Optimise for Specific Countries

This is one of those problems that business must continuously address with the search engines .i.e. how do you identify yourself as "local" for the eyes of the search engines? What if a user in Ireland googles for flower shops in Cork. How do the search engines know what results to present to the user? Here are the main reasons that contribute to international ranking success:

• Host your web domain in the country you are targeting (This will ensure you have country-specific IP address for the goe-location you are targeting)
• Ensure you register with local search engines:
  Yahoo!: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
  Google: http://www.google.com/local/add/
  Bing: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx
• Get the proper extension for your domain (e.g., ..ie, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .nl) for the country that your business is targeting
• Get other websites from your target country link to you
• Place your relevant local address data on every page of the site
• Open a in Google Webmaster Tools account and defining your preferred region
• Using the native language on the site (an absolute requirement for usability)

Implementing these factors will act as strong indicators to the search engines regarding the country you are
geo-targeting, and will make them more likely to present your website for relevant local results.