Looking to rank a .co.uk domain in the USA
-
Hello Mozzers,
One of my clients sites is "domain.co.uk" and they are looking to rank in the USA with the same domain.
They are looking to change host (for unrelated reasons) and I think it may be beneficial for them to get hosting in the USA.
Essentially the business is moving to the USA but they want to retain their domain name as they cannot get their hands on a domain with their company name in that is .com / .net / .org etc. . .
I know that the .co.uk domain will adversely affect click through rates in the states, but there seems to be no way around this if they want their retain the company name as their domain name.
Would American based hosting help them rank better for searches from the USA or is the benefit of this negligible?
Net66
-
Thanks for the replies guys! Some really good answers.
I know that it will be harder, but I'm going to give it a go!
As they are already getting a company.com domain and will retain the company.co.uk page the only reason for the CLIENT-NAME.co.uk page is as a personal landing page / portfolio page.
It is worth seeing if I can rank their name in the USA. The domain is set up to rank for this already and is already ranking close to page one.
I have seen other name based domains rank in both countries. I think it is worth the risk as I doubt my clients UK rankings (for their name) will be altered. They have scores of links and the content is well targeted.
Once more, thanks for the advice!
Net66
-
Hey guys,
It currently ranks number 17 in the USA, so it is not too far away from the first page.
I think it is doable, but not advisable. It is always worth having a go, and failing that getting a new domain.
Thanks for all the help!
Net66
-
Hi Neil,
Ranking for a person's name in the US with a 'name.co.uk' is possible - for example I think if you do a search for 'Jane Copland' in the US you'll see janecopland.co.uk ranking 1st.
Do you know how well or otherwise the site is ranking in the US right now?
Essentially the ability to rank will likely be impacted by how common or otherwise the person's name is and how strong their site is.
In terms of actions from you I wouldn't be inclined to change hosting as that's unlikely to have an impact on it's own - however if as you say you're looking to change the hosting in any case then moving it the US probably wouldn't hurt. I'd also encourage you to build links to this domain to strengthen the site.
I guess I'm saying it's not necessarily impossible, but in an ideal world you'd get some sort of generic domain (.com / .net etc).
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
I think that it's harder, you will need a lot of US links so it's a lot of work. The best would be to use a .com and to create a US version of your site.
USA users won't really be attracted to .co.uk and also the vocabulary you use on the site could be a real turn off for US users.
But if you absolutely want to do it, I would host a sub-domain of .co.uk on a server located in USA. But as I said, it's a lot of work that users may not appreciate to much.
-
My experience is that the .uk extension is a strong indicator for a local site and it creates extra work. US hosting, contact details and predominantly US links would help, however personally I would still be thinking about a separate non .uk name.
-
Hi Istavan,
Thanks for the quick reply!
Maybe I wasn't too clear.
The company would have a separate site a company-name.com. This would be US based and have the company address, and details on there.
The other site that (.co.uk) has no real income in terms of sales.
It is a photographer and this site is a personal profile site that will have links to his business site.
The idea of this site is to rank for his name, and his name alone as it gets a lot of searches. His UK rank for this does not matter as he will not be returning.
His domain is perfectly set up to rank for his name. His domain is "his-name.co.uk" and has some good content.
My question is really just related to ranking for the clients name. It is a very, very common name but ranks first in the UK.
Would it be possible to gain this ranking in the USA?
I have never tried to rank a .co.uk domain name in the USA, but I know that Google is trying to return local results. (Thus my conclusion that a .co.uk name would not be beneficial).
While I know this is not the best situation my client really wants to retain his current domain.
He is only looking to rank for his name, which is his domain name. Is this going to be a possibility?
Has anyone ranked a .co.uk domain in the USA successfully?
Finally, would US based hosting help at all?
Net66
-
Hi Net66,
As I read through your question my first impression was... No Waaaaay!
I wouldn't advice to mix things up. Just simple create a new brand for the US market. The reasons are the following:
1. When re-targeting an established website you can hurt your rankings in both UK and US results.
2. a .co.uk is a ccTLD which wont be very useful for a US targeting
3. for a better on-site optimization you will have to rewrite content to better fit the US English readers level (and there are major differences between US and UK English) - What happens to their established visitors?
4. if you reach to retarget somehow the .co.uk website, they will see a fall in the sales (because they will probably loose some ranks in the .co.uk and gain some new ones in the .com)
Ok. Now if you buy a new brand name for the US market:
1. You can develop from first stage an optimized website (information architecture, content, links, etc.)
2. You can have a brand name that is more catchy for US market.
3. They can run two different websites in the same time effectively. Until the US website comes up, they will have enough sales from UK markets.
I hope that helped,
Istvan
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
-
Does the domain extension effect domain authority and ranking
We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?
Technical SEO | | easydomains0 -
Should I be concerned about Google indexing an old domain if the listings redirect to the new domain?
I noticed this about Moz's old domain SEOMoz.org. If the URLs from the old domain are redirecting, is there any reason to be concerned about an old domain still appearing to be indexed by Google? See here: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Aseomoz.org Links to seomoz.org are listed, but if you click them they redirect to moz.com. Is this anything to be concerned about or is everything operating as expected?
Technical SEO | | 352inc0 -
Domain Registrar
Looking for opinions on some good domain registrars since I have decided to transfer from Godaddy. A question while I'm here discussing the topic. Does the reputation of a Domain Registrar affect SEO in any form?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
.ca and. com domains
Hello, currently the main site im working on is a .com, but have the .ca version purchased from register.com. should i have this setup to redirect to the .com site. will google see these as dup content. We have the .ca for our canadian customers but both sites are identical. Thank you
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
301 Redirect Have no ranking
Hi Guys wonder if you can help my site www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk has just been 301 from www.economyleasinguk.co.uk The reason for the move is the site is going to be structured for both cars and vans separately we did the 301 around 8 weeks ago and initially we thought everything went well, all the new site was indexed within 24 hours, we updated WMT on the old site we monitored around 150 keywords many were top 10 in Google 99% were top 5 pages However 8 weeks on we do not rank for hardly anything, i have confirmed all the redirects are working, we have 200 ok from the home page and all the other canonical pages return 301 we just implemented the canonical tag to all pages. we did factor that we will get some down time but not 8 weeks worth, i have done a 301 on this scale before with no real loss of rankings (Different site) Really tempted to put the old site back however its not what i want to do, Bing seems to have picked up on the change really well but im thinking Google just needs time The change looks like its done perfectly and everything is working as it should however it looks like that none of the original rankings or juice has been pushed over from Google yet and im wondering how long does it typically take to get the site ranking again site have gone from 17k unique s per month to less than 2k Paul
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
Local Keywords Not Ranking Well in a Geographic Location (but Rank Very Well Outside of Geographic Location)
Has anyone experienced, in the last few months, an issue where a website that once ranked well for 'local' terms in Google stopped ranking well for those terms (but saw a ranking decrease only within the geographic location contained within those keywords)? For example only, some 'root' keywords could be: Chicago dentist Chicago dentists dentist Chicago dentists Chicago What happens is that when a searcher searches from within the geographic area of Chicago, IL, the target website no longer ranks on the 1st page for these types of keyword phrases, but they used to rank in the top 3 perhaps. However, if someone was to search for the same keyword phrases from another city outside of Chicago or set a custom location (such as Illinois or even Milwaukee, WI perhaps) in their Google search, the target website appears to have normal (high) 1st page rankings for these types of terms. My own theory: At first I thought it was a Penguin related issue but the client's rankings overall haven't appeared to have been affected on the date(s) of Penguin updates. Authority Labs and Raven Tools (which uses Authority Labs data) did not detect any ranking decrease and still reports all the local keyword rankings as high on the 1st page of Google. However, when the client themselves goes to check their own rankings (as they are within that affected geographic area), they are no where to be found on the 1st page. :S After some digging I found that (one of) the company's Google Places listings (the main office listing) became an 'unsupported' status in Google Maps. So now I am thinking that this phenomenon is due to the fact that other listings are now appearing in search results for the same location. For example, in this case, an individual dentist's Google Places listing (who works within the dental office) is being displayed instead of the actual dental office's listing. Also, the dentist's name on the Google Places listing is being swapped out by Google with the name of the dental office, but if you click through to the Google Places listing, it shows the name of the individual Dentist. Anyone encounter a similar issue or have any other theories besides the Google Places issue?
Technical SEO | | OrionGroup0 -
Why the rapid drop in Domain Authority?
I couple weeks ago I switched my website from Drupal to a Wordpress CMS: Martial Arts Austin My rankings have remained the same, but the Domain Authority has plummeted from like 29 to 21. I know this is small fry, but I don't want my business to drop in ranking. The URL's were kept exactly the same, with the internal links and copy also kept the same with few additions. Also, according to Open Site Explorer, the site's stronger pages have now averaged out with the weaker and unused pages so they all now share the same Page Authority - that doesn't seem right. Is there reason for concern? Did I screw something up, or am I making too much of this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve1 -
Accidently did a 301 redirect on root domain and lost domain keyword position
I just bought a domain about a week ago and instantly ranked number 4 for for my keywords with the domain keyword bonus. I created a landing page off the root of my domain while I'm building out my main site. I accidentally did a 301 redirect instead of a 302 from my root to my landing paging and this resulted in me losing my position and only being about to find my domain in the google if I searched for my domain specifically. Anyway to regain my original position? I have removed the redirect. Have I been put in the sandbox?
Technical SEO | | JohnTurner790