Ranking in US and UK search when your company is in Lagos

Most African founders selling software abroad carry a quiet assumption that their address is working against them.

Google publishes the signals it uses to work out which country a page is meant for. Where your company is registered has never been one of them. Neither has your founder's nationality, your team's location, or where you file your taxes. What Google looks at is a specific and public list, and a team in Lagos can work through all of it.

Here's the whole picture: what the signals are, which ones matter most for a small African team selling abroad, the order to work through them, and how to tell whether it's working.

What Google Actually Uses to Decide Which Country a Page Is For

From Google's own documentation on multi-regional sites, the signals are:

• Country-code top-level domains, or ccTLDs. A .ng or a .co.uk tells Google and users the site is meant for one specific country. It's the strongest single signal available, and it points at one country only.
• hreflang annotations. Tags in the page head, HTTP headers, or entries in your XML sitemap, telling Google which language and region each URL is meant for.
• Server location, through your server's IP address. Where your server sits gives Google a hint about who the site is for. But it's a weak hint, because plenty of sites use a content delivery network, or CDN, or host abroad.
• Other signals, which Google lists as local addresses and phone numbers on the pages, the use of local language and currency, links from other local sites, and signals from your Business Profile where you have one.

Read that list again and notice what it means for you. Every signal is about the page, the domain, the currency, the links, and the people you serve. None is about you. A team in Lagos and a team in Austin have access to exactly the same set.

The Domain Decision, and Why .com Is Usually Right

A country-code domain is a strong geotargeting signal and it binds you to one country. Google's guidance is explicit that a ccTLD can only target a single country. If you're on a .ng and you plan to sell to US and UK buyers, you've chosen the wrong strong signal.

A generic domain like .com carries no country signal, which is what you want when you're selling into several countries at once. Google works out your market from the other signals, such as your currency, your address and the sites linking to you.

• When you're selling globally, use a .com.
• When you're selling only into Nigeria, a .ng or .com.ng is a genuine advantage and will help you against international competitors on local queries.
• When you're selling both at home and abroad, use the .com as your primary and point any ccTLD at it with a redirect.

If you're already on a ccTLD with real traffic and links, moving is possible. The steps:

• Register the .com and migrate the content across
• Set up 301 redirects from every old URL to its new match
• Update hreflang if you use it
• Resubmit your sitemaps in Search Console
• Expect a dip of a month or two before things settle

Do it early if you're going to do it, because the cost only rises with the traffic you have to move.

One more thing on domains: .io, .me, .tv and a handful of others look like country codes, but Google treats them as generic, so they behave like a .com for these purposes.

hreflang, and the Case for Skipping It

hreflang exists to tell Google which version of a page to serve to which audience when you have more than one version. Most early-stage SaaS companies have one English site serving every market, and in that situation hreflang has nothing to do.

You need it when you build market-specific pages. If you create /us/pricing in dollars and /uk/pricing in pounds, hreflang is what stops Google treating them as duplicates and picking one arbitrarily.

The rules that catch people out:

• Every version must point at every other version, and at itself. A page that lists the others and omits its own self-reference is a broken set.
• Use the language code, with a region code only when you actually need the distinction. en covers every English speaker. en-gb and en-us separate two variants of the same language.
• Add x-default for the page that should serve anyone your other tags don't cover.
• Put the tags in the head, in HTTP headers, or in the sitemap. The sitemap is easiest to maintain once you have more than a handful of pages.

Once the tags are in, check them with a crawler like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Site Audit or Semrush Site Audit.

If you have one site for all your markets, skip hreflang entirely and spend the time earning backlinks from sites in the market you sell to.

Hosting, Speed, and What Actually Matters

Where your server sits is one of Google's signals, so hosting in Lagos tells Google your site is a little more Nigerian. Google weights it lightly, because so many sites use a CDN or host wherever the infrastructure is best.

A CDN keeps copies of your pages in data centres around the world and serves each visitor from the nearest one, so a buyer in Chicago gets your site from a server in the US.

Speed matters more than the signal anyway. Test your site with the location set to your target market. Most speed tools let you choose one. Testing from your own connection will always look fast, because you're sitting close to your own server.

The Signals You Control on the Page

Four things on the page tell Google and your buyer which market you serve.

• Currency. Price in the currency your buyer earns in. A US buyer looking at naira pricing has to do mental arithmetic to work out whether they can afford you, and some of them close the tab instead. This is a geo signal to Google and a conversion factor for the buyer, which makes it the highest-value item on this list.
• Language conventions. Spelling, date formats, and the words your buyers use. A UK buyer reads "organisation" without thinking and notices "organization" on a page that claims to be built for them. Pick your primary market's conventions and hold them consistently.
• A phone number they can call. A local number in your target market costs a few dollars a month through any internet phone provider and routes to whoever answers. It's a signal on Google's list and it removes a real objection for an enterprise buyer.
• Address. Put your real address on the site.

Don't fake a US address. Google's Business Profile requires an actual presence where you claim to be, and buyers check anyway. A buyer who finds a Nigerian registration behind a US address stops trusting everything else on the site.

Links from Your Target Market Are the Heaviest Lever You Have

Google lists "links from other local sites" among the signals that identify a page's intended audience. On a .com you have no country signal in the domain, so links from sites in your target market are the main market signal you can keep building. They're also the slowest, so start them first.

What works at your size:

• Contributed articles. Industry publications in your target market take bylined pieces from practitioners. The bar is a genuinely useful piece on something you actually know, and a Lagos byline is a differentiator in a pile of submissions that all sound the same.
• Podcasts. Smaller shows in your category book guests constantly and the show notes carry a link. This is the highest ratio of link value to effort available to an early-stage founder.
• Expert-source platforms. Journalists post requests for sources daily, and a good answer gets you a link from a domain you could never pitch cold.
• Something worth citing. Original data from your own product, a free tool, a benchmark nobody else has published. This is slower and it compounds, because one good asset keeps earning links even after you stop working on it.
• Partners and integrations. If your product connects to other software, those companies often maintain directories that link out. Ask.

What to avoid: paid link packages, guest post networks, and directory blasts. They're cheap in dollars and expensive later, and a young domain has less tolerance for the cleanup.

Make It Obvious What You Are

Buyers in your target market have no reference point for your company, so the site has to do the work a reputation would do elsewhere.

• Name the people. An About page with real names, faces and histories. For a company nobody has heard of, in a country the buyer may have no picture of, an anonymous team is the single most expensive choice on the site.
• Show verifiable credentials. Certifications that link to their verification pages, platform records, anything a buyer can check without asking you.
• Mark up the entity. Organization schema with your name, registration, address and social profiles, and Person schema for your founder. This gives search engines clearer information about who your company and your people are.
• Keep the details consistent. Same company name, same address, same phone number across your site, your LinkedIn, your bylines and any directory you appear in.

The Three Questions Buyers Have About Your Location

A buyer choosing between three vendors, one of them in Lagos, has three questions they need answered.

Will you be there when I need you? Put your working hours in their timezone on the site. Lagos runs on UTC+1 all year, so you're level with London in summer and an hour ahead in winter, and five or six hours ahead of New York depending on the season.

How do I pay you? Have an answer before the question arrives. Paystack and Flutterwave both take international cards. The other route is a merchant of record like Paddle or Lemon Squeezy.

Who's accountable if this goes wrong? Name a person, give them a title, put their face on the site, and make them reachable.

What to Do First: a 90-Day Plan

Weeks 1 to 4: the foundation.

• Confirm the domain decision, and migrate now if you're going to
• Put a CDN in front of the site and test load speed from your target market
• Fix the currency on your pricing page
• Add the address, a target-market phone number, and your working hours in the buyer's timezone
• Write the About page with real people on it
• Add Organization and Person schema
• Set up Search Console if it isn't already, and note where you stand

Weeks 5 to 8: the pages.

• Write for the queries your target market actually searches
• Start with the searches closest to a buying decision, because those pages convert while the rest of the programme is still warming up
• Build [Competitor] alternatives pages first, since the search demand already exists under your competitor's name and none exists under yours yet

Weeks 9 to 12: the links.

• Pitch three contributed pieces
• Apply to five podcasts
• Answer source requests daily
• Ask every integration partner for a directory listing

Expect a low hit rate and keep going.

None of this needs a rebrand, a paid tool stack or an agency retainer.

How to Tell Whether It's Working

Three of these come from Search Console. Open the performance report and add a country filter.

• Impressions in your target country. This moves first, well before clicks. Impressions in the US rising from nothing to a few hundred a month means Google has started showing you to the audience you want.
• Average position, filtered by country. Your position for the same query is often different in Nigeria and the US, and the gap tells you how far the geo signals still have to travel.
• The query list, filtered by country. What US searchers find you for tells you whether your pages match the language that market uses. If the queries look wrong, rewrite the pages.
• Conversations, counted by hand. At your volume, ten relevant conversations a month from the right market is a working channel, so keep a running count of who got in touch and where they came from.

Positions on low-competition terms usually start moving between 60 and 90 days, and revenue comes later. If you have less than nine months of runway, put the money into direct sales and come back to this later.

Getting the Order Right

Organic search compounds, and it takes time to get going. A Lagos team can keep a content and links programme running at a monthly cost the companies ranking above you cannot match.

Fix the domain and the currency, make the site fast and readable for the buyer you want, then spend months earning backlinks from their market.

Common Questions

Does Google Rank My Site Lower Because My Company Is in Nigeria?

No. Google's signals for deciding which country a page is meant for cover the domain, hreflang, server location, currency, address and local links. Where a company is registered is absent from that list.

Should I Use a .com or a .ng?

Use a .com if you sell internationally. A country-code domain like .ng only targets one country, so it helps if Nigeria is your only market and hurts if it isn't.

Do I Need to Register a US or UK Company to Rank There?

No. Incorporation is a payments and procurement question, and some enterprise buyers do push for a local entity. It has no bearing on where you rank.

Can We Take Payments from US Customers Without Stripe?

Yes. Paystack and Flutterwave both accept international Visa and Mastercard. A merchant of record like Paddle or Lemon Squeezy is the other common route.

Do I Need a US Address or Phone Number?

Put your real address on the site. A phone number in your target market costs a few dollars a month through an internet phone provider and removes a real objection for enterprise buyers.

Will US Buyers Care That We're Based in Nigeria?

Some will, and hiding it makes it worse, because they find the registration anyway. Say where you are, then answer the three things behind the concern: your working hours in their timezone, how they pay you, and who is accountable.

Do the Backlinks Have to Come from US or UK Sites?

Any relevant link helps, and links from sites in your target market do double duty, because Google counts links from local sites as one of the signals that a page is meant for that market.

Do I Need hreflang?

Only if you have more than one version of a page for different markets. One English site serving everyone needs none.

Where Should I Host the Site?

Host anywhere and put a CDN in front of it. Google treats server location as a weak signal. A CDN serves your pages from close to the buyer, so speed stops depending on where your server sits.

How Long Does This Take?

Positions start moving on low-competition terms at 60 to 90 days.

Kehinde Akindele

Founder, Derive DE · Upwork Top Rated, 100% Job Success

I run Derive DE, a B2B SaaS marketing studio in Lagos working with early-stage SaaS teams across the US, UK, and Africa. I plan the work and I do the work.

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