Targeting multiple countries with SEO

I’m often asked if we can target different countries with a single domain and the simple answer is yes, however ,in reality there are more factors to consider.

Lets take Google, by far the biggest search engine in terms of weight and also traffic potential for a site. Google will decide what country is your primary “main country” from your domain name extension ie .com .co.uk .it .es etc and the location of your server. For example, if you have a .co.uk this is a firm stamp that you’re UK focused, if you have a .com then Google falls back to where you’re hosted, eg if you’re hosted in the USA then Google will consider your main target the US. Google also take other aspects into account however these are the main two.

Now this doesn’t mean you can’t do well in other countries however, in other countries your power will be dampened. I’ll explain…

For ease of explanation, let’s say that for keyword X in the UK and the same keyword X in the USA the sites at the top of both these result pages have the same 10,000 “points” (as a measure of SEO power). If Google has the UK as your main focus then to beat the top site you simply need 10,001 “points”, however this is not the same for the site in the USA. Because your site does not have the USA as the main country your “points” are dampened, ie they could be reduced to 25% (different niches / keywords behave differently to the dampening effect). So now your 10,001 is only worth 2500.25 so you can’t beat the top site in the USA, you’ll need to get the equivalent of 40,004 in the UK to beat them, which is doable but it must be taken into account is this the best route. For example, the extra time, energy and cost to gain those extra “points” in your non primary country(s)- a) could we have gained  more results in the main target country that would yield more profits  ? and b) if the other country(s) are important is it more effective to make new sites that are focused on that specific country ?

To me, when this situation arises we need to look at all the options and look at a multi country strategy to lay out the best platform(s) so we gain the clients goal(s) as soon as possible whilst also looking more long term.