.Com version of my site is ranking better than .co.uk for my UK Website for branded search. 301 redirect mess
-
Dear Mozzers,
I have an issue with my UK Website (short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD ) whereby when I type my company name in to google.co.uk search the .com version returns in Search as opposed to the .co.uk and from looking at open site explorer the page rank of the .com is higher than the .co.uk ?. Infact I cant even see the .co.uk homepage version but other pages from my site.
The .com version is also 301'd to the .co.uk.
From looking at Open Site Explorer, I have noticed that we have more links pointing to .com as opposed to .co.uk. Alot of these are from our own separate microsites which we closed down last year and I have noticed the IT company who closed them down for some reason 301'd them to the .com version of our site as opposed to the .co.uk but If I look in http://httpstatus.io/ (http status checker tool) to check one of these mircosites it shows - 301 - 302 - 200 status codes which to me looks wrong ?. I am wondering what it should read ... e.g should it just be a 301 to a 200 status code ?.
-
My Website short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD and an example of some of 10 microsites we closed down last year which seems to be redirected to .com is http://goo.gl/BkcIjy and http://goo.gl/kogJ02
-
As these were redirected almost a year ago - it is okay if I now get them redirected to the .co.uk version of my site or what should I do ?
-
They currently redirect to the home page but given that each of the microsites are based on an individual category of my main site , would it be better to 301 them to the relevant category on my site. My only concern is that , may cause to much internal linking and therefore I wont have enough links on my homepage ?
-
How would you suggest I go about building up my .co.uk authority so it ranks betters than the .com- I am guessing this is obviously affecting my rankings and I am losing link juice with all this.
Any advice greatly appreciated .
thanks
Pete
-
-
Hi Russ,
I don't quite understand why I would need to add hreflang tags.
I don't have .com versions of any of my pages, I only have a .com dominant homepage when I do search for my branch name in serps.
Or am I missing something here ? Can you please explain a bit more ?
thanks
Pete
-
Many thanks Ben, I will look at those things you mentioned.
Much Appreciated
Pete
-
This is a clear case of needing to use the hreflang tag
Put this on the .com
Put this on the .co.uk
Preferably do this on every page, as long as the pages correspond with one another...
Put this on the .com
Put this on the .co.uk
-
First off you definitely want to get rid of that redirect chain, the 301-302-200. That 302 temporary redirect isn't a good thing. Go back to your IT company them and ask them to do things properly by redirecting straight to the .co.uk site. That 302 is intriguing; I presume you've checked that they've used 301s to redirect the .com to the .co.uk domain, not 302s? If they have done it with 302s, first get them to turn those 302s into 301s then get a new IT company.
If the microsites are for different product categories then make the 301s point to your category pages; any user who goes through that 301 is going to prefer landing on the relevant category page to the home page.
Also, if you can do so and depending on the site you might want to look at changing the .com domain's DNS records, so that the changeover happens at the server level not just at the browser level.
A few ideas for improving the domain authority of the .co.uk quickly:
- Lok again in OSE at the links pointing to the .com and if any of those aren't from your own microsites then see if you can get them changed - most people are quite happy to do that if you ask them since it helps their customers find what they need
- Do the same with all your microsites
- Go through the full list of your suppliers, see which of them link to retailers, plant hires, or distributors but don't link to you, and ask for a link
- You have local branches, so get into the local directories
- If you exhibit at any trade shows, get any coverage in the trade press, or do anything else with someone that has a website, ask for a link
- Do you have customers with websites who have been customers for a long time, as in ten years or more? If so would any of them be happy putting a badge on their website? Wrap a link around that badge and there you go
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 or .co.uk
I have ownership over the .co.uk and the .com for my brand name and I was wondering which URL I should use. Most my sales come from within the UK, (with only a small amount from the US). Currently I'm using the .co.uk and redirecting the .com URL but should I be doing this the other way around? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
301 redirects cross domains
Hi Moz Community. We have a client that has Website A and Website B. Website A is going to be replaced by Website C, a new website and brand. Some products sold on Website A are going to be split out to Website B & C. i.e. Say Website A sells eight products - then four will go to Website B and four to Website C. OUR QUESTION Technically we know we can 301 redirect the Website A products to the relevant Website B & Website C products. 1. Given this convoluted structure, will there be any negative ramifications for SEO? and; 2. Which website would you redirect the homepage to, B or C?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WCR0 -
Robots.txt - Do I block Bots from crawling the non-www version if I use www.site.com ?
my site uses is set up at http://www.site.com I have my site redirected from non- www to the www in htacess file. My question is... what should my robots.txt file look like for the non-www site? Do you block robots from crawling the site like this? Or do you leave it blank? User-agent: * Disallow: / Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/video-sitemap.xml
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | morg454540 -
Website Suddenly dropping rank
Morning Moz Fans: My URL is: http://goo.gl/Dhbjwj According to MOZ, which we are tracking this URL with, somewhere between the 3rd Feb and 10th the domain went from being fairly well indexed to being dropped to pages further back than 6-7, for pretty much everything, even the company name was only registering at the bottom of page one. Around this time we were transferring the website from .php into wordpress, so we were creating new pages, called by the same names and all the same content but we created the wordpress area in a sub domain of the website. Again around this time we had an issue with the blog area and had to take it down for 4-5 weeks due to some errors which meant google wouldn't have been able to crawl these pages properly, but the rest of the website was up and running. We also discovered recently that the company have and use this domain http://goo.gl/5JvDUH So my question is, what do you think caused the problem? has it been premaritally penalised? is there a way I can get google to specifically look at it and is there any more i can do?Thank you for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | popcreativeltd0 -
Does 301 Redirect solve many problems?
Hi, there are many problems with my site. I have a lot of duplicate page titles and a lot of missing meta tags. However, I think most of them are BECAUSE i have a lot of duplicate pages. So I have read some articles and I will 301 redirect all the duplicated pages. Will this solve the problem with duplicate titles and missing meta tags as well? For example, my homepage has like 10 duplicated pages. Since they are duplicated, they have the same titles and they are all missing meta tags. I am planning to fill in meta tags JUST for the canonical page and redirect all duplicated pages to that page. Is this a good practice? Also, just curious, do different title tags and different meta tag description make the pages "not duplicated?" I assume it will still appear as duplicated.... Sorry if this was confusing...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0 -
Redirects, 302 and geolocation for multi-regional .com website
One of our sites utilizes a single .com domain but offers differentiated article page for users depending on their location. For example: example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-gb-en for UK example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-us-en for US example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-au-en for Aus Currently we use example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo as the relative link on the site and then the user is redirected by 302 to the correct article for them based on their location. I've read countless pages about 302 redirects (and largely why you shouldn't use them because of link juice, indexing etc) but what alternative can we use since we don't want to permanently redirect to one URL but rather redirect to the relevant URL based on the users location. All the stuff I've read talks about redirecting using 301s but this surely only works when you are redirecting from one URL to one permanent new URL as opposed to redirecting to one of many country specific URLs. It's not really a solution for us to set up separate TLDs for each country so what is the best mechanism for redirecting user to the correct article for them and making sure that link juice is shared, pages are indexed etc? I hope I've explained this well enough for any of you to offer advice. Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simon_realbuzz0 -
How long do 301 redirects have to stay in place?
For a large retail site we have plenty of "old" pages that are 2-3 years old and still have 301 redirects to a new page. After a search engine has recognized a 301 redirect and dropped the "Old" URL from the index and started displaying the "New" URL, is it safe to delete that old page and thus remove the 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOmoxy0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0
