If your WordPress site is like most people’s WordPress sites, your traffic probably comes from all over the world. And a lot of the time, that’s A-OK. A visitor from the USA is usually just the same as a visitor from Vietnam…but not always. In fact, there are a number of situations where your WordPress site can benefit from geotargeting.
By geotargeting, I just mean doing something different depending on the actual physical location that a visitor is browsing from.
What’s that “something different”? Well, that’s what this post is about!
I’m going to spend the rest of the post going over 5 scenarios in which your WordPress site can benefit from using geolocation.
Let’s dig in!
1. Show Different Ads Or Affiliate Links To Users From Different Countries
There are two main reasons you might benefit from displaying different ads and affiliate offers based on a user’s location:
- Some ads just might not pay for traffic from certain countries. This is especially common with affiliate offers, where they only pay commission for signups from specific countries.
- Even if your primary offer does accept international traffic, it might not convert as well for certain locations as another offer does.
In both cases, you can use geotargeting to optimize your ads and stop wasting traffic. You can see an example of this here – every visitor sees an ad that’s optimized for their country:
And it’s not just banner ads, either. You can also use geotargeting to seamlessly swap out affiliate links based on a user’s location.
When you’re able to more closely match your ads and affiliate offers with your users, you can boost your conversion rates and revenue. And that’s a great thing for any WordPress website!
2. Show Or Restrict Content Based On A User’s Location
Beyond ads, there are plenty of other reasons it can be helpful to geotarget your WordPress site’s content.
For example, maybe you’re running a membership site that only accepts members from certain countries.
Using geotargeting, you could show your regular signup form to visitors from those countries, while showing a different message to visitors from countries that you don’t serve.
Or, if you have an email list, you can use geotargeting to show different opt-in forms to boost your conversion rate and easily segment your subscribers into different lists based on location.
The possibilities really are endless with this one and I’m sure you can think up something that applies to your site.
3. Redirect Users To The Proper Translation For Their Language
If you’re using a WordPress translation plugin to create a multilingual site, you can offer a more user-friendly experience for your international visitors by setting up geo redirect to automatically send them to their native language.
This is how most large sites handle multilingual traffic – for example, both Google and Facebook automatically send international visitors to each visitor’s local language. And with a geo redirect plugin, you can easily apply that same functionality to your WordPress site by setting up automatic redirects:
4. Block Countries You Don’t Serve (Or That Are Causing Issues With Spam)
Up until now, I’ve talked about ways to show different content based on a user’s location. But sometimes you might want to go the other way and actually completely stop people from certain locations from seeing your site.
One common reason you’d want to do this is that you’re experiencing especially bad spam from a certain area. For example, Vietnam has an especially high number of botnets operating, despite its small size, which is why a number of popular sites in the USA block all Vietnamese traffic.
So if you’re experiencing an especially high amount of spam from an area that you don’t serve anyway, it might make better sense just to block traffic from that location.
By using a geotargeting plugin instead of blocking traffic at a server-level, you’re still able to show a customized message explaining the issue.
5. Geotarget Your WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads Store
This one won’t apply to all WordPress sites. But if you are using WordPress to power an eCommerce store, there are all kinds of ways that you can use geolocation at your store to sell more products and offer a more user-friendly experience.
Here are some of the best ways to use geotargeting for eCommerce:
- Display different products based on a user’s location. For example, swimsuits in a hot climate and heavy jackets in cold climates.
- Change price and tax based on a user’s location. This lets them know the exact price they’ll pay.
- Advertise special offers to the right people. For example, you might only offer free shipping to certain locations. You don’t want to tease people outside those locations by showing them the offer as well!
- Display the nearest physical location. If you have physical stores, you can show the nearest location based on a user’s geolocation.
Here’s an example from Optimizely of that first tactic in action:
Final Thoughts On Using Geotargeting In WordPress
Whether you want to show different affiliate offers to different visitors, redirect users to their native language, or just plain block visitors from certain countries, geotargeting is your WordPress site’s best friend.
Now over to you – can you think of any other creative ways in which your WordPress site can benefit from geotargeting?
