How to replace my .co.uk site with my .com site in the US Google results
-
My customer and I are based in the UK. My customer's site, www.blindbolt.co.uk has been around for years. Last year we launched their American site, www.blindboltusa.com.
Searching on google.com (tested both via proxy and using the gl=us querystring trick), a search for blind bolt on the US Google returns our www.blindbolt.co.uk site. We would like it to show our www.blindboltusa.com website in US searches.
Webmaster tools has the Geographic Target set correctly for each site.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions please? Thanks.
-
Thanks Jane, that's a great help!
-
Hi Matthew,
Although the metrics of the two sites (number of backlinks, etc) are quite similar, domain / site age are going to be playing a part here. The years of indexation are going to put the .co.uk site at a big advantage over the .com. Although exact match domains are not a guarantee of ranking, you do also have an exact-match with the .co.uk, but not with the .com (with "usa" added). Do you have plans to acquire http://www.blindbolt.com/?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Prevent us.domainname ranking for UK searches
Hi Moz Community, I'd appreciate any advice you can offer on this. We have a client with international offices, and we manage the website and SEO for some of these offices, including UK. Others, such as their US office, are managed by another agency. All websites have the same domain name, but differ in their sub domains depending on their targeted country, e.g. uk.domainname for UK, us.domainname for US. All are .com. The US office's agency re-desgined their us.domainname website earlier this year. We noticed a couple of months ago that the US website started to outrank the uk.domainname website for branded searches on Google from the UK. After some investigation, we found that their agency had incorrectly implemented hreflang tags and set the us sub-domain as the hreflang="x-default" instead of www.domainname. They corrected this and uk.domainname is now the first organic result on Google. However, us.domainname has remained in 2nd place for organic brand searches (from Google UK) for the past two months, when we were hoping that this would have dropped out of the rankings by now. We have asked the US office to ensure that their International Targeting is set to United States in Google Search Console, but have no way of knowing if this has actually been done. Does anyone have experience of this? Is there anything else we could try to stop the US site ranking for Google UK, or is it just a matter of waiting? Many thanks, James
International SEO | | mcmnetjames0 -
Correct site internationalization strategy
Hi, I'm working on the internationalization of a large website; the company wants to reach around 100 countries. I read this Google doc: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en in order to design the strategy. The strategy is the following: For each market, I'll define a domain or subdomain with the next settings: Leave the mysitename.com for the biggest market in which it has been working for years, and define the geographic target in Google search console. Reserve the ccTLD domains for other markets In the markets where I'm not able to reserve the ccTLD domains, I'll use subdomains for the .com site, for example us.mysitename.com, and I'll define in Google search console the geographic target for this domain. Each domain will only be in the preferred language of each country (but the user will be able to change the language via cookies). The content will be similar in all markets of the same language, for example, in the .co.uk and in .us the texts will be the same, but the product selections will be specific for each market. Each URL will link to the same link in other countries via direct link and also via hreflang. The point of this is that all the link relevance that any of them gets, will be transmitted to all other sites. My questions are: Do you think that there are any possible problems with this strategy? Is it possible that I'll have problems with duplicate content? (like I said before, all domains will be assigned to a specific geographic target) Each site will have around 2.000.000 of URLs. Do you think that this could generate problems? It's possible that only primary and other important locations will have URLs with high quality external links and a decent TrustRank. Any other consideration or related experience with a similar process will be very appreciated as well. Sorry for all these questions, but I want to be really sure with this plan, since the company's growth is linked to this internationalization process. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | robertorg0 -
Google Analytics - whats best way to set up to track users on geotargeted sub folders & tlds ?
Hi ive got a client site just about to launch into 2 new territories (German Germany & Turkish Turkey) The existing/main site is in English & targets English keyword usage globally via domain.com and is not geotargeted in anyway. Analytics is set up for this on domain.com and tracking accurately and GWT is set up too. Now we have added a Turkish language site via a subfolder (domain.com/tr/) & the German site (domsain.com/de/) BUT this German subfolder will be domain mapped to a TLD (domain.de) eventually.. So what's best way to configure/set up Google Analytics to track users so can view the international sub-sites as individual sites etc ? (& GWT for that matter) ? Also after doing this i will be setting up in Moz Anlytics as separate campaigns so how do you set up so only draws in the Analytics data specific to these sub-folders ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools Filtering
I've just set up a client who uses internationalization on Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics. For easier management they opted to use subfolders rather than subdomains or cctlds. So I set up a Google Analytic Property, with one Unfiltered profile, and another 3 profiles filtered per language. With the main language English being exclude anything starting /fr/ /de/ as it resides on root. The filters seem to work fine; however after linking this to the Google Webmaster Account to be able to access Search Engine Optimization I do not seem to get any language filtered data. I was wondering if someone had any idea or possible solution to this problem. As I would expect to at least have the Landing Pages if not exactly the keywords filtered by the same criteria that the rest of the data is being filtered. I know there's also an option to create a separate webmaster tools account, however this way I still cannot filter just the English; and I cannot link it to all the separate profiles.
International SEO | | jonmifsud0 -
Ranking UK company in Google.com
Hi all, I have a UK client with a .com domain, hosted on a US server, but the physical business premises is based in the UK. Their product is a really great product and available for export to the US. I want to rank them higher in the US, more specifically Google.com. I've helped them rank very well organically in the UK (google.co.uk) for some great terms, however they rank almost nowhere in google.com (gl=us) for the same terms, for example: In Google.co.uk they rank #3 for the key-phrase.
International SEO | | seowoody
In Google.com they rank #90 for the same key-phrase. I've got them some great US focused links with PR coverage including MSN Cars, nydailynews.com etc. I just wondered if there was any one "golden ticket" for boosting US rankings? I've read that a physical business premises located in the US helps a lot. Can anyone confirm this and if so, would a rented PO box in the US help? The site has great social signals too, growing twitter following and many FB likes/shares etc. Any other tips/advice? Thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Woody 🙂0 -
Moving British site to the US... who will have .com? US or UK?
We are the UK's first baby social commerce site launched in Nov 2011. We're doing quite well and are looking at expanding to the US. However I'm not sure what advice you'd give me in terms of internationalising the site. I see three options on how to deal with the URL structure? Make US site as .com as it will be my main source of revenue for the long run and redirect all British traffic to .co.uk Have .com for both UK and US but have the URL as either: us.babyhuddle.com or as babyhuddle.com/us/. Same thing for the UK Another option? Would love to hear the feedback from you guys. Thanks, Walid
International SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
.US VS .COM TLD Domains
Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi
International SEO | | overalia0 -
Google Directory Listings in multiple countries
I was doing some competitive link research and one of the sites I was looking at has links in multiple Google Directories of other countries. By that I mean a listing in: www.google.pl www.google.hu www.google.pt www.google.co.nz www.google.ie www.google.com.sg www.google.vg and a few others It seemed kind of odd because the site getting these links is a ranch in Oregon. Here is the Open Site Explorer info. I'm a bit of a noob so I've never seen this before. Are these kinds of links worth pursuing? If so, how did they get these multiple listings?
International SEO | | AaronParrish0