Can Someone Explain How This Works Please?

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bearaman

bearaman

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Hi All,
I setup a website for my girlfriend for her acupuncture practice - Cork Acupuncture Clinic - Welcome to Cork Acupuncture Clinic: Acupuncture, Tuina, Cupping, Moxabustion, Stop Smoking Naturally. It's hosted with GoDaddy in the USA. I think I read somewhere on this forum that to get indexed with Google as an Irish site, I needed to host in Ireland OR use a .ie address. Since the site is doing neitheir, how it is indexed and ranked well on Google? Maybe someone with a bit of SEO and Google knowledge can explan.
Thanks,
Bearaman
 
paul

paul

Ninja
bearaman, you can try and get some inlinks to your pages that should help. But ultimately if you want to rank high for say "Acupuncture Cork" you shouldn't have too many problems, as you are already ranking for that on google.
 
L

louie

New Member
is ranking well in Google for what phases or words?

in Google.ie for

"Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in Cork" rank no.7 and is kind of your headline on the home page.

for just "Acupuncture" you are not on the first 4 pages and same for "Acupuncture Ireland"

What do you mean by ranking well?

The only reason you have page-rank 2 is because the domain is more then 1 year old (oct 2006), but you only have 10 pages in Google and Alexa rank is N/A (not really important)
 
bearaman

bearaman

New Member
Hi Folks,
Very interesting feedback, thanks.
I think I didn't phrase my question too well. I read on this forum somewhere than an Irish site that targets an Irish market such as Cork Acupuncture Clinic - Welcome to Cork Acupuncture Clinic: Acupuncture, Tuina, Cupping, Moxabustion, Stop Smoking Naturally needs to be hosted in Ireland OR be a .ie domain to be ranked well in Google. Is this true? Does it matter at all where I host my Irish sites?

Thanks for your very informative feedback.
Bearaman
 
paul

paul

Ninja
If you go to google.ie and do the "pages from ireland" your site probably won't show.

Google tailors regional searches based on some factors, and IP address (in ireland or the US or somewhere else) and TLD , all have more of a factor when listing on google.ie (even when you are not doing the "pages from ireland" search).
 
G

Gavin

New Member
paul said:
If you go to google.ie and do the "pages from ireland" your site probably won't show.
Click to expand...

I was just checking that and the site still shows.

For a business site targeting an Irish audience I would host it in Ireland and also use a .ie for various reasons.
 
R

RedCardinal

New Member
bearaman said:
Hi All,
I setup a website for my girlfriend for her acupuncture practice - Cork Acupuncture Clinic - Welcome to Cork Acupuncture Clinic: Acupuncture, Tuina, Cupping, Moxabustion, Stop Smoking Naturally. It's hosted with GoDaddy in the USA. I think I read somewhere on this forum that to get indexed with Google as an Irish site, I needed to host in Ireland OR use a .ie address. Since the site is doing neitheir, how it is indexed and ranked well on Google? Maybe someone with a bit of SEO and Google knowledge can explan.
Thanks,
Bearaman
Click to expand...
Now this one is very weird.
Was it always hosted on Godaddy?

If this is for real then I think we might have to consider that Google is doing something new. Mind boggles at this one TBH.

A couple of ideas spring to mind, but let's wait and see.
 
G

Gavin

New Member
paul said:
Are you using an Irish IP address, try one of those proxy sites or google translate ans see if it works.
Click to expand...

Yup an Irish IP but just after checking with a U.S. one and still see the site at #1.

RedCardinal said:
Now this one is very weird.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same when I first checked. It doesn't happen with one site I am looking at, as expected.
 
paul

paul

Ninja
I had one idea that maybe the took care of the address in the WHOIS info, but I see you use domains by Proxy, so I am back at square one.

Maybe G realises that Cork is a word that should be inherently linked to Ireland .
 
bearaman

bearaman

New Member
Thanks again for all this great information,
I had read about the "rules" before and thought it was strange that the site was doing well is searches for "acupuncture cork". Could it all be down to content?

At any rate, am I correct in saying that for any future sites that target an Irish market, I should host in Ireland OR use a .ie domain. Could I host in the USA and use a .ie domain?

The reason I ask is that I see hosting in the USA is way cheaper and feature rich that what's on offer here in Ireland. Hosting in the USA would be a big cost saver if I knew the sites would be easily found by Irish web searches.
Thanks Again,
Bearaman
 
V

Voytec

New Member
Google seems to 'geo-target' using many different factors including:
1) country specific backlinks
2) anchor texts of the backlinks
3) text surrounding backlinks
4) country specific domain
5) IP address of the server
6) address of the domain registrar
7) address displayed on the website
8) listing in Google Local
and who knows what else...

So having your site hosted in a different country should not be such a big issue these days. Still, it is much better to use .ie domain when you are only targeting Irish market (better for your clickthroughs, conversions and so on).
 
L

louie

New Member
Yes is true it's a lot cheaper to host a website in USA, but if you are really serious about your website and want to improve your IE ranking, I rec you should try get a host in Ireland. It is highly recommended from the regional SE point of view, plus there a few more advantages.

Sometimes price doesn't matter, especially when is business related.
How much more can it be 60 -70 Euro per year? That's a small price to pay for what are you going to achieve.
 
R

RedCardinal

New Member
Voytec said:
Google seems to 'geo-target' using many different factors including:
1) country specific backlinks
2) anchor texts of the backlinks
3) text surrounding backlinks
4) country specific domain
5) IP address of the server
6) address of the domain registrar
7) address displayed on the website
8) listing in Google Local
and who knows what else...

So having your site hosted in a different country should not be such a big issue these days. Still, it is much better to use .ie domain when you are only targeting Irish market (better for your clickthroughs, conversions and so on).
Click to expand...
Perhaps.

But I have never seen this particular behaviour before.

I was guessing something similar to your points above and wondering also whether the use of a Google map with a pin might also be in play here.

Might we be on the cusp of local search in Ireland?
 
G

glengara

New Member
Depends where you're targeting, if it's Ireland only a .ie hosted in the US should work fine, if you're also targeting US/UK "foreign" TLDs are a bit of a rarity in the results.

Had a quick look to see if Ringjohn.com now turns up in the PFI results which he probably should if the rules had changed, no sign of him yet.....
 
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