International Search Engine Optimization

The internet has done a great deal to bring the world closer together,
but where search engines are concerned, there is still very much a
regional divide. Australian users have a tendency to use Australian
engines and the same applies to users from the UK, Canada, New Zealand
etc.

In many cases they don’t really have a choice. Did you know that an Australian user connecting to Google.com can automatically be re-directed to the Australian version of Google? Many major engines do the same thing.

What it means, is that you are probably missing out on traffic from several very important regional markets such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand and others. This presents a problem if you have an international client base or a web site with an international character. It also presents an opportunity if you know how to take advantage of this niche.
The key is to ensure that your web site is listed on the regional engines, but this is not as simple as it sounds. Most regional engines only index regional web sites. (That is after all, what makes them regional.)

How does an engine know that a site is regional?

There are two simple ways. The first is to look at the domain. If the domain has .co.uk, you can assume that it is a UK site, .au if Australian and so on. The second is to classify a site based on its IP address. Each country has specific ranges of IP addresses assigned to it and engines use this information to identify where a web site is hosted. From this they can assume that if a .com or a .net site is hosted in the UK, it is likely to be a regional UK site.
What this all means, is that to get listed on regional engines, you either:

a) Need a regional domain for your website.
b) Need to have your site hosted on a regional server.
c) Pay to be added in the regional indexes. (only a few engines offer this option).

Note: Non-English speaking countries may also use the language and character encoding as a guide.

Sounds simple, but this can actually be complicated, time-consuming and expensive. To make things worse, many countries do not allow domain registrations without having a permanent presence in the region, such as a registered business or a company.

The simplest solution is to purchase a separate hosting account for each country.