I'm setting up a website selling an assortment of goods to the UK and therefore have a co.uk domain name and a .com My advertising will definately use the .com version but my thinking is that I should put the site on the co.uk domain and forward the traffic to the .com Do you think this is the best approach? My belief is that as I only require UK traffic the co.uk will SEO better. I also assume customers wouldn't be put off when the .com redirects to the co.uk. Maybe this isn't the best strategy though? What are your thoughts?
You could do that with a 301 redirect, that way any backlinks you may have for the .com would be credited towards the .co.uk.
Thats probably the best bet. You definatly dont want to clone your site amongst domains as google will get cranky and penalise you for duplicate content.
Another option will take more work but you can treat the .uk version as complimentary of the .com or vice versa. What I mean is you can create 2 completely different websites, with one focusing on customer support/feedback/forums while the other focuses on the content. I'm not exactly sure how you can go about it because I'm not familar with your websites but I have seen other websites pull this off, i.e. .com is the main site and the .net is the forum...but this might be a bad idea for the long haul. Probably best to say KISS Keep It Simple Stupid and 301 permanent redirect one to the other like Narrator and lonewolff suggested.
Thanks for the replies. @ gamefriends - It's an interesting idea though this will essentially be a shopping site so initially I think the KISS plan would be better. I'll definately make a mental note of that one for other projects though! Most competitors have their site on the .com domain and redirect from the .co.uk. It may well be I should follow the crowd but I was thinking about doing the opposite simply for the SEO points. I'm just not sure how many extra points I get though!