Web Analytics. I have a site in UK that is only relevant to UK users. Why so may US visitors?

Question

Using web analytics I can see that over 60% of visitors to the site are from US although the site is only relevant to people in UK. Are the stats correct? What could influence them if they're not?

Answer 1

I think it comes down to geo-location; most SEO's miss this key piece.

Your site may have relevant content for UK users, however you may be geo-located to the US.

Here is how you can achieve your desired geo-location.

- ccTLD (Country-Code Top-Level Domains)

- hosting in your target country, in your case UK

- link building from relevant UK sites.

The easiest is buying the co.uk domain, however if you have .com then host in the UK....or if a ccTLD and hosting in the UK is not an option for .com domain then concentrate in link building.

Be cautious of link building or hiring someone that is not sure of what they're doing. I had a client come to me once, ironic enough from the UK, that their rankings had dropped in Google UK and increased in Google Russia....the reason after doing some digging was that they had hired an SEO company from Russia to do link building and these guys did link building all from Russian sites.

I don't have a post on this topic yet, but perhaps is good one to cover.....here is a link to my blog where you should find other useful SEO info http://tourismmarketing.wordpress.com/

Answer 2

Before i can answer your question I think you need to check your backward links and search engine referrals to see the bounce rate and the conversion from them. Maybe your visitors from US are originally from UK and have relatives there who might have interests in your website.

I think you need to check your data again, see the trend and do some segmentation before taking any action that might cost you money for no reason.

Don't panic about the extra traffic from US even if the bounce rate is huge, concentrate on the trend, this is what will cut your expenses and will make you achieve your targets.

Answer 3

It could be for a number of reasons:

- the search engines have indexed your site and US visitors may have found your pages in the search engines

- some US visitors may have seen your site in bookmarking or social networking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, MySpace, etc. and clicked on your site

- some US visitors may have heard about your site via email, press releases, media mentions (if any) and clicked on your site

- some US visitors may actually be interested in your site for one reason or another

Same way with my US based and US focused sites -- I have lots of visitors from Europe and Asia because my pages do well in the search engines. Just because you have a UK focused site does not mean that you're only going to get UK visitors

But what's the bounce rate of your site?

If the bounce rate is high, then maybe those US visitors who accidentally found your site hit the back button immediately because your content is not relevant to them