How to make a .co.uk work in the US
-
Hi
Anyone out there got any tips on the best way to get a .co.uk working well in Google US? We have a Travel site working fantastically well in the UK for some very competitive keywords. It is ranking okay for the same keywords in US but nothing particularly great. Any tips on bespoke activity to drive the ranking for the site in the US without undermining the UK rankings.
Thanks
Pete
-
Hi Pete,
both answers by Greg and Malcom are correct.
More over, take into account that any territorial domain name, as the .co.uk, automatically geo-target the given country territory. That is the reason why .co.uk sites do not perform well on Google.com
The best solution is to have separate domain names for the two territories and implement the use of the rel=alternate hreflang in order to suggest to Google what URL show in the SERPs of the two domain, being both in English.
Be aware that - even though Google sometimes suggests to use that tag along with the cross domain canonical one, that is true just for those pages of both sites, which have exactly the same content.
Said that, remember always to geo-localize the content for US and UK in order to make them different (language, currency, address, phone numbers).
-
I have never seen an example of a .co.uk ranking well in the US market. The logical approach is to use a .com TLD and use Google WMT to set the target to US. You can't set a .co.uk as far as I believe because it's main purpose is to serve the UK market anyway. I have been in situations where a .com and .co.uk have both targeted at the UK and they basically end up cannibalising each other until one wins and one disappears.
Your best bet is to create a US-separate site (with different content!).
In my personal opinion you will never reach #1 with a .co.uk on google.com, I could be mistaken though and having a US IP address, US links pointing in may help.
-
Hi Pete,
I would suggest having a separate US version of the site (ideally on a .com domain matching your .co.uk) rather than trying to target both from the .co.uk domain name. I think (as you've already experienced to an extent) it would be very difficult to target both and could have long-term negative effects on your work in the UK rankings.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Greg
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
-
Google indexing .com and .co.uk site
Hi, I am working on a site that is experiencing indexation problems: To give you an idea, the website should be www.example.com however, Google seems to index www.example.co.uk as well. It doesn’t seem to honour the 301 redirect that is on the co.uk site. This is causing quite a few reporting and tracking issues. This happened the first time in November 2016 and there was an issue identified in the DDOS protection which meant we would have to point www.example.co.uk to the same DNS as www.example.com. This was implemented and made no difference. I cleaned up the htaccess file and this made no difference either. In June 2017, Google finally indexed the correct URL, but I can’t be sure what changed it. I have now migrated the site onto https and www.example.co.uk has been reindexed in Google alongside www.example.com I have been advised that the http needs to be removed from DDOS which is in motion I have also redirected http://www.example.co.uk straight to https://www.example.com to prevent chain redirects I can’t block the site via robot.txt unless I take the redirects off which could mean that I lose my rankings. I should also mention that I haven't actually lost any rankings, it's just replaced some URLs with co.uk and others have remained the same. Could you please advise what further steps I should take to ensure the correct URL’s are indexed in Google?
Technical SEO | | Niki_10 -
How much difference does .co.uk vs .com for SEO make?
My Website has a .com domain. However I have noticed that for local businesses all of them have a .co.uk (UK business) TLD (check plumbers southampton for example). I have also noticed that on checking my serp rankings, I'm on page 1 if searched on Google.com but page 2 if searched on google.co.uk. Now being UK based I would assume most of my customers will be redirected to google.co.uk so I'm wondering how much of an impact this actually makes? Would it be worth purchasing .co.uk domain and transferring my website to that? Or run them both at the same time and set up 301 direct on my .com to .co.uk? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Marvellous0 -
Using Wix and the keyword grader tool isn't working.
After reading other posts about Wix and SEO I think I need to change the web design provider to something I have more control of SEO options. Does anyone have any suggestions of something I can use?
Technical SEO | | benjacksoncook0 -
Cache Not Working on Our Site
We redesigned our site (www.motivators.com) back in April. Ever since then, we can't view the cache. It loads as a blank, white page but the cache text is at the top saying: "This is Google's cache of http://www.motivators.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jul 22, 2013 15:50:40 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more. Tip: To quickly find your search term on this page, press Ctrl+F or ⌘-F (Mac) and use the find bar." Has anyone else ever seen this happen? Any ideas as to why it's happening? Could it be hurting us? Advice, tips, suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Motivators0 -
What changes do i need to make to my site to get into google news
Hi, when we had the old design, we were in google news but then when we upgraded our site, we had a major problem which forced us to have to redesign our site. Since then we have not been included in google news and we would like to get back in. We only want to be in google news for the following page http://www.in2town.co.uk/Latest-News-Headlines But for some reason, no matter what we do we keep getting knocked back. I would love to know what we should be doing to get into google news and see what the problems are. We have moved to a bigger dedicated server to increase speed so i know it is not that. Any help would be great Also is there an alternative to google news that i can get our site into to generate traffic and to get our news stories straight out to people Hi, Thank you for your note. We appreciate your interest in sharing your content with us. However, when we reviewed your site, we found that we cannot include it in Google News at this time. We have certain guidelines in place regarding the quality of sites which are included in Google News. Please feel free to review these guidelines at the following link: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40787 We know it can be frustrating to not have more information about this but we appreciate your efforts and understanding. We will log your site for future consideration. Please keep in mind that we will be unlikely to review your site for at least 60 days following this email. Thanks for your understanding and your continued interest in Google News. Regards,
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
The Google News Team0 -
Any one worked on a sites.google.com/ website ?
Hi I have a client that has a sites.google.com/ website, Has anyone ever used one ? or had to do SEO on one ? Any help would be very much appreciated Thanks
Technical SEO | | tempowebdesign0 -
Deos canonicalisation work across directories?
Hi everyone, I'm new to the group and can't find this question answered anywhere else. I have a dynamic site that we aim to rewrite the URLs removing parameters and making it easier for the engines to index us and users to recall URLs. The issue that worries me relates to canonical tags. If I put a canonical tag on a directory.. http://www.abc.com/spain (index page) and then point all variations of that page to the index page will it stop/pass juice for those pages at the next directory level to the index page rather than properly index and rank those pages appropriately. ie. http://www.abc.com/spain/Malaga.html will it pass any link juice I have for the second level to the first level? It concerns me that it will as I had a conversation with someone who lost all visibility on her site and it turned out to be the canonical tag on the home page that was causing it. Thanks in anticipation
Technical SEO | | VIPvillasdotcom0 -
Can anyone recommend a good UK service provider for Dedicated Servers?
Hi, we have just had a shocking experience moving from shared hosting to a dedicated server with a very large service provider. Our website slowed down, the server has been down more times than up so we have moved back to shared hosting until we can find a supplier that can deliver. nightmare!! If anyone can recommend a good company it would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SGIMarketing1