Sometimes it can be frustrating when you are researching a niche market and find there is way too much competition when it comes to SEO.
When I check keyword after keyword and can’t seem to find anything that I think I can get to the top of Google with quickly, yet I know the niche is profitable, I get annoyed, I’m sure you know the feeling!
Thefore in this post I will be sharing a technique that I am starting to use more now for avoiding the masses yet still being able to profit in a great niche. The way I will be doing this is by targeting Google UK instead of Google USA. The UK get about 1/4 of the traffic that the USA gets, but that is still quite a large chuck of traffic and not something to be scoffed at.
UK Rankings
In order to rank your affiliate marketing sites in Google UK there are some things you need to do. The first and most important thing is to buy a .co.uk domain, or a .org.uk domain also, both rank well in the UK.
You can test this out for yourself, and you
will see that when looking at Google UK listings, that there are more .co.uk and .org.uk sites than .com.net.orgs, because Google wants to give the most relevant results to their UK searchers, which makes perfect sense.
The next thing you want to do is sign up with a UK hosting company, so that you site is hosted in the UK, which has an SEO advantage, most probably because the site will load faster, but Google probably like to see local hosting also I imagine.
I found this UK host the other day: http://www.dataflame.co.uk, I’m not sure if they are the best but they seem decent, and that no affiliate link either, I’m just sharing my research.
Keywords
Before you do anything you need to check out the search volume in theΒ UK for the keywords you are considering. This is easy to do, just open the Google Keyword tool and when searching make sure you have the country location set to the UK.
The next thing you need to do is look at the keyword competition for Google UK, because this is where you will be targeting, so you have to check the sites out that rank there. I know that there are many ways to check SEO competition for a keyword, so I want go into that now, but the main things you need to look at are the backlinks the pages ranking in the top three spots in Google have and also their PR and title tags. I’ve included a quick video below to help with this:
So you can see that the UK has less competition for the same keywords, and that there are more UK domains ranking in Google UK. What this can mean is that you can get to the top of Google UK faster than you would for Google USA and essentially if you do everything else right, make money more easily! I have spent the last week looking at keywords in Google UK and am already planning a new site as a result.
That’s all for today’s update folks, hope you found that useful,
Matt Carter
Related articles
I’m from the UK and I use ukwebhosting reliable service good customer service, I’ve been with them over 2 years and no complaints.
Enjoyed your post today! Always content that makes sense!
Very true Matt.
This also might help. For Firefox, you can use the Google global plug in. It can be found on this page: http://www.redflymarketing.com/internet-marketing-tools/google-global/
With it you can set the search engine location. You can do the same thing manually, it’s just an easy tool to use.
Thanks Matt for the useful info as always!
Targeting local traffic is certainly easier than targeting US traffic as a whole.
Cheers
Hey Matt,
I never knew hosting a site in a country will help the ranking there.
As for country extensions ,I’ve experienced that with some of my e-commerce stores. Because I live in UK , i got .co.uk I’m able to rank easily in UK for some very competitive keywords.By using Market samurai ,keywords research are easier for me now.
Hey Matt, I have to say that this is a very good idea… and wierdly I wondered about the effectiveness not too long ago but it was just a ‘thought’ and didn’t follow through as far as testing the effectiveness.
I didn’t think about getting a localized Host though.
As usual, great food for thought. Thanks for your creativity.
Jayne
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Hey Jayne
Great to hear from you again!
Thanks for dropping bye and glad you liked the post
Matt
Hey Matt,
Very good post. I have a reseller hosting account and I can set up sites in different areas, which give them an IP address for that area. Most servers are located in different states in the US but there are a couple in the UK.
I imagine that if I setup a site on a server there would do the trick instead of buying hosting from a UK based company. What do you think?
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:50 am
Hi Bryan
Yes if the IP is in the UK then that would be fine
Matt
Thank you Matt,
One thing I always appreciate is your complete honesty, something that is getting to be harder and harder to find in online ‘so-called’ gurus.
It does appear that with a bit of knowledge and imagination there is definately never a shortage of ways to make money online.
Thanks again,
Ruth M
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Thanks Ruth!
Matt
Hello Matt,
Thanks again for another high value, content packed post. This is very useful information that if acted on can help to create good to great financial results.
Thanks again for your willingness to share and give value to others.
Keep up the good work ; – )
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Hi Sean
You’re welcome and thanks for commenting
Matt
Great content as always π
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Thanks Andrej
If you are looking for a good UK hosting service, we use http://www.catn.com who are brilliant.
Thanks Matt,
I live in Canada. To get a .ca you have to pass an “exam” by some govt department, proving you are Canadian living in Canada. I gather not the same for .uk
I’ve thought about making everything .ca but found that there just isn’t enough traffic here. Does that really matter if you’re Launch Jacking? Would a .ca site rank in a global search?
Thanks,
Mike
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:49 am
Hi Michael
No I have not heard of .co.uk’s having this kind of restriction, and yeah I don’t think Canada has the traffic to target
Thanks
Matt
Great article. Never thought of that. Thanks for the free tips π
Hi Matt
Useful information as always.
I knew about the .co.uk domain but I did not expect hosting in the UK to make a difference. Does this mean if you host a site in the US but target a worldwide client base that your search engine results say in the UK, Ausie, etc is not what it could have been?
Thanks for the info
Regards
Deon
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Hi Deon
I think the bigger factor is the domain extension more than than the hosting, but I think the hosting plays a role in the rankings.
Matt
Hi Matt and thanks for the post. The location of the server is taken into account from google even if you have a .com address. One of the details in the webmaster tools states that google will locate searches based on your ip address and serve that address first. So it does help to have a local host yes. Also you can change the options in settings in webmaster tools to specify the country or region. hope this helps
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:48 am
Hey Leigh
Yes that does help and a few people were commenting about that exact topics, so thanks for explaining that
Matt
Hi Matt!
UK traffic converts even better. Just need to use very soft presells, UK people are very intolerant to the pushy stuff. I love UK traffic )
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Very good point Anton
thanks for sharing
Matt
Hey Matt – I have been quietly following your info for a couple of weeks taking on board what you have been suggesting. I am fairly new to AF Mktg but getting there slowly ! hopefully one day I will make some money lol. Thanks for all the tips – James
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Hey James
Great to hear from you and yes just keep learning and you will get there my friend
Thanks
Matt
Thank you Matt,
I have seen some articles on trying to take advantage of non-us domains and traffic but have been hesitant to test the water because of the uncertainty of dealing with hosting companies outside the states. Based on your research and advice I think I’ll give it another look.
Thanks for the tip!
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Hey Derek
Yeah no harm in giving these things a go!!
Matt
Thanks Matt-
Great tip! I never knew the UK generated 1/4 as much traffic as the USA. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
Cool to have a UK hosting resource as well.
Appreciate the solid info (as usual)!
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Hello
Yeah the UK traffic is bigger than I thought also!!
Lots of opportunity
Matt
Hey Matt, good stuff, you got me thinking… Question for you, would there be any benefits to pointing a UK domain to a USA domain?
Tony
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Hey Tony
I don’t think I would try and rank a UK domain in the USA, but if you did get some traffic it wouldn’t be a bad thing, as long as the offers you are running are relevant
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt
I just picked up Rapid Profit Formula a few weeks ago and have 3 sites done and working the fourth. Great Course. After reading this great post on using the UK for domains,I’m wondering if it would behoove us to actually have duplicate sites with one in sitename .com,org,net and setting up same sitename with UK domain name and hosting or would this still be considered duplicare content by google? You got me thinking this might be a good way to leverage the work with one site without much effort for another site. Just curious.
Thanks, Jerry
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Hey Jerry
I think I have answered this comment already, but anyway, I don’t think you should duplicate sites, best to keep to original unique content. If you have a site working well then you could build another one to get more traffic , but I have not done that myself before, but I have run two of the sames offers on different sites and made sales on both.
Matt
Hi Matt
On the radio this morning here in the UK it said there are more broadband users in China than there are people in the USA. So perhaps that’s where we target next then? Anybody know a good translation service. Lol.
Seriously though, given that there is only a quarter of the traffic and folks are twice as hard to sell to here, the numbers will have to be read very differently to US stats.
Another consideration here is that the Amazon commission rates are seriously capped for the UK. So don’t go thinking you will make a lot of money from them. You won’t.
Good luck with you UK site Matt. Hope you can give us some pointers from it later.
Tony
Hey Matt,
Great idea! Never really occurred to me to just target the UK. Really appreciate the tip on buying the hosting there. Makes perfect sense.
Thanks for all the great help that you provide.
Lonnie
And from the point of view of the link building is it the same or will you focus on building links from site with a “UK” domain?
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:47 am
Hi
From my experience you can link build the same, if you can get some local uk links it is better but not essential
Matt
I’m living in Thailand now and I have had similar thoughts especially with some of the market health products. I do think though that social marketing is the key to these smaller country niche markets to help get the traffic.
Matt, youΚ»re a great guy and one of the best compliments I can give you is that youΚ»re honest, generous and have integrity. ThatΚ»s rare! Plus, you are very smart business man.
Thanks,
Frances
Hey Matt!
You’re sharing helpful info! . . . .doesn’t hurt my feelings a bit if you have an affiliate link in there. It’s a way we can say, “Thanks!” rather than let a perfectly legit lead go unused. – For what it’s worth . . .
Shannon in US – Virginia
Hi Matt,
You are on target as always with your content. Yes get a .co.uk and yes get UK hosting and target the right keywords. However although it is easier to target some UK keyphrases many are just as difficult as US and there is less population so less traffic. I like the idea of contributor above – lets start targetting China now – imagine just how BIG that is going to be.
Thanks.
Paul S
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:43 am
Hey Paul
Yes I agree about China, this is something I am looking into
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt,
ItΒ΄s funny really I have just been looking for a good U.K. host, and I have been thinking of getting .co.uk domain, I wonder what would happen to my site if I got a .co.uk name the same as my.com name and just switched the url I think that it might damage the ranking of the site. It does seem to rank fairly well.
Do you have any Ideas on this.
Question, Matt!
Do you ever deliver on your bonuses?
I e-mailed you twice about Rankbuilder bonuses and still no response!
What’s going on?
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:42 am
Hi
Yes of course I deliver on my bonuses, I always stand by my word. If you emailed styaff [at] mattsmarketingblog.com with your receipt then I check that inbox everymorning and would reply to you. I also check my junk mail everyday, so I suggest sending the receipt again and if you can from a different email just in case
Thanks
Matt
Randy Hall Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 8:39 am
I can certainly vouch that Matt always stands by his word. I have several of Matt’s products, and have had only one glitch with obtaining one of Matt’s bonuses. After a couple of emails, it was cleared up. The emails were answered promptly, usually within a few hours.
Annette Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 9:30 am
I’ll back you up there Matt. Received my bonuses the following day after emailing my receipt from my Rankbuilder purchase. Thanks so much – will start using them this week.
Thanks again
Annette
Matt,
Great stuff as always. Really didn’t know that having hosting from the UK for UK sites would make a difference! Going to look a switching over for my UK sites as been using Hostgator for all my sites.
Learn something new everyday here guys!
Michael
this technique i had used sometimes ago. but how about rank in google which have different language?
Thanks Matt.
But then i got this concept from you way back when i was getting those 12 free videos. u once touched on it and i applied it for my first site promoting weight loss product. my website is only a month old but its already on page 6 of Google, i am hoping its making its way to first page though. i will give it another month to get at first page i hope.
other than that, i also have a .us in my other website, and this one seems the competition is stiff, i can see that already.
in every way, i want to agree with your post. lately i will try a .au, to target your own people in Australia though…
thanks for the post, cheers!
Great post Matt
Can’t say that I have seen anyone else sharing this straightforward and very logical solution, whilst trawling around the net.
Thanks for sharing
Mike
Thanks Matt you are always one step ahead of the pack
Hi Matt
Thanks for the advise will check it out.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the useful information! Do you have any idea how much weight the new .co extensions have?
I purchased some of these domains last summer but don’t recall seeing any in search results.
They recently were offered at GoDaddy at about half of the original price.
I live in the UK, so “Off My Land”….
Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees, – Great post as usual.
Roger
One of my websites targets the UK specifically, and after reading somewhere about latency and speed issues affecting ranking, i moved to a UK host a few years back – although i don’t think it makes much difference to be honest.
Tweaking graphics, getting rid of unneeded plugins etc are probably better ways to speed up a website’s load time.
I totally agree about the TLD though, Google’s UK listings are dominated with .co.uk extentions, although you could always set UK as a target market in webmaster tools even if you have a .com.
Do you think a .co.uk will beat a .com which has been set to UK specific targetting (everything else being equal)?
Darn you, Matt!
Stop giving away all the best “secrets” ;-D
For anyone looking for UK hosting I can’t recommend D9 highly enough, excellent service!
http://d9hosting.com
(or there’s an affiliate link on my site, just in case you wanted it!)
Hi Matt!
Thanks for sharing this and for the free videos. Very useful information.
Would like to hear your views on how to adapt good work ethics with regards to online marketing.
All the best
Claes
Great post here and was pleased to see you recommended that hosting company as they are not bad on the price compared to others I researched based in the UK.
As I am UK based myself I have considered some co.uk domains but have held back for now but with this info I certainly will get some.
There is also the case that I heard that if you host your domains with different companies and link them it gets viewed by the search engines as completely separate sites sites so ranks them better. As I have many sites in the same niche I have always wondered if this was true as I do not mind hosting my co.uk separate from my .com domains.
Do you have any views on this Matt ?
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:38 am
Hey Robert
Yes if you host your sites on different c class IP’s, which would be the case with differnet hosts, then you can link them as you say
Matt
Hey! this is kind of funny for me – slightly. I’m in the UK and I bend over backwards to find US keywords I can rank for. It’s never occuring to me to target the UK! It’s interesting we get 1/4 of the searches. Certainly something to keep in mind for the future though. Yep.
Matt,
Another great post. One of my sites is a co.uk site, as I read something similar to this some time ago. However, I am going to keep this front and center when doing research for future sites.
Thanks again.
Does this work for Canada .ca or Australia .au as well? I would think so. This is a good strategy to create a link wheel surrounding your .com site.
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Hey James
Yes I assume it would do
Matt
Matt,
Very interesting strategy. I did some research on some keywords and what I found is that “US” keywords might have a slightly different slant in the UK.
For example: “mom” and “mum”.
You have got me doing some research on this angle. : )
Thank you,
Theresa
PS – Question: I also did some research on hosting and UK packages seem to offer less capacity. Do you think you could still work this strategy if you purchase the UK domains, but use US hosting? I know you addressed that in the post, however I would appreciate your additional thoughts. Thank you.
Hi Matt,
Great practical content!
As always really appreciate the info about hosting in different countries.
Would it be possible for you to do an article on cloud hosting? I’d really appreciate your take on this subject.
Kind regards…
Matt,
Awesome post. I never thought about localizing my keywords to the UK. Nice idea!!!
Thanks
Thanks Matt,
I have been opening your messages and learning a lot from you. This is another fine example of the value you share.
Matt!!
This is our little secret in the UK. You’ve just let the cat out of the bag now!
Ref hosting, I used host9 in the states as they have servers in the states and the UK and cheap at around $7 with cpanel.
I’ve found most UK hosting companies dont use cpanel, therefore you’re limited to one domain per hosting account.
Cheers
Richard
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:36 am
Hey Rich
Thanks for the host9 tip, I really appreciate that my friend, I will use them now.
Great comment
Matt
Hi Matt, thank you as always I live in the UK and have noticed that most of my traffic comes from the uk and in most niches I rank in the first page of google and my site has been on line for 5 months now even though I have visitors everyday .I have not made any sales yet, I have frequent visitors ,to my site Iam begining to wonder that .maybe the Save Relationship niche is not convertting well ,Any idea how to turn those keywords into Gold I have recently included buyer keywords in my post.
Thank You
Matt,
Some very useful information. I live in the US, but as you said, the market is very competitive here. So, I think I’ll try this…both in the UK and AU.
I’m doing something similar to this here in the US by focusing on local listings. For example, LawnMowersForSaleAtlanta.com. Not as much traffic, but the words are keyword focused and the domains much more readily available.
Thanks for the info.
Hi Matt,
What evidence is there for supporting the theory that the location of hosting affects how google will view a site?
I understand that google want to show local results but that is done by the extension .co.uk surely?
I view sites all over the world as we all do and do not really see a problem with load time, unless the site design dictates it.
just my 2 cents.
Mike UK
Matt Carter Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:35 am
Hi Mike, I have read a few article by SEO people about the hosting, and I think the main thing is the speed of page load, which is why I mentioned it, and the other reason and again I am not 100% sure about this but if you are hosted locally I think it reinforces the site is local, but at the end of the day it is your call, if you want to host in the US then by all means go for, but I am hosting these domains in the Uk just to be on the safe side as it certainly wont hurt anything
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt, as an english affiliate marketer I have definitely found this to be the case. How have you found taking your local sites to top positions in the worldwide and American SERPS? I have a number of .co.uk domains which will be easy to rank here in the UK, but I want them to rank high on a wider basis. What are your thoughts on this? Also, would duplicating the same site as .co.uk and .com mean that it would be seen as duplicate content? Or can a simple forward suffice and any authority in a localised site be passed to a .com address that just forwards to the local domain?
Thanks again. More great information, off the beaten track. I am not that advanced as of yet to be able to use the these advanced ideas.
Hi Matt,
I had heard the domain extension idea before but never thought of the implications of UK hosting as well. I’m putting this one on my “to do” list for more research. You always have great tips…thanks for sharing!
If we get a UK hosting account, would any domain put on it for the US market be less effective? We should essentially have two accounts, one for the states and one in the UK?
Good stuff again, thanks Matt. This happens a lot when researching keywords these are great tips to try. Thank you for helping.
Intuitively, what you say makes sense. Presumably, this applies to all countries and not just the UK. Are you suggesting that we should create a country specific site for each of the largest countries?
Thanks again Matt, what about if im targeting on mexico, should i buy a domain.com.mx aswell?
Hey Jerry
I wouldn’t replicate sites as such, but if you do a simialr thing on other domains with unique content and you are sure you have profitable site models and just want more traffic than yeah that could work
Matt
Thanks Matt…. I was wondering about this, but I wanted to market Central & South America. I imagine it’s more or less the same…
Thanks
Brian
Matt,
This is great info, as usual.
I always read your emails (not so with every list I am on) because you deliver great content. And I see that you also answer questions that are posed on your blog.. not everyone does that either.
Thanks for doing what you do.
Wayne
Geez Matt, always giving away my secrets! π
.com’s are worldwide so you should be able to target the UK if you so desired with products that sell well there, black trench coat perhaps?
GoDaddy for example can sell you .uk domains if you want to go that route, id like to see the numbers on a .uk domain hosted in the US versus one hosted in the UK.
I found a little snippet with people talking about the same thing here http://www.highrankings.com/targeting-different-countries
In Google webmaster tools there is an option to target a specific geographic location
Geographic target – Target users in: United States
“If your site targets users in a particular location, you can provide us with information that will help determine how your site appears in search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. You can only use this feature for sites with a neutral top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Country-specific domains, such as .ie or .fr, are already associated with a country or region. If you don’t want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted.”
https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399&hl=en
I’d be interested to see the results of someone with two similar domains ie: blacktrenchcoat.co.uk and blacktrenchcoats.com with each targeted to the relevant country via the Google web master tools.
Cheers
Aaron
oh further to my previous comment, what about if you own a .com and a .org develop both and target both the UK and the US since Google classes those as neutral top-level domains
Hi Matt
I have offen thought that the UK market never gets a mension it is always target the US market. Do you think that by targeting the UK market you will also be targeting the euorpe market as well.
Neil
I think you may have a point. I am with an American hosting company (Hostgator} and a .com domain. At the moment, I come much higher in the US than I do the UK search and I am from the UK. My mistake but if I was to sell my domain, would it not be easier to sell a .com site?
An understanding of the fine details is fundamental to achieving success with affiliate marketing This post, as with your other educational material, is highly relevant, useful, and most helpful. Many thanks.
You wrote “lawn movers” π
Hi Matt as always great information, thanks very much.
I got some websites in Australia and they are automatically listed with Google US.
I suspect that any region in the world would automatically rank in Google US.
In my Mozilla browser I have SEO Ranking plugin and I always check US and Australia ranking at the same run,and the Aussie websites always showing in Google US.
For UK sites I suspect this would be similar however somewhat distant from the front page.
I’ll be checking to see and will duly report.
Good content as always Matt.
Thanks for the tip on Dataflame by the way. It is always good to receive your recommendations despite affiliate links or not.
Hey Matt, what a great tip…and like some of the other comments, you always have something valuable to pass on….keep them coming.
Tom
Thanks for great info.
I guess the same applies for Australia. I have heard of someone doing something similar in Aust. Never thought about the hosting though.
Matt,
Never thought about targeting keywords in a different country. Great idea! I definitely know what you mean about getting bummed about the competition with a keyword phrase with good searches. Thanks for the tip about the hosting too!
people, think about what google, yahoo, msn oops bing are in business for. They want you to use their search engine when on the web…. period! They make money when you search with them. Go to a site click on an advert etc.. So where you live is very important to the search engines because keeping you as a customer is all about giving you a relevant experience. Think about it I live in the USA do i want to read UK websites, No! Nothing against Uk websites or anyone elses it’s just human nature. We are all a product of our environment and our speech, language, traditions etc. mimic that. We are all more comfortable in our own space. The search engines know that as they study human behavior, as well should we. Ask yourself, when was the last time you deliberately put in another country domain in your search? Not that often I would bet.
Ok, hey Matt thanks for the post good food for thought.
Daniel
Matt,
This is very VERY helpful. Thank you so much!
i nvr thought tht local hosting will make a difference on SEO. gonna experiment this with some of my new projects then. However in my country, the local domain needs some approval from the govt. better still for me to stick with tht .com or .net domain. thnks matt for the great content.