International targeting
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Hi
I have a UK based website using a .com, we also own the .co.uk which points to the .com. We get IRO 40,000 UVs per month and we have good domain authority. I now want to launch the site in America however if I seperated the sites out and used the .co.uk for the UK and the .com for the US I would decimate my UK rankings.
Am I able to target both the US and the UK under the one domain, or will the fact that I host in the UK ultimately impact on any rankings I may achieve in the US?
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I would choose the .com and create the /us/ subcarpet (targeting the US via GWT), in order to give to it an initial boost thanks to the authority the .com site already have.
I would be sure to pay attention to all the classic issues of International SEO, especially I'd try to avoid duplicated content, and surely will implement the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in order to avoid as much as I can to see ranking the UK version of the site in the US.
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I would suggest you change to the .com version and keep your site hosted in the UK. UK rankings will fluctuate when the site gets re-indexed but should potentially get back on track seeing that the site is still exactly the same and all your .co.uk URLs are now pointing to a .com version. This way you can rank world wide and still rank super well in your local SE.
just my opinion.
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