.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
-
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 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Change domain from .es to .com
Hi all, we have a website with 2 domains name to point to it: -hacerfamilia.es -hacerfamilia.com We used to take .es like the default domain, so the .com redirected to the .es with a 301 header. But now we decided to change to .com because it is more international. So default domain would be .com. We made a multiple redirect to .es to .com with a simple htaccess rule, with a 301 header. The hosting it is the same, and the address too, for the two domains. Should we take any other steps? Thank you.
International SEO | | seoseoseos0 -
Poor Google.co.uk ranking for a UK based .net, but great Google.com
I run an extremely popular news & community website at http://www.onedirection.net, but we're having a few ranking issues in Google.co.uk. The site gets most of its traffic from the USA which isnt a bad thing - but for our key term "one direction", we currently don't rank at all on Google.co.uk. The site is located on a server based in Manchester, UK, and we used to rank very well earlier this year - fluttering about in position 5-7 most of the time. However earlier this year, around July, we started to fall down to page 2 or 3, and at the start of this month we don't rank at all for "one direction" on Google.co.uk. On Google.com however we're very strong, always on page one. We're definitely indexed on .co.uk, just not for main search term - which I find a bit frustrating. All the content on our site is unique, and we write 2-4 stories every day. We have an active forum too, so a lot of our content is user-generated. We've never had any "unnatural link building" messages in Webmaster Tools, and our link profile looks fine to me. Do we just need more .co.uk links, or are we being penalised for something? (I can't imagine what though). It certainly seems that way though. Another site, "www.onedirection.co.uk" which is never updated and has a blatant ad for something completely unrelated on its homepage, ranks above us at the moment- which I find quite frankly appalling as our site is pretty much regarded as the worlds most popular One Direction news and fan site. We've spent the last few months improving the page-load times of our site, and we've reduced any unneccesary internal linking on the site. Approx 2 months ago we launched a new forum on the site, 301'ing all the old forum links to the new one, so that could have had an impact on rankings - but we'd expect to see an impact on Google.com as well if this was an issue. We definitely feel that we should be ranking higher on Google.co.uk. Does anyone have any ideas what the iproblems could be? Cheers, Chris.
International SEO | | PixelKicks0 -
SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English. The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's. Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ? As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca
International SEO | | vanvallejo0 -
Google US vs Google UK
I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.
International SEO | | journeybeyondtravel0 -
How can I view Google.com SERPs from outside the US?
If I go to Google.com I get redirected back to Google.co.uk and search results have a UK bias. I'm trying to research the US market and have a hazy recolection of Rand demonstrating how you can add a few characters to the google.co.uk url to see US results - just can't remember what video I saw it in. Any ideas? Thanks a lot
International SEO | | trbaldwin0 -
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
