Keywords + Country?

[BruLee]

Hey guys,

Let's say that I'm doing on-site SEO for a website that sells football shirts. This website targets 5 different countries. We only have a .com domain and no other country specific domains will be added at this point.

When I choose the keywords, do I opt for product name + country or only product name?

football shirts france or football shirts?

Some info:

• Countries have been added in the title of the pages.
• Countries appear in the footer.

Thank You.

[DiTomaso]

Absolutely. I don't know how much work you've done with local SEO, but I'd also consider doing things like citations, Google+ Local pages, etc for each of your store locations.

And also create pages for specific country themes - like all the football shirts from France (assuming that's one of your countries).

[BruLee]

The thing is that right now, on the site, is a store locator page with all of the countries where stores are available.

The problem is that it is done in flash and there isn't seperate pages for each country. Do you suggest remodeling this page so that there is a page for each country?

[DiTomaso]

Not quite. I think you should have country specific sections, but as a part of the main site, not on separate subdomains or what have you. You need to create something interesting that's rank worthy, that also is an integrated part of your main website.

[BruLee]

Thank you for your answer.

So you advise me of creating country specific landing pages and linking them back to the original site?

[DiTomaso]

To add to William's great points, if you're only optimizing for the country because you want to sell the shirts there, you'll have to do more to rank. I'd recommend blogging about football in those countries, setting up country-specific landing pages with the shirts from those countries, and add pages about shipping to those countries and how much it usually costs. I hope that helps!

[William.Lau]

One quick note, footer links aren't always that great to have anymore now a days.

If you are selling the TEAM France shirts, then yes..you should most definitely put that. Not just Football shirts. So each product should be, American Football Shirt, or France Football Shirt.

It really depends what benefits the shopper and what makes it easier for them to read.

You don't want to try to optimize the content but have your customers driven away by confusing titles and descriptions.