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Kristy

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We have this open query on this moroccan website remodel.
Moroccan web hosting companies are not the easiest to deal with. The service is low quality.
So the client is requesting to change the hosting to another provider
But if outside of Morocco we shall lose our Morocco IP address. How bad would it affect our client's website organic ranking?
Considering in Google Webmaster tool you can select a country for a website, etc...

What would be the consequence on Bing, Yahoo! etc?
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
There's always going to be disagreement about this :)

If the domain is either a local one ie. company.ma, then it'll automatically be associated with Morocco by Google (and I assume Bing)
And you can set the geo-target in Google webmaster tools if it's a .com

There's no simple answer..
 

paul

Ninja
If you host in the market you are targeting then latency is reduced. So that can have advantages.
 

link8r

New Member
We have this open query on this moroccan website remodel.
Moroccan web hosting companies are not the easiest to deal with. The service is low quality.
So the client is requesting to change the hosting to another provider
But if outside of Morocco we shall lose our Morocco IP address. How bad would it affect our client's website organic ranking?
Considering in Google Webmaster tool you can select a country for a website, etc...

What would be the consequence on Bing, Yahoo! etc?

The problem is that Google doesn't always measure latency from the country you're targeting (I'm just answering the seo/organic ranking question).

I don't think it's that important - and where it is - its going to be where all else is equal - and that's rarely the case. Google have already officially stated on a number of occassions that hosting location doesn't matter for ccTLD domains.

I like hosting in Ireland and here's a thing. We recently started work for a lovely company in the UK. We came up with a new complimentary SEO strategy with a new domain. Within 6 months we're outranking them in their own country but we always host in Ireland (for a number of reasons).
 

Kristy

New Member
Thanks for all the quick feedback guys.

So in .ma scenario, it sounds pretty straight forward especially on search engines like Google when the GWT geolocation is set to Morocco
Same for a .com scenario on Google
But what about the likes of Bing. I dont see the option of selecting a Geo-location for a specific website on the Bing webmaster tools.
What can be done? Would a Geo Site Map help the whole process?
I am also reading adding a meta tag for country location? Do you guys have experience with this?
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
I haven't come across any information about setting geo-targets in Bing - I guess I should look into it :)

If you find out something please share it here, as I'd love to know more myself
 

Kristy

New Member
Thx Blacknight

The feedback i find is that indeed it is still not possible to set a geo location in Bing webmaster tools so they recommend to add a geo meta tag to your website - which is is said to be ignored by Google - see Google Also Ignores Geo-Meta Tags, But Bing Lives By Them

Here is another question on the topic of Geo location and search engines
In a case of a multilingual .com website targeting various international market.
How do you set up the geo-location for each target country so it is relevant?
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Kristy

I think there's been a few posts about the international SEO problem on here in the past ..

There's several ways that people do it, though I'm really unsure as to which actually works better ..

Some companies have a single site . ..

Others do domain.tld/country

While others do domain.cctld

Again, I'd expect there to be several competing theories :)
 

Kristy

New Member
Google Also Ignores Geo-Meta Tags, But Bing Lives By Them

Thanks, do you confirm from experience?
What library of codes do you use for reference?


Kristy

I think there's been a few posts about the international SEO problem on here in the past ..

I did go through the SEO section and ran searches with little result


Others do domain.tld/country

in this specific case scenario, of let's say mywebsite.com/fr and mywebsite.com/es , how do you work out the GWT code geo targeting? How do you guys advise to work around this?
 

link8r

New Member
Funny thing is - there are tags that Google publicly states that they read - and publishes them in a static Webmaster document that excludes the Keywords and Geo tags. But in discreet posts (e.g. their Webmaster blog) - they state that they do support Adult Content tags. Google also supports the RDFa markup very well and have publicised that.

They will treat Geo-location information and tags as information.

GWT - targeting for mydomain.com/fr

You need to register and verify mydomain.com/fr as a new site in GWT. Once verified you can then set the GT for this sub domain and all lower domains will/should inherit that property.
 

Kristy

New Member
GWT - targeting for mydomain.com/fr

You need to register and verify mydomain.com/fr as a new site in GWT. Once verified you can then set the GT for this sub domain and all lower domains will/should inherit that property.

Thanks for the answer and tip.

Now here my other question.
What standard should be followed to set up those Geo Meta Tags? I have Googling for
Geo Tag Meta Data Format and nothing comes out
Do you guys have a reference 'library' kind of thing?
 

brianbaru

New Member
I'm no expert by any means but I'm pretty sure if it's a .com or .net or whatever makes no difference to Google as long as it's being hosted in Ireland it's treated exactly the same as a .ie. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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