When I first set up one of my sites I decided to go for .co.uk and that is now ranking quite while both her and on Google.com (I do have the equivalent .com domain for the site but that is on permanent redirect to the .co.uk). Would people searchig from the USA/Canada open a .co.uk site and if so, would they go as far as using products/services on it. Would be interested to hear your views. Thanks.
If you would like to target different countries in the world for your business, you should go at .com domain and redirect your .co.uk domain at 301 permanent redirection. This permanent redirection will be able to transfer your current website seo values at .com domain. You can target different region visitors with google geo targeting solution. The structure of the website will be as follows: for uk.........www.abc.com/uk/ for canada ..www.abc.com/canada/ for us.........www.abc.com/us/ the above folders uk, canada and us will have web pages according to countries. After creating these web pages you have to create xml site map according to countries and then you have to submit that sitemap in respective folder. With google geo-targeting option you can target your website folder at desired country.
Sounds like a plan, thanks Neil. How long would it take, after setting up the redirect, for Google search results to start showing the .com ?
That's what I feared. To be honest, when I set up the site, I never imagined it would get global traffic, so went for the .co.uk As I said before, the issue now is how to get the .com (which I also own) replacing the .co.uk with loss of rankings.