ECommerce .com or .co.uk

[TPearson]

I'm in the process of putting together an eCommerce site selling greetings cards.

I would like to sell the cards to both the US and UK markets. I also want to have the best chance of ranking well in the US and UK SERPs.

Should I build 2 sites using the same products/content on a .com and .co.uk domain (dup content issues?), or should I have one site with the ability to checkout in either currency?

Any thoughts / guidance would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

[webmethod]

+1 what Keri and Andriy have said. I would only add that you can still buy additional domains and redirect them to your core site.

e.g. your single site sits on site.com. If you wanted to "glocalise" your appeal then you could promote site.co.uk in the UK in advertising campaigns and have it 301 redirect to site.com. This would protect your brand, and also gives you the opportunity to localise the experience on site.com if they were referred via site.co.uk, and configure things like setting correct local currency. It really depends on how important having a local appeal is to your client.

George

@methodicalweb

[nurzhyk]

Up to me your exact case demands one single site. There is no use to write the same content on two sites. It is better to use one .com site with possibility to chose two currencies. But you can buy uk domain too and have a possibility for future development of something personalised for Uk market but remember to post there only unique content.

[KeriMorgret]

I'd opt for the single site, both of the duplicate content issues and for your sanity. You'll have one site to maintain instead of two, one site to build links to, only one entry instead of two if something changes for a card, one place to make price changes, etc.