Hi Joanne,

When taking such a decision I always read through again and again the article from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

Ideally it would be good to contact each webmaster and ask them to change the url from the .com to the .co.uk, but realistic that is almost impossible.

What I would do is download through OpenSiteExplorer all the incoming links, check in general which are the most important for me and at least contact those webmasters and tell them about the change of address.

I hope it helps.

Istvan

Yes, that would be a signal. But the idea I have mentioned in my previous answer was to "host" different languages on different ccTLDs.

English version  - .com or .co.uk (if you are targeting the UK)

French version - .fr

Spanish version - .es

We had 9 languages back that at that company and for each language we had different subfolders: /en/; /fr/; /it/ and so on... which gave us the possibility to geo-target each subfolder from Google Webmaster Tools, but we have seen our competitors next to us(and even before us) in most of the cases with their ccTLD version.

"Having different ccTLD's for each language but keeping the same site would result in duplicate content am I right?"

If you plan to keep the current versions + have new ccTLD versions then yes, you have a duplicate there. What you could do, if you migrate to ccTLD version is the create 301 redirects from the old URL to the new.

Istvan

Hi Teddi,

I personally like the idea of having the navigation on the right side, but we usually test it for each client. Questioning your visitors with a feedback will even give you a better overview of how they like it.

That would be my personal approach for it, but I hope it helps.

Istvan

Hi BruLee,

In your case I would advice you to check the article of Danny Dover. It might be a little-bit old - 2009 - but it covers the pros and cons of choosing how to host the different languages.

I have experience with the version where you have one big site and different languages are hosted on different subfolders, which was good, but we could have done better.

If you have enough resources to have better link building campaigns I would go with the different ccTLD for each language.

I hope this helped,

Istvan

Hey.

Maybe it would be an idea to use Copyscape.com. They have the so called Copysentry.

Gr.,

Istvan

Hey,

Long time since the Question, I was just wondering if you worked it out or not.

Gr.,

Istvan

Hi Emmanuel,

If you want to have a quick crawl then maybe it would be smart to use: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test

I am not aware of starting a new crawl faster with the campaign which you already set up.

Gr.,

Istvan