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
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
-
Exact keyword in domain - does it work
Hi, a hypothetical question: let's say there is a fresh domain travelnorway.com (of course there is already domain like that, I am using it just as a example) Will it rank first on googe for "travel norway" query on google?( I mean in situation where 30 other companies are trying to rank for the same phrase) Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
How would I make an image sitemap for a site with 50k images?
Is it worth creating an image sitemap? I read an image sitemap can only have 1k entries would I need to make 50 different ones?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
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 -
Would removing or making non relevant links no follow boost a site?
Hi, I have just been checking out the backlinks for a prospective new client. It appears they have a number of links that are totally irrelevant to their nature of business and I was wondering if they would improve in the rankings etc if I removed them or made them no follow instead? Or would I simply just be throwing away crucial link juice? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
Interesting Dilemma: Making A (Good) Content Scrapper Rank
Greetings Moz'ers! I'm in the process of optimizing a non-profit's website that has an interesting dilemma: They lack the resources to create their own content so they search the web for videos, quotes, blogs, pictures, etc. to post on their website. As the "good guys" their cause is just but because they are essentially scrapping content from other sites they are considered "bad guys" in Google's eyes and are getting hit with duplicate content penalties. What they are doing isn't much different than what the major news sites do - they just want to be a good resource center. The content that they are using is relevant to the cause and they give credit on everything they post by linking to where the content came from. Any recommendations on how I can help them? Thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | DragonSearch0 -
Non-www to www code not working in htaccess
I use the same rewrite code on every site to consolidate the non-www and www versions. All sites in Joomla, linux hosting. Code is as follows: RewriteEngine On rewritecond %{http_host} ^site.com/ rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.site.com/$1 [R=301,L] Immediately following this code, I also rewrite /index.php to /. Thing is, I can get index.php to rewrite correctly but the non-www won't rewrite to www. I use the same code on every site but for some reason it's not working here. Are there common issues that interfere with rewriting a non-www to www in htaccess that could be interfering with the code I'm using above?
Technical SEO | | Caleone0 -
When does it make sense to use no-follow on your own domain?
Hey guys, I'm not too sure if I'm over-thinking this, but I've seen no-follow being used with SEOmoz and I'm looking to implement this myself. Most of my links point to my root domain (yes I'm working on building links to deep pages) so would it make sense to 'limit' or 'no-follow' links on my root domain so that only the most important pages are being passed link juice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | reegs0