Incoming links are considered to be a major factor that forms Google’s opinion about your site. Naturally, country specific links are also very important to make sure Google understands your geographic targeting efforts.
That’s not a big deal if you have only one site targeting one specific location. But what if you have numerous websites all meant to target different countries? In this case you may end up targeting a foreign country you have not much knowledge about.
Here is a short helpful list of tips on how to pursue country-specific backlinks:
- find your competitors’ country specific backlinks and follow their example:
- search for places to drop a link in Google using country specific TLDs and site: command.
Examples: [site:.co.uk donors], [site:.co.uk forums], etc
- take advantage of this handy Yahoo search operator to find pages of different geographic location (available country options: europe, africa, asia, centralamerica, downunder, mediterranean, mideast, northamerica, southamerica, southeastasia).
Example: [linkdomain:YourCompetitorSite.com region:europe]
- search for your potential promoters using this Google Global FireFox extension allowing you to see local search results for 5 locations: USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia.
- let the country specific links come on their own: dedicate a few prominent sections of your site to the country you are trying to target and list there the country’s most bizarre history or culture facts.
Example: find Canada-specific results for [inurl:forums keyword]
Example: if your site is all about cars and you want British auto enthusiasts to link to it, list most weird British superstitions related to cars or most interesting history facts about British autos, etc
