.Com to .co.uk?
-
I'm out ranked by people with FAR less links for Google in the UK and I think its purely down to the fact I'm using a .com rather than a .co.uk.
I'm based in the UK but there's other aspects of my business that I want to target internationally although my main hub needs to be UK.
I set my geo-targeting for my .com and it didn't help.
Tried doing mydomain.com/mainkeyword-uk. Its picked up on this and I'm in top 10....but would obviously prefer number 1 especially due to the nature of my business.
Worried about doing a 301 redirect from .com to .co.uk because of loosing even a little bit of link juice. I've already put so much effort into the .com.
I get so many different answers to this so I'm confused....some people (particularly people on here at SEOmoz) say switch to the .co.uk and others just say keep the .com and that you can rank without the country level domain.
If I keep the .com and link build from country specific domains to mydomain.com/mainkeyword-uk (which ranks well) as well as build page authority for overall site......would that be fine or will I just absolutely have no chance in heck with ranking competitively in the UK if I don't do the .co.uk?
Trying to pick the path of least resistance and best possible returns here.
If you do absolutely recommend the 301....whats the best possible way to do this to preserve page authority? How long will it take for Google to transfer to the new site? I've heard horror stories in forums of people doing 301's and dropping off the Google planet and never recuperating.
Not a pro so any help would be appreciated. x
-
The .com really shouldn't cause you any issues in the future either - I really wouldn't worry about it
You're more than welcome - totally understand how confusing this stuff can be!
Hannah
-
Thanks Hannah....all this time I thought she was ranking ahead because of the .co.uk. I'll really push the links to this page and rework the content too.
As the keyword gets more and more competitive, do you think the .co.uk would be an issue or not to worry?
I really really appreciate your help by the way. Trying to teach yourself web design and SEO and figure out how to run a small business too isn't easy. xoxoxoox
-
Hi Christine,
OK, so the good news is that I don't think this is an international SEO problem. As such you don't need to worry about switching to a .co.uk or anything like that.
The keyword your going after isn't particularly competitive and the competitor that's ranking ahead of you right now looks totally beatable.
As Google are already favouring this page (i.e. this is the page that's ranking) - <cite>www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk </cite>
I'd be inclined to build some more links to this page to push it up the rankings.
Given that you actually have products (always nice to have physical things when link building) - I'd suggest offering some products to bloggers to review / give away. A handful of decent links should see your rankings improve pretty quickly.
NB - you might want to re-work this page slightly depending on what you think the user intent is for this sort of keyword - e.g. are people searching for Scentsy UK looking to buy products or become a seller? My gut says most people probably just want to buy products - but I could be wrong!
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
hi Hannah Thanks for responding and sorry for the delay in responding back. My website is www.ldnwicklesscandles.com and keyword is Scentsy UK. Any suggestions you can give would be great. I'm ranking first page but people with a .co.uk are ranking ahead which is why I've considered moving over. Would rather keep my website if I could and only change the domain if I have to. Google seems to be picking up any tags with Scentsy UK in it and it's picked up ldnwicklesscandles.com/Scentsy-uk more strongly than my root domain. As a course of action should I just continue to link build for this page and across the domain generally? feel like I don't know what I'm doing 1/2 the time and Im trying anything and everything just to see if it will work. Anything you can do to point me in the right direction will help immensely. X
-
Hi Christine,
Apologies for the delayed response
Ranking in the UK with a .com shouldn't be an issue; there are many sites which use a .com and rank perfectly well in the UK. As such I don't think you should be considering going down the .co.uk route.
You mention that you've geo-targeted via webmaster tools which is great, but there are some other things I'd also recommend that you do (if you're not already). These aren't ranking factors per se, however they will help the search engines to better understand the location that you're targeting.
-
Include a UK bricks and mortar address
-
Include a UK phone number
-
Claim / create your business Google Places
-
Ensure prices are in £s
I'd also be happy to take a closer look if you'd like to share your domain and the keyword which you're looking to target.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
-
Seriously no one has any suggestions???
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
-
UK English and USA English - two flags on navigation?
If a website is translated to English and has .co.uk version and a .com which are directed at UK and USA audiences respectively (using localised spellings etc), how do you get the visitor to the right version? It seems clumsy to add two flags on the navigation - one for USA and one for GB English as well as other languages. Should a redirection script be in place based on their IP address? Thanks for any help
International SEO | | AL123al0 -
International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.
Hi Mozzers, I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com OPTION 1:
International SEO | | jeremycabral
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan OPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan My concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder. Which option is better from an SEO perspective? Cheers, Jeremy0 -
Multiple Regional Domains - such as .co.uk / .de etc for one brand
Hello, We are in the process of building up our version 2 for our site, currently we have only one domain (i.e. xxxxx.com). Our target audience is distributed among various regions and speak different languages, we would like to know which will benefit us more: a) by having one root domain and then having folders based on automatic IP detection, for example the customer opening a website in Japan would see the domain as: www.xxxx.com/jp. B) or is it better to have different domains so in the above case it will be www.xxxx.co.jp. The content on the site will be different based on the regional demand, so of course the language will be Japanese and the content will also be aligned with the Japanese community. We plan to start with 5 different markets (UK/US/AU, Japan, China, Germany, Spanish speaking countries). We would appreciate if you can suggest us the best route to achieve the best results. Thank you, SK
International SEO | | sidkumar0 -
Ranking issues for UK vs US spelling - advice please
Hi guys, I'm reaching out here for what may seem to be a very simple and obvious issue, but not something I can find a good answer for. We have a .com site hosted in Germany that serves our worldwide audience. The site is in English, but our business language is British (UK) English. This means that we rank very well for (e.g.) optimisation software but optimization software is nowhere to be found. The cause of this to me seems obvious; a robot reading those two phrases sees two distinct words. Nonetheless, having seen discussions of a similar nature around the use of plurals in keywords, it would seem to me that Google should have this sort of thing covered. Am I right or wrong here? If I'm wrong, then what are my options? I really don't want to have to make a copy of the entire site; apart from the additional effort involved in content upkeep I see this path fraught with duplicate content issues. Any help is very much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | StevenHowe0 -
Freelancer.com: Same Content on Different TLD?
Take a look at freelancer.com and freelancer.in. Both have the same content. I check for rel=canonical and freelancer.in has one to itself. Not to the .com version. Both the sites are indexed in Google as well. Do you think high authority sites like freelancer can get away with duplicate content?
International SEO | | jombay0 -
Google UK picking up USA Site
I have a site with two subfolders one is .../uk and one is .../us Part of the content on the two sites is the same and part is unique. The US site's language is set to en and the UK site's language is set to en_gb. I have setup geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The problem is that the home page is a GEO-IP redirect and it seems to be picking up information from the US site even on google uk. I'm not concerned too much about getting the uk site crawled as we submit a sitemap for that anyway. But my concern is that if I setup the geo-ip redirect as a 301 will my UK site loose all of it's ranking? Also am I likely to be penalised for duplicate content?
International SEO | | matthewdolman0 -
Ranking well in Google US but not showing up in UK
Hi, We are trying to position a specific site for a big sport event that will be played at the end of May. We only care about Google UK. It had no relevant content until last week. The site is a almost a year old but we just started to get links for it (all from the UK). They worked so fast: we were in page 2 of SERPs in the UK within a few days. But suddenly the site has disappeared and we're not even in top 100 anymore. However, we are ranking extremely well in the US (first page for the keywords we wanted to rank for). The site is a .com and it's hosted in Wordpress.com (with a custom URL). I understand that that can be a problem, but we have already told Google that our business is in the UK through Webmaster Tools. I guess that with time and more UK links, Google would ultimately understand that our focus is the UK audience, but unfortunately we have no time and we can't wait due to the date of the sport event. What do you think that we can do to rank well in the UK and not in the US as fast as possible? Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Domain strategy for UK and USA
Hi Everyone, We have example.org.uk with 20K inbound links. We want to target the US as well as the UK. I would be interested to hear what approaches are best for SEO. For example is it better to keep our current domain and have subdirectories for USA for example. Or would it be better to register example.org and then use subdirectories. Or is it better to use different domains for each country? Any help with this much appreciated. Cheers
International SEO | | MarkChambers0