.co.uk and .co coexistance?
-
Hello,
Our business has been setup and has been targeting the uk. Therefore, we've always had a .co.uk domain. Now that we want to go international, we are looking into expanding in the U.S. and have bought a .co domain to do so.
My question is: would we get .co.uk penalised if some of the .co pages will have similar content to the .co.uk pages?
I know .co is a Generic Top Level Domain (gTLDs), but my understanding so far is that: as long as we set a country target & US language on the .co domain and follow basic cautionary steps and best practises from this article and others, we should be completely fine.
Is this also what you guys think?
Thanks in advance!
-
Ups! My mistake, was not aware of that article from google. Im deepl sorry if i´ve confused you.
Yeah! Following the recommended precautions and steps in the cited articles you will be perfect! There is no need to do any further than that.
Best luck!
GR. -
Hi Ramon,
Yup, that's correct on the setup - it's how we are thinking about it. Glad to hear you don't think we shold have duplication issues once we follow best practices.
Thanks for your help.
-
Hi MarketingGH,
Yes you are right, wasn´t aware of this list (learning everyday). It is in fact a ccTLD but google treats it as a gTLD.
So just to clarify you would have a:
xxxx.co targeting the US (and setting up this geotargeting in your GSC)
xxxx.co.uk targeting the Uk (and no need to setup geotargeting in GSC since it already a ccTLD)
If this is the case you wouldn´t have any duplicate content issues. If i misunderstood could you clarify.
-
Hi Gaston,
Thanks!
My question was mainly due to the fact that all articles you and I have mentioned talk about using the same domain and internationalising that or buying a ccTLDs. My question is instead regarding adding a new domain gTLD to internationalise and whether if we do add a brand new domain (not subdomain), I need to do anything else apart from everything written on those articles.
Have a look at why I think .co is regarded as gTLD by Google: https://www.screencast.com/t/5YgjXIriy
Image from this article.
-
What I was pointing at on same article cited above is the following list of ccTLDs that Google treats as generic so as gTLDs and .co is one of them?
-
Hi MarketingGH,
Try to use a gTLD domain. Leave the .co for Columbia.
If you cant by the .com site, try with another gTLD.Remember to be extra carefull with the internationalization, try to give a read to these articles:
Google internationalization FAQs
Internationalization SEO ChecklistAbout the duplicate content, as cited in every article about internationalization, use hreflang tags and double check them to be sure that are correctly implemented.
Best luck!
GR. -
.co is a ccTLD (https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db) and assigned to Columbia
.com is a gTLD (https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db)
The article you mention starts by saying "If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, and doesn´t mention .co
-
Not sure what you mean by ".co is a ccTLD for Columbia" as Google treats it as generic according to this article? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?visit_id=1-636422994188525421-4135517685&rd=1
-
Hi MarketingGH,
with ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) there is no problem with duplicate content in the same languages through these domains and when setting a country target for gTLD´s this wouldn´t be an issue either.
As far as i know though .co is a ccTLD for Columbia and not a gTLD so you should register the .com domain (unless this is what you meant than thats correct).
Hope this helps
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
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
How to speed a website which government demands a popup of age restriction to display
Hi team, Im running a website, which is related to Online Vape shop and I have some confusion regarding the core web vital algorithm. However, the Government of the USA is very strict for this kind of topic and we should have to display the age restriction popup for those new users who enter the website: https://ashvapesmoke.com/ Can anyone tell me how to speed up the website, as if the website has this kind of popup mandatory guidelines from the government. Google is launching a new core update related to speed in the may 2021 right? So if we add this kind of banner popup and all In the website, how we can get away from the issues. Please clarify to me, anyone, ASAP.
Local SEO | | hopseq0 -
Advice needed; Scrap mature .co.uk and move to .com, or run two separate domains?
Asked before, we have a .co.uk domain name and it has grown with rankings over many years with many quality links made to it. Since, we also have acquired the .com of our agency brand, and want to also focus on US market - something hard to do with a UK domain. However, we aren't sure which route to go from here... Should we keep the .co.uk active and allow that to focus on the UK market, and grow the .com from scratch with a site that looks the same with slightly different content and interlink the two with regional flags. Or move across to the .com totally and scrap the .co.uk. I know we could do a redirect and save a good number of the links made on the .co.uk, but is that worth even doing? And what would the risk be of having two sites the same with similar content? Since this isn't an area I've dealt with before, we are interested to get some real advice to understand which decision is right given the scenario.
Local SEO | | thewebpreneur0 -
Effective Real Estate SEO Strategies
I am looking to increase organic traffic to our Real Estate website, and am looking for any suggestions and or feedback as to strategies to implement in this area or even the must-have SEO pages every real-estate business should build. Interested in attracting sellers & buyers, but obviously would love more to attract sellers... The issue with that being you have to outrank the massive sites like Zillow and Realtor. Some ideas I have so far. Building out Neighbourhood pages to rank for people searching for 'Neighbourhood name' Any feedback on this one greatly appreciate. What's {city name} like? {Neighbourhood name} houses for sale What are good areas of {city name} Is {city name} a good place to live? What's {city name} like? What __ are in {city name} restaraunts hospitals beaches colleges How is {city names} weather Thanks guys!
Local SEO | | Dakota_G1 -
Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results?
For exemple we set a UK subdomaine for : www.igomorocco.com www.uk.igomorocco.com Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results? How this should be set up correctly?
Local SEO | | mounirigomorocco0 -
Should I use LocalBusiness schema on my home page or Contact Us page?
I know I should only use Organization schema on one page of my site, but I'm not sure if I should use it on the Home page or use LocalBusiness schema on the home page. I was thinking of adding LocalBusiness schema to home page, Organization schema to About Us page and Corporate Contact Schema to Contact us page. Thoughts? Is there a best practice? I can't seem to find much information on what's best to use where.
Local SEO | | RoxBrock1 -
Will I get Penelized for having a .co.uk site AND a .com site?
Hi Mozers, I have a very important pitch coming up which needs to tackle a questions about international SEO. My client currently has a .com website, but we are debating internally about creating a .co.uk website too so that we can localise content for the UK versus American English on our .com site. Currently, our clients proposition is global, so we made the decision to create a .com website but using American English spelling as a large chunk of English speakers in the world use American English over British English. However, we want to grow the business within the UK, and therefore want to use British English language. Hence creating a .co.uk website. Now, my question is this.... the new .co.uk website will be identical content as the .com website, except for a few spelling changes and the way we phrase certain sentences. How would we be able to run both a .co.uk site and .com site without being penelized from Google for plagarism? Would it involve href lang tags? Server hosting location? Any ideas from you guys out there?
Local SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
To Keep My Company's CO.UK Page Or Redirect It...
Hi Moz'ers - I have a question... Just to set the stage, we're a small recruiting firm, with an even smaller marketing department. I'm essentially a one man wrecking crew and don't have a ton of extra time. That being said, I know that page rank (and local office rank) are critical to our inbound lead generation, so I'm willing to invest some of my time into doing it right. The issue I'm having is ranking high as a local business in Austin, New York, San Francisco, and London, UK (to name a few). So far I've solved this through building dedicated subpages on our .com site and link building key word anchor text towards those pages. The only page that's not really gaining traction is our London page. So I decided to clone (most of) the site, tweak the text (to try and avoid dup text), and try and get that page to rank. I'm also having it hosted on a local server, have it using a local domain address suffix (co.uk), using local hreflang (on our .com site), created dedicated web 2.0 sites, and done my best to do some link building. The problem I'm facing is crapy local ranking, and limited bandwidth to maintain two sites. Should I: A) Scrap the co.uk site and focus on the .com (and subpages)
Local SEO | | bettsrecruiting
B) Keep the co.uk domain, and just redirect the URL to our .com page
C) Keep the co.uk domain, send all links from the home page to the relevant page on our .com page, and set up 301 redirects for all other relevant pages.
D) Hire someone to clean up, rewrite, and upkeep the co.uk site because it has the most SEO value in the long run and is the only way I'm going to be able to rank locally in London. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim Our European Site - http://bettsrecruiting.co.uk/
Our US Site - http://bettsrecruiting.com/0