Geo Targeting Based on IP Delivery with ASP

[internet-marketing-cr]

Hello webproworld Members, I will like to have help with the process of implementing Geo Targeting based on IP delivery in an SEO Friendly way, so that the site doesn´t get taken out of SE index.

I have read a few posts on that matter:
googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-google-defines-ip-delivery.html
mattcutts.com/blog/boston-pubcon-2006-day-1/#comment-22227
blogstorm guide to geo targeting for seo and usability
ninebyblue blog making geotargeted content findable for the right searchers

Also read the book "Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP".

It has helped me understand certain issues, but I will really like to make sure I have things right and clear before I proceed.

I´m in the process of implementing Geo targeting based on IP delivery for our site: mysite dot com

I want to keep showing mysite dot com to USA visitors, but when we detect a visitor from outside USA based on IP detection method, we want to show the following version of the site: sub.mysite dot com (for English speakers outside USA) .

I will be using a geo-target database service from maxmind dot com to detect IP´s of visitors.

Our site is aspx driven.

An example of what we want to implement is forex dot com (we are aware that they are using JavaScript to redirect visitors, we don´t want to do it that way, we want to implement a 302 temporary redirect???).

They are showing USA visitors this version:

.com/index.html

And outside USA visitors the following version:

.com/land-international.html so visitors can select the country, but they all get redirected to the uk version below:

.com/uk/index.html

I am clear about the difference between:

Cloaking refers to the practice of delivering different content to a search engine than tohuman visitors browsing a web site. In practice, cloaking is usually implemented throughIP delivery.

Geo-targeting is similar to cloaking in that it provides different content depending on the type of visitor — but this time by their physical location on Earth. Search engine spiders are not treated any differently than human visitors. This technique is useful when you want to show different content to a user from France than to a user from the United States, for example.

I don´t want to implement any deceptive practice as I don´t want to get the site out of SE´s index. Any advice, information, resources that you can point me out to will be much appreciated as I want to make sure this procedure is done correctly.

Can you please point me out to some one of trust to help me on this issue? Any good resources to read about it? I need help with implementing it right.

Thanks in advanced.

[morestar]

Well so far from what I read at the Matt Cutts post/comment on IP delivery, it seems that as long as you don't do any kind of redirection on the googlebot that you are fine - even google does redirection based on the users ip/location.

Now about how to go about doing it the right way? I'm not quite sure as of yet but I do know, based on the post that if you're only redirecting users and NOT GBot, then you're going to stay in the good books.

[chandrika]

Hi,
I have been using IP2Location for a few years to acheive a similar thing where all visitors from UK see one site and anyone else goes to the international version. I use php, but the instructions are there also for asp

Articles & Tutorials | IP2Location?

Both versions of the site I use that on do fine in Google, so SEO wise I believe it is ok.

Hope there is some useful info for you there.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by internet-marketing-cr

Cloaking refers to the practice of delivering different content to a search engine than tohuman visitors browsing a web site. In practice, cloaking is usually implemented throughIP delivery.

No there are a Million reasons to deliver content based on IP certain industries must in order to meet laws in multiple jurisdictions. For instance pharmacy. In your case no way could it be cloaking as cloaking is generally accepted to have occured when specific engines i.e. are given different content than users. You can also use content delivery which basically tests for ability to do something like maniplate the DOM or JS. Basically if you aren't checking only for specific engines then you should be safe... or IMO, at least a good rule of thumb.

[subsystems]

Sites are international/regional. SEs know this and must allow typical methods for directing visitors/spiders to the appropriate pages.

A Googlebot spidering from in the US is going to find US sites and regional sites hosted in the US and overseas. It is the clustering of content (ie URLs) and the site links that will give the SEs clues to the nature of the pages and which region the results should appear in. There are HTML tags that include what language/region the page is intended for. So keep those proper for the corresponding pages.

Lastly, there are common exceptions to the IP location being used solely to determine which page to show a user.

Always give the user a means to select the region manually. Laptops travel worldwide. A US visitor may be overseas for any number of reasons. They should be able to select the US site even if they are using a foreign ISP. Just something to keep in mind.

[morestar]

Originally Posted by subsystems

Always give the user a means to select the region manually. Laptops travel worldwide. A US visitor may be overseas for any number of reasons. They should be able to select the US site even if they are using a foreign ISP. Just something to keep in mind.

This is a very important suggestion. In the end a dropdown that lets the user select their region is probably the easiest way to go about this.

[langsor]

Originally Posted by subsystems

Always give the user a means to select the region manually. Laptops travel worldwide. A US visitor may be overseas for any number of reasons. They should be able to select the US site even if they are using a foreign ISP. Just something to keep in mind.

I was searching on Google the other day (what a surprise, I know) and was trying to locate a business in a neighboring city...Google kept feeding me results in my own city, even though I put the neighboring city in the search terms...very frustrating.

I agree, that you want to keep a high level of control in the hands of the users, if you wish to keep them as users -- google can get away with this clumsy behavior, they are virtually a monopoly (of effectiveness), but not many other sites can.

IMHO

[subsystems]

Here is a page that has aspx code that will give you the country based on the IP.
CodeProject: How to convert IP address to country name. Free source code and programming help

I think the best solution IMO is to have a pulldown to choose the country and have it default the selection based on the IP. This will give you the correct selection most of the time and allow the user to change it if needed.