For a UK company is it worth swapping from .com to .co.uk
-
I currently own the domain lionseo.com and I also own the .co.uk variant some of the keywords I am targeting will have UK in them. My thoughts are that a .co.uk may help improve rankings on google.co.uk and click through + have a keyword match in the home page URL.
**Do you guys think it's worth swapping to the .co.uk domain from .com? **
Thanks in advance
Keith
-
Hi Hannah,
"I think" I will just leave the .com in place...
I can see a lot more .co.uk's in the SERP's for my keywords but perhaps that is just because I live in England and everyone has bought .co.uk's
I have already done the geo targeting in web master tools and claimed a places page etc.
Thanks for your help
Keith
-
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
-
Hi Keith,
If I were you I'd stick with the .com - I've not seen any evidence to suggest that using a .co.uk makes any difference to UK rankings. I don't think you'll see any major issues with CTR either.
I'm assuming that you're not having any US v UK issues right now E.G. - you're ranking better in the US than the UK, receiving more US than UK traffic etc. However if this is the case you could implement geo-targeting via webmaster tools, claim a Places listing (if you haven't already) etc to send some more signals about where you're located.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
I run a web development business in the UK and we have several domain variations such as .co.uk, .com, .net, .eu, but we are using .co.uk as the main one and do the 301 redirect on all the other ones so if someone types in .com variation in the url they will be redirected straight to .co.uk one.
-
To be honest I think a good strategy could be:
1. Make the .co.uk focused on - UK content, UK host, and uk specific data.
2. Keep the .com for US based clients with a US influence.
I mean if your only market is .co.uk and you only want to gather uk traffic I would look at implementing a 301 redirect from the .com to the .co.uk domain.
-
-
I would 301
-
Who knows, it's possible... But not right now
-
mostly UK
-
Nothing at all
I would love to hear from a person who has actually done this to find out if it's worth while from a ranking prospective.
-
-
-
Do you have much pre-existing link equity built up against pages on the .com?
-
Do you ever anticipate moving out of targeting a pure UK based client list?
-
Where does the majority of traffic come from today? i.e., is it mostly from the UK/where you want it to come from OR is it mostly from outside of the UK?
-
What would stop you from targeting the keywords now and reviewing performance in terms of traffic etc using the .com domain and then potentially utilising the .co.uk as a secondary measure if necessary?
Ben
-
-
I own both domains, when i say swapping I mean go through the effort of 301'ing the .com to the .co.uk
I have read up on this and I know most people will say that swapping domains won't make much difference, however it would be great to hear from some one who has actually done this.
Thanks
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
-
.com vs .co.uk
Hi, we are a UK based company and we have a lot of links from .com websites. Does the fact that they are .com or .co.uk affect the quality of the links for a UK website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
How does this company rank this page?
If you Google the keyword "used iPhone 5," the URL ranking #1 in the SERP is the following: http://buy.gazelle.com/buy-used-iphone-5/ This page has zero content on it and a button on it that takes you to a category page with the iPhone 5 pre selected. My question is **how does this page outrank the sites products pages? **I ran a backlink analysis and don't see any links pointing to that URL. Also, **how does this site deal with its duplicate content issues? **If you look at the following URLs, you'll see a bunch of duplicate content in the "Key Features" section below the fold. http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-at-t http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-sprint If you think about it, this site will have different product pages for each variations of cellphone carrier and cellphone storage capacity. So for an iPhone 5, they will have 15 pages! Any insight into this would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cody_West0 -
Umbrella company is taking Domain and link strength!
Hi everyone! First thanks for reading this, I really appreciate it. The company I work for has two sites one is an event website and the other is a blog. The blog gets a great amount of the traffic and propels sales. The event website doesn't get much traffic but has been around for awhile and has garnered a 6 Google Page rank with a lot of backlinks and referring domains. The event website, though, has the same name of the company and this sometimes gets confusing when talking to businesses so the executives in charge want to make the event website an umbrella site for the company (very similar to Virgin's website). They will keep the event website but rebrand it with a new domain and basically start over. The good news about this is the event website, even though it has high link strength, has a lot of 404s because they had a previous database that they dumped leading to a lot of 404s (I made them change those to 410s). Here's my issue. I want to keep the SEO strength of the event website for the event website. Could I do a 301 redirect for a couple months and then take it off and make the umbrella site? Would the strength pass? Or would it be possible to do a 301 redirect in the subfolders where most of the content and links are? Or would you recommend another method of transferring the strength of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Therealmattyd0 -
Client has been COPYING blog posts to wordpress.com for years. Now what?
Just discovered my client has been copying all her blog posts over to her wordpress.com blog account. So she has duplicate content to what is on her site. She has roughly 700 posts on her main site but doesn't look like that many on the wordpress site. There are no inbound links coming off the wordpress site that I could find. Here's an example: http://thevanillaqueen.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/ http://vanilla.com/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/ What are you recommendations for what should be done? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse0 -
What SEO Experts say about Pagination on PakWheels.com?
Hi SEOmozers... I need your expert feedback regarding SEO of listing pages with pagination. Crawl following links and write down your advice: Used Cars Car Reviews Listing New Honda Cars Actually these are the search listing pages with pagination. Please provide specialized recommendations for On page enhancements. Looking forward to see answers with pagination best practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | razasaeed0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0 -
Any advice for my website http://cvcsports.com?
I run the website http://cvcsports.com for myself and my parents. We offer custom varsity jackets for athletes/companies/etc. We rank first in Google for "letterman jackets" and near the top for "varsity jackets". I really want to reach #1 for "varsity jackets" (we were briefly #1 a few days ago but didn't stay there). Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to achieve that? Thanks in advance for the tips!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandonDoyle0
