Gone are the days when the web was seen as a way to socialize the world and turn it into a global village. Today, the emphasis is placed on the local content, i.e. on the particular location and needs of the citizen of that global village.

Gradually, the marketing focus of businesses has shifted from reaching the mass audiences to reaching the right audience and hence boosting conversions.

Visitors location is a top priority for Google, which serves its search results based on their browser’s whereabouts. And online advertising services do the same because it allows businesses to reach the right customers and maximize the conversion rates.

Geo targeting for delivering local content

The technology that lies behind that localization is called geo-targeting. It allows identification of the visitor’s geographic location according to their IP address and serves them content that is specific to that location.

For example, Juniper, one of the producer of network switches that we use, has a few language and content versions of its site.

• Here is how the site loads to a visitor in the USA:

• And this is how the site will look like if you are loading it from Germany:

You can set up your website to load content based on the browser's location by using various techniques such as .htaccess file-triggered redirects or PHP code. Next there are two links to PHP-based geo-targeting code offered by MaxMind (they open in a new window / tab):

• Example code: https://github.com/maxmind/geoip-api-php/blob/master/examples/country.php
• IP geolocation database: https://www.maxmind.com/en/opensource

Geo-targeting for maximum loading speeds

Geo-targeting can also be used for boosting the loading speeds of your sites by resolving from the data centre that is closest to the visitor. As we know, the closer a website is located to your visitors, the faster it will display your content in their browsers.

By setting up DNS-based geo-targeting, your site will detect your visitors’ location automatically and then deliver your content fastly and localised for them.

How do I use geo-targeting for my site?

Here is how you can set up DNS-based geo-targeting using the GeoIP API functionality in your Web Hosting Control Panel (opens in a new window).

Firstly,  find out which are the main geographic target markets for your website. Let’s say that your site is targeted at users from the UK and Australia and you want them both to load your site on their devices equally fastly.

Then, you will need to replicate your site between two data centers – one in the UK and one in Australia. All you have to do is set up two hosting accounts – one in the UK and one in Australia, and host two exact copies of your site under these accounts.

In the Custom DNS Records section, click on the Create a DNS record button on the top right.

From the pop-up window, select the type of DNS record that you want to set. In our example, this would be an A record. You could also set GeoIP targeting with an AAAA and a CNAME record.

Then fill in the IP address of the server:

Next, mark the Enable GeoIP checkbox. This will open a long list of location options allowing you to narrow down your targeting by Continent, Country, State and even City!:

When done, click on the Add button to create the A record with enabled GeoIP targeting.

Next, you will need to do the same for your UK-based site in the respective hosting account.

Also, you will also have to set up another non-GeoIP-enabled A record in one of the two accounts, so that your site will load its default content to visitors outside of the geographic range that you have specified using the geo-targeting functionality.

All in all, geo-targeting is a great new way to add flexibility to your site’s performance and to reach your customers as fast as possible wherever they are located, serving them the content they want to see.

Kind Regards,
Support team