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.
Is having a .uk.com domain a hindrance for long-term SEO?
-
I know there has been some mention on Moz Q&A for .uk.com, but not for at least 3 years. So I wanted to see if any Mozzers out there knew if having a .uk.com domain would hinder our SEO long-term?
Our company is finally now taking SEO seriously and we're planning some great stuff for the year ahead, but I have a feeling that our .uk.com domain may prevent us from out-ranking some of the bigger companies out there.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this out there?
Thanks
-
Hi Matt-Antonino,
Great - thank you.
Ok, I'm glad it's not going to be a problem!
Thanks again,
J
-
That's perfect, thank you for answering my question!
Cheers!!
J
-
You're asking a slightly different question than what was answered but let me clear it up 100% for you:
Yes, you're on a subdomain.  Yes, that's not generally ideal if you're trying to rank company.com and you also want blog.company.com  You would instead want company.com/blog (in most cases.)
However, you're on a fresh subdomain, as your main URL. That will work just fine.
In fact, the last time I downloaded the Majestic Million there were over 170,000 of the top 1M on subdomains.
Some famous subdomains you may know:
- maps.google.com
- itunes.apple.com
- get.adobe.com
- online.wsj.com
- news.yahoo.com
- abcnews.go.com
- money.cnn.com
Hope that helps! Â I wouldn't worry much about it if you're happy with the uk.com address.
-
A sub-domain acts like a normal domain, the problem you may find is people looking for your brand etc. so if they type out the URL and go to our company.com which could lead them to a different site etc. So in short you can still rank it fine though its perhaps a bit more complex, I would look at it from a user point of view and a branding perspective and go from there.
Personally I may agree with you on moving to a .co.uk (assuming you are aiming at UK markets) just so its not on a subdomain and its a bit easier to brand etc. but SEO wise its still possible to rank uk.com
Hope that helps a bit, Good luck!
-
Hey
Thanks for your response! I appreciate it.
Ok, that's good to know. Though we have .uk.com not .uk - e.g. OurCompany.uk.com
My concern is that we are essentially on a sub domain of .uk.com - is this still not a problem? Or would we be beneficial to move to OurCompany.com / OurCompany.uk etc etc..
Thank you again
-
in short no.
new TLDS can rank just as well as any other TLD and the .uk is treated essentially the same as .co.uk so as long as you're doing good SEO you shouldn't find it hinders you.
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
-
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Legacy domains
Hi all, A couple of years ago we amalgamated five separate domains into one, and set up 301 redirects from all the pages on the old domains to their equivalent pages on the new site. We were a bit tardy in using the "change of address" tool in Search Console, but that was done nearly 8 months ago now as well. Two years after implementing all the redirects, the old domains still have significant authority (DAs of between 20-35) and some strong inbound links. I expected to see the DA of the legacy domains taper off during this period and (hopefully!) the DA of the new domain increase. The latter has happened, although not as much as I'd hoped, but the DA of the legacy domains is more or less as good as it ever was? Google is still indexing a handful of links from the legacy sites, strangely even when it is picking up the redirects correctly. So, for example, if you do a site:legacydomain1.com query, it will give a list of results which includes pages where it shows the title and snippet of the page on newdomain.com, but the link is to the page on legacydomain1.com. What has prompted me to finally try and resolve this is that the server which hosted the original 5 domains is now due to be decommissioned which obviously means the 301 redirects for the original pages will no longer be served. I can set up web forwarding for each of the legacy domains at the hosting level, but to maintain the page-by-page redirects I'd have to actually host the websites somewhere. I'd like to know the best way forward both in terms of the redirect issue, and also in terms of the indexing of the legacy domains? Many thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clarkovitch0 -
Should I migrate .co.uk to .com?
I have previously searched the forum and could not find a definitive answer on this subject so would appreciate any guidance. I have just joined a new company, we have a .co.uk site which gets lots of traffic. We have a .com site which is targeting USA and .com/de/ targeting Germany. 'hreflang' is configured on the .com (between the USA and German sites) but not on .co.uk. This means that in the eyes of search engines (and Moz Pro) the 2 domains are competitors (and the .co.uk has much more presence than the .com in the USA). I know how to fix this and I am in the process of doing so. My question is whether it would make sense to migrate the .co.uk site to .com As previously mentioned the .co.uk site already does very well both in the UK and around the world (as our product is well known in our niche). As .co.uk can only primarily be targeted to UK would our global reach increase enough to justify migrating it to .com? We have dealers/distributors in maybe 30 countries and are continuing to expand, we will at point point add additional languages so my suggestion is that we migrate now as the authority of the .co.uk will help the emerging markets as well as increase our visibility in markets that are not currently primary targets. We are also in the process of hiring new staff specifically to focus on Content Marketing. So again this suggests having the 1 domain will make sense in the long run (as any value gained from content marketing success will be seen by all country/language focussed sites). I am also planning to rebuild the sites in the next few months as the current ones are not fit for purpose so the migration would coincide with this (I know this is not ideal). Apologies for the lengthy question, I hope the additional background information will help in providing some feedback to help me make the decision. David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesCrossland0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Redirect domain or keep separate domains in each country?
Hi all Hoping this might be something that can be answered given the number of variables 🙂Â
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse
My main site is www.isacleanse.com.au (Obviously targeted to Australian Market) and also www.isacleanse.co.nz targeted to NZ. The main Keywords im targeting are 'Isagenix' for both and also Isagenix Australia, Isagenix Perth, Sydney (Australian cities) and Isagenix NZ, Isagenix New Zealand, Isagenix Auckland etc.. for NZ The Australian site gets a lot more traffic and Australian market gets a lot more searches - I also have a section www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-new-zealand/ on the Australian site. The question is am I best off redirrecting the .co.nz domain completley to the Australian Domain to give it extra SEO Juice?0 -
SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1 -
Help - .ie vs .co.uk in google uk
We have a website that for years has attracted a high level of organic searches and had a very high level of links.  It has the .ie extension (Ireland) and did very well when competing in the niche market it is in on google.co.uk.  We have the same domain name but in .co.uk format and basically redirected traffic to it when people typed in .co.uk instead.  Since the latest panda update, we have noticed that the number of visits organically has dropped to a quarter of what it was and this is continuing to go down.  We have also noticed that the .ie version is no longer listed in google and has been replaced by .co.uk.  As we've never exchanged or submitted links for the .co.uk domain this means there are only links indexed in google. Is there any way I can get google to re-index the site using the .ie domain rather than the .co.uk domain?  I am hemorrhaging sales now and becoming a much more withdrawn person by the day!!! PS - the .co.uk domain is set up as a domain alias in plesk with both .ie and .co.uk domain dns pointing to the the same IP address. Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rufo
Steve0