1) So I have a website I'm launching in the new year for the UK. Since I have only so much time, I can only spend time on SEO for 1 tld. Lets say I have .com and .co.uk and on my webserver and it automatically detects the incoming IP and will route UK visitors .co.uk who hit the .com address. Would time be better spent on working on .com or .co.uk? 2) Also how do I maximise SEO for when I have multiple tlds such as .fr (french), .es (spanish), .ie (irish), .de (german) ? Thanks for your time.
the .com will pull you more international traffic while the .co.uk domai will really only help you in the UK when it comes to Google
If you are going to target Google.co.uk then I would suggest you going for .co.uk domain and if you are targetting Google.com, go for .com. Same goes for your server IP. For Google.co.uk, having a server based in UK will help.