duplicate/ for more details.