HI guys,
On some WH stuff that I want to rank for in nations other than my own:
I need more than just that nations domain extension right?
I need to serve pages from that nation as well?
Is there a trick to host in my nation ( the US ) but its IP is in the offshore nation I want to rank in?
Thank you any tips and suggestions.
You don't *need* to host your sites in the country that you're trying to rank in. I've ranked sites in all sorts of bizarre places hosted in the UK.
However, it does help. Iit'll help your page load speed a lot, which will bring your bounce rate down and your user satisfaction up, as well as directly helping you in Google's rankings.
To the best of my knowledge, though, if you've gone for a country-specific TLD, there's no direct reason your IP has to be in the same country as you're ranking for - and a quick bit of Googling implies that sources like SEOMoz believe the same thing.
You can set your preferred country in GWT: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
You should also add a local address for your preferred country on your contact us page, that usually helps.
TLDs and local host are important, but you don't really need it if you set the above