undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Looking to rank a .co.uk domain in the USA

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Looking to rank a .co.uk domain in the USA

Technical SEO
5
8
3.9k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • net66
    net66 last edited by Mar 19, 2012, 12:33 PM

    Hello Mozzers,

    One of my clients sites is "domain.co.uk" and they are looking to rank in the USA with the same domain.

    They are looking to change host (for unrelated reasons) and I think it may be beneficial for them to get hosting in the USA.

    Essentially the business is moving to the USA but they want to retain their domain name as they cannot get their hands on a domain with their company name in that is .com / .net / .org etc. . .

    I know that the .co.uk domain will adversely affect click through rates in the states, but there seems to be no way around this if they want their retain the company name as their domain name.

    Would American based hosting help them rank better for searches from the USA or is the benefit of this negligible?

    Net66

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • net66
      net66 last edited by Mar 21, 2012, 8:01 AM Mar 21, 2012, 8:01 AM

      Thanks for the replies guys! Some really good answers.

      I know that it will be harder, but I'm going to give it a go!

      As they are already getting a company.com domain and will retain the company.co.uk page the only reason for the CLIENT-NAME.co.uk page is as a personal landing page / portfolio page.

      It is worth seeing if I can rank their name in the USA. The domain is set up to rank for this already and is already ranking close to page one.

      I have seen other name based domains rank in both countries. I think it is worth the risk as I doubt my clients UK rankings (for their name) will be altered. They have scores of links and the content is well targeted.

      Once more, thanks for the advice!

      Net66

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • net66
        net66 @Hannah_Smith last edited by Mar 20, 2012, 10:46 AM Mar 20, 2012, 10:46 AM

        Hey guys,

        It currently ranks number 17 in the USA, so it is not too far away from the first page.

        I think it is doable, but not advisable. It is always worth having a go, and failing that getting a new domain.

        Thanks for all the help!

        Net66

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Hannah_Smith
          Hannah_Smith last edited by Mar 20, 2012, 8:47 AM Mar 20, 2012, 8:47 AM

          Hi Neil,

          Ranking for a person's name in the US with a 'name.co.uk' is possible - for example I think if you do a search for 'Jane Copland' in the US you'll see janecopland.co.uk ranking 1st.

          Do you know how well or otherwise the site is ranking in the US right now?

          Essentially the ability to rank will likely be impacted by how common or otherwise the person's name is and how strong their site is.

          In terms of actions from you I wouldn't be inclined to change hosting as that's unlikely to have an impact on it's own - however if as you say you're looking to change the hosting in any case then moving it the US probably wouldn't hurt. I'd also encourage you to build links to this domain to strengthen the site.

          I guess I'm saying it's not necessarily impossible, but in an ideal world you'd get some sort of generic domain (.com / .net etc).

          I hope this helps,

          Hannah

          net66 1 Reply Last reply Mar 20, 2012, 10:46 AM Reply Quote 2
          • Catalyste
            Catalyste last edited by Mar 19, 2012, 5:21 PM Mar 19, 2012, 5:21 PM

            I think that it's harder, you will need a lot of US links so it's a lot of work. The best would be to use a .com and to create a US version of your site.

            USA users won't really be attracted to .co.uk and also the vocabulary you use on the site could be a real turn off for US users.

            But if you absolutely want to do it, I would host a sub-domain of .co.uk on a server located in USA. But as I said, it's a lot of work that users may not appreciate to much.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • matbennett
              matbennett last edited by Mar 19, 2012, 3:25 PM Mar 19, 2012, 3:25 PM

              My experience is that the .uk extension is a strong indicator for a local site and it creates extra work. US hosting, contact details and predominantly US links would help, however personally I would still be thinking about a separate non .uk name.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • net66
                net66 @Keszi last edited by Mar 19, 2012, 2:04 PM Mar 19, 2012, 2:04 PM

                Hi Istavan,

                Thanks for the quick reply!

                Maybe I wasn't too clear.

                The company would have a separate site a company-name.com. This would be US based and have the company address, and details on there.

                The other site that (.co.uk) has no real income in terms of sales.

                It is a photographer and this site is a personal profile site that will have links to his business site.

                The idea of this site is to rank for his name, and his name alone as it gets a lot of searches. His UK rank for this does not matter as he will not be returning.

                His domain is perfectly set up to rank for his name. His domain is "his-name.co.uk" and has some good content.

                My question is really just related to ranking for the clients name. It is a very, very common name but ranks first in the UK.

                Would it be possible to gain this ranking in the USA?

                I have never tried to rank a .co.uk domain name in the USA, but I know that Google is trying to return local results. (Thus my conclusion that a .co.uk name would not be beneficial).

                While I know this is not the best situation my client really wants to retain his current domain.

                He is only looking to rank for his name, which is his domain name. Is this going to be a possibility?

                Has anyone ranked a .co.uk domain in the USA successfully?

                Finally, would US based hosting help at all?

                Net66

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Keszi
                  Keszi last edited by Mar 19, 2012, 1:49 PM Mar 19, 2012, 12:54 PM

                  Hi Net66,

                  As I read through your question my first impression was... No Waaaaay!

                  I wouldn't advice to mix things up. Just simple create a new brand for the US market. The reasons are the following:

                  1. When re-targeting an established website you can hurt your rankings in both UK and US results.

                  2. a .co.uk is a ccTLD which wont be very useful for a US targeting

                  3. for a better on-site optimization you will have to rewrite content to better fit the US English readers level (and there are major differences between US and UK English) - What happens to their established visitors?

                  4. if you reach to retarget somehow the .co.uk website, they will see a fall in the sales (because they will probably loose some ranks in the .co.uk and gain some new ones in the .com)

                  Ok. Now if you buy a new brand name for the US market:

                  1. You can develop from first stage an optimized website (information architecture, content, links, etc.)

                  2. You can have a brand name that is more catchy for US market.

                  3. They can run two different websites in the same time effectively. Until the US website comes up, they will have enough sales from UK markets.

                  I hope that helped,

                  Istvan

                  net66 1 Reply Last reply Mar 19, 2012, 2:04 PM Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Leaf-a-mark

                    Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?

                    Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
                    I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers

                    Technical SEO | Apr 7, 2021, 6:30 PM | Leaf-a-mark
                    0
                  • nathangdavidson2

                    How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?

                    I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
                    https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan

                    Technical SEO | Nov 21, 2016, 7:59 PM | nathangdavidson2
                    0
                  • usDragons

                    Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

                    My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!

                    Technical SEO | May 13, 2016, 3:30 PM | usDragons
                    0
                  • kuchenchef

                    Redirect typo domains

                    Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?

                    Technical SEO | Jul 10, 2015, 12:18 PM | kuchenchef
                    0
                  • waqid

                    Clients domain expired - rankings lost - repurchased domain - what next?

                    Its only been 10 days and i have repurchased the domain name/ renewed. The who is info, website and contact information is all still the same. However we have lost all rankings and i am hoping that our top rankings come back. Does anyone have experience with such a crappy situation?

                    Technical SEO | Nov 14, 2014, 7:39 AM | waqid
                    0
                  • john25181010

                    How well do .ltd.uk domain names rank?

                    Hi all, do .ltd.uk domain names rank well? How well do they stack up against a .com or .co.uk? I'd really appreciate any feedback from people with any experience with these domains. Thanks John

                    Technical SEO | Feb 22, 2013, 3:20 PM | john25181010
                    0
                  • pauledwards

                    .com or .co.uk in UK index? but the .com has higher domain authority...

                    Hi there i have a .com and a .co.uk for a site that has been around a while. However not much seo has been done on it, i was wonderign do i continue to optimise for the .com or switch to the .co.uk to rank in Google UK index for various search terms. .COM = 40 domain authority .CO.UK - 10 domain authority. Let the debate start 🙂

                    Technical SEO | Dec 20, 2011, 7:13 AM | pauledwards
                    0
                  • bThere

                    Subdomain and Domain Rankings

                    I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league)  when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks

                    Technical SEO | Oct 18, 2011, 8:56 AM | bThere
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.