When to Use a Geo Redirect

When it comes to digital marketing these days, it’s all about optimizing for the user experience. With redirects and geo redirects, business owners and digital marketers can customize their brand messaging to appease different members of their audience. Going the extra mile and catering the digital experience to the customer's location has proven to increase conversion rates by 30%. If you’re not currently utilizing a geo redirect tool, you are missing out. So, what is a redirect, and how is it different from a geo redirect?

What is a Redirect?

A redirect automatically takes the user from one URL to a new URL. If you’ve clicked on a link and realized the URL changed in the search bar before loading the webpage, you’ve experienced a redirect.

Say, for example, you delete an old blog post on your website. If a user tries to revisit that blog post, they will not reach it. Instead, they will see an “Error 404” page or “Page not found”. Unfortunately, this leads to a poor user experience, and Google does not want to see Error 404-page loads associated with your website.

To remedy this, you would have to create a redirection. This redirect points the user to a different page on your website that contains a similar topic matter. Now, when the user clicks on the URL of the deleted post, they will receive information relevant to what they were searching for. However, it will be on a different page since the blog post is deleted.

There are a few other reasons one might use a redirect, including:

  • Company name change: In this case, someone might redirect the old URL to the company’s new page so old customers can still find them the same way.
  • To track how visitors came to the site: For example, a company might be driving traffic to a single, marketing-focused landing page from several different sources (Facebook, Google Ads, etc.). In order to track sources and their respective metrics accurately, companies can use different URL parameters to differentiate between ad platforms in Google Analytics. However, all traffic is redirected to the marketing-focused landing page, despite using different URLs.
  • To update your site without interrupting your customers: In this example, a company might redirect their typical URL to a copy of the same web page so customers can continue to shop while the actual site is being renovated.

What is a Geo Redirect?

A geo redirect allows business owners to provide a hyper-personalized web experience to their users. Simply put, a geo redirect redirects a visitor from one website or webpage and brings them to a new destination based on their location. This geotargeting technique may be categorized by country, state, region, city, longitude-latitude radius zone, or IP address. You may choose to create a geo redirect for your entire website, or for select pages across your site. Another name for this type of redirect is IP Redirect since the redirect that happens is based on the user’s IP address.

Geo redirects enhance the website visitor’s experience by providing them with the exact information they need. At GeoFli, we’ve found that our customers with geo-targeted sites or URLs see a 25% increase in the time their visitors spend on their site and a 30% increase in conversion rates. Providing this personalized web experience for customers is key. In fact, the more pages a user must visit to find the desired information, the more likely they are to bounce. This means you are less likely to achieve your goal and convert more customers. So why not cater to their landing page experience when you have the opportunity to?

When to Use a Geo Redirect

Customized communication has become extremely valuable to many business owners in recent years. While not every business requires this level of personalization, geo redirects create a better user experience and solve multiple problems, such as:

Cultural Differences

Sometimes, a company may have to tweak its branding once it branches out into different regions or countries. It’s not unusual to modify messaging based on the audience’s location since different countries contain different cultures, lingo, and values. Geo redirects allow business owners to tailor their brand’s message to better communicate with its target audience.

Product Availability

Geo redirects come in handy for businesses with varying shipping locations and policies. For example, if only half of your inventory ships to Canada, you will want to take advantage of a geo redirect.

Difference in Traffic

It’s possible that your website is bringing in significant traffic in one location but lacking severely in another. In this case, you’ll want to utilize a geo redirect to communicate more effectively to this audience. Maybe it’s the imagery or the words you use in your higher-level headings. Either way, you’ll want to learn how to attract audiences of any geographic location. A geo redirect is an easy and effective way to achieve this. 

Questions About Geo Redirects?

Reach out to our team for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

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