Need advice from UK site owners

Hi there,

I have a site selling big mens clothes which I have been doing a bit of SEO on for the last few months.

I've done all the on page stuff ages ago and have been focussing on link building mainly through dofollow blogs and forums.

The thing is that I'm ranking well for google.com but not so well for google.co.uk which is where I'm targetting. The links I've been building have been aimed at the .com version of my site - this was before I knew that it's much harder to get a .com to rank in google.co.uk. My question is should I be redirecting my .com domain name to my .co.uk domain name and if I do so will this ruin all my linkbuilding efforts so far? And if not, how long should I expect it to take to get my .co.uk domain in the SERPs (it's nowhere to be seen currently)

In other words, since all the links point to mysite.com if I redirect to mysite.com to mysite.co.uk will the links which point at the .com version not therefore benefit the .co.uk version?

I have changed the geographic target of my site in the google webmaster tools CP but that was over 2 months ago and has had absolutely no effect so far. Anyone having the same or similar issues?

Thanks in advance

 

It is not matter that your site domain name on .com or .co.uk because I am also working for UK mobile phones sites. I have seen many sites which are on .com but selling mobile in UK and is on #1 also. Main things are that your optimization should be properly for UK based and links for your site should comes from UK mostly. If you redirect from .com to .co.uk then effort and ranking which is in .com will also down. So, it depends on IP 1st then domain booking address, your products, your business offices all the things then it comes in search based on region.

 

as you said that if you are getting good ranking in .com than it is very easy to get rank for .co.uk as there is very less competition in .co.uk than .com.

I would recommend you to get back links from .co.uk domain and try to post articles about your site in .co.uk article directories.

Let me know if you need any help

all the best

 

I've got a sex toy website that's at the top of page 2 of google for "discount sex toys" does quite well for other phrases aswell though.

I think writing articles puting the articles on the site, aswell as adding them to lots of article directories is what worked for me.

Now that it's up there now I'm very tempted to sell it, don't have time to run it now due to personal reasons.

 

In your opinion, which would rank better on google.co.uk:

a site.com which has lots on .co.uk backlinks or a site.co.uk which has a lot of .com backlinks?

 

My opinion?... I don't really know, my on page SEO is all pretty good I'm sure, dont really know much about the backlinks and stuff.

Writing articles is I think what worked for me, making sure to post about 2 or 3 links in each article submission using the appropriate anchor text. As I said though I'm not an expert and there's a good chance that I'm doing it all wrong, but it seems to be working for now.

 

Personally I've never come across any issues - but then my experience of URL forwarding is not brilliant. I would probably hazard a guess at encouraging more .co.uk links to your .com domain. Having said that, if you find it still ranks poorly in google.co.uk, a 301 redirect is SEO friendly and so, your PR would not decrease massively.

Btw, if anyone has a spare minute, please take a look at a new site I'm SEO-ing. Its the Internet Marketing link in my signature. I'd appreciate any feedback and if you've got some thoughts on any of the blog articles, please feel free to contribute. Thanks very much!

 

Hi,

If you are targeting the UK market only then it is far better to rank in google.co.uk as as there are five times as may uk searches on google.co.uk as google.com. I have been going through exactly the same thing, so i know that there are a couple of things you can try before giving up on ranking in .co.uk.

You can set the location in webmaster tools to the UK, you can make sure your hosting is based in the UK and preferably your registrar as well. You should also concentrate on getting links from UK based sites.

If those things don't help then you can try a 301 redirect which shouldn't harm your site in anyway.

 

To answer this question...

If you set up and use a 301 redirect you will pass on all the googlelove generated by the links pointing to the .com site onto the co.uk site, so it will benefit.

 

The same thing happened to me about 3 months ago! In the end I did the 301 redirect to .co.uk site. The thing to remember here is patients. Firstly you will loose your google.com rankings, and you will not appear anywhere in google.co.uk - DON"T PANIC!!!! it is alright. The whole thing take about 8 - 12 weeks, and then as if by magic, you will suddenly start ranking again in google.co.uk, and within a short space of time, will be back on the front page again.

 

Here's what you need to do.

1. Set your geographic preference in Google's Webmasters Tools to the United Kingdom
2. Attract quality relevant incoming links from other related Web sites located in the UK.
3. (optional) Have your site hosted on a server in the UK.
4. (optional) Move your site over to the co.uk TLD and 301 redirect the .com to it.

 

I did both of these, and to tell you the truth, didn't make a blind bit of difference! If you have a .com domain even if you host it in the UK, chances are you are gonna be pushed back the bottom of google.co.uk, regardless of what you do...

The answer is so very simple with a 301 redirect to a .co.uk domain (and make sure it is hosted in the UK) that a just wait a bit of time, continue link building to your new domain and Bob is your uncle - hello uncle Bob!

 

And how long did you wait? I never said it would happen overnight.

 

Thanks for all the info guys. I think I'll do as Dan Shultz suggests and aim for more links from .co.uk sites. I've already changed the webmaster tools goetargetting months ago. I'm going to leave my hosting as it is even though it's germany I can't afford to change.

The only other thing to do then is the optional 301 redirect. I'm pleased that it worked well for you sonix7, sounds like I'll be having a bit of that too!

I don't suppose you have a link for whatever tutorial you used to explain exactly how to do the redirect? I don't want to mess it up and if it worked for you it should work for me right?

 

If the site you mean is the same as the one in your signature then you dont need to change hosts- its coming up as a UK server (take a look- http://whois.domaintools.com/bigmenslargeclothes.com).

 

This is very important. A lesson learnt some time ago when our developer moved our site to US hosting without our knowledge.