How to target more than one geographic area with a single domain

Hi

Here's somethings I have come across regarding targeting multiple geographic areas with a single domain.

This works with non-country specific domains (.com, .org, .net etc) it will not work with country specific TLD's.

In Google webmaster tools we all know that we can set a sites geographic target area, now what I didn't realise till just recently is that you can submit a subdirectory as a site in webmaster tools... so we can have multiple sites on a single domain:

www.exampledomain.com
www.exampledomain.com/country2
www.exampledomain.com/country3

So we could set the straight domain www.exampledomain.com to be a USA geographic target, www.exampledomain.com/country2 to be a Spain geographic target and www.exampledomain.com/country3 to be a France geographic target.

This also will work for subdomains so you could use:

www.exampledomain.com : set geographic target to USA
france.exampledomain.com : set geographic target to France
spain.exampledomain.com : set geographic target to Spain

Personally I think the folder version looks neater.

If you are translating content into different languages then you won't have duplicate content issues between different versions in differenct subfolders, however if you are targetting differing geographic areas which share a common language (such as USA, UK, Canada and Australia) then you'll have to spend some time on unique content for each to get around the duplicate content filter I would think.

Anyway, I think we have an alternative answer for the recurring "how do i target multiple geographic areas?" in some cases now

Good post.

We can also add in things like adding the country specific information on each page.

1) Full Address
2) Phone Number with Country Code and Area Code
3) Region you are targetting in text

Plus getting links that are mainly from the target area.

Looks aren't everything.

One added benefit for subdomains is internal linkage. Google sees subs as different domains, and counts linkage from sub to main as backlinks; but you also get linkage bleed over from main to sub.

True as was, though Google stated a while ago that most subdomains would start to be treated as folders (though there are ocassional exceptions):

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/