Optimizing for the UK

One of the websites I run (and do the sales for) is based in the US. We get a handful of buyers each day from the UK and other European countries, but feel the region is much more productive than that. My question is, what steps should we take to further optimize the site for our European buyers?

Buying a .co.uk or similar domain? Any other tips?

 

Thanks for the note Shawn, I've got some work to do now.

 

I have lived on both sides of the British Channel/North Sea, here is my advice:

'European buyers' and the UK market are not quite the same. Mainland European buyers will relate better to dollar prizes which are nearly the same as Euro's but most of them don't know what Pound Sterling would be compared to Euro's. Mainland Europe surfers will also manually try and type in a .com address before trying a .co.uk address yet for SE marketing this won't be that important. UK buyers are way more comfortable paying with credit cards than mainland European potential customers and obviously, to quite an extent, there is the language barrier if you try to optimize for the whole of Europe. Try and write british english if you mainly target the UK, for the rest of EU it won't matter that much. Different after sales laws apply too in different countries. If it's the whole of Europe you are after then pay a good deal of attention to optimising for commen per-country misspellings of english keywords.

Good Luck!

 

Mmmm!!??

Notwithstanding the above you should let me know what it is eg site url etc as some preconceptions about geo are not quite what they seem.

One thing is for sure - what goes for Europe does NOT go for the UK!

 

Great info folks, thanks. I can tell this will take quite a bit of study in order to work well.

 

Digitalpoint, for the idiots like me, why do you suggest that the site is hosted in the UK?

 

There's nothing idiotic about your question CM, in fact, I asked exactly the same question a while back (different context, but the same question), after a similar statement by Shawn that I also asked him to clarify.

I'm yet to see any evidence that Google factors the registered locality of an IP address (used on a server) into it's SERPS. Obviously it geotargets clients, but servers are an entirely different matter.

The only instance in which Google **might** factor the registered locality of an IP address is where it is a generic tld such as a .com/net/org/biz/info etc. (Which Shawn wound up explaining to me.)

If you're using a co.uk to reach UK (commercial) audience, then don't be at all concerned. ie, there's no reason Google would penalize a company for simply choosing to use an off shore datacenter. Many do.

 

All but one of our .coms [no .co.uk] are hosted in the US - previously they were in France with three being moved to England and then 2 and the others into US.

Our market is US and UK for things in France and Spain and to be honest we have not ever noticed any difference from one DC to another or from the IP we were using for connection.

 

Thanx for clearing that up Shawn. Once again... Love that tool!

 

Thought I would put an end to speculation, and post this reply I got from Google about 3 weeks ago.

-------------snip>
Hi James,

Thank you for your note. Searches that are restricted to a country domain
should only return sites that are physically hosted in that company,
regardless of the extension. If you would like your site or others in the
UK to be returned in a 'UK sites only' search, we recommend that you have
the site hosted in that country. This should make it more likely that your
site will return in a search for pages from that country.

If your site is currently hosted in the correct country and you feel that
Google is incorrectly detecting your site's location, please visit
http://services.google.com/georeport/ to report the error. In your report,
please use the 'Comments' section to let us know the IP address of your
website, as well as where the website is physically located.

We hope this response is helpful to you.

Regards,
The Google Team

-----------------------snip>

As you can see they quite clearly say it is based on IP location, however, that said, my server is in the US, and all my co.uk's appear, but only some of my com's.

OWG

 

Another thing to be be carefull about is, don't assume that a UK host is actually using servers in the UK.
I use easyspace, a UK based company and originaly assumed the servers were UK based. I soon found out they weren't.
My .co.uk domains show up when searching for "pages from the UK" at google.co.uk, but my .com domains don't.
They used to be on servers in Australia and the .com and .co.uk would both show up when searching for "pages from Australia"
Thet have now moved the servers to the US and this shows that the .co.uk obviously has an effect with Google.

 

sim64 Good point. We have a .co.uk domain but it is hosted in Canada. There is very good reason for that. Basically what Google is doing is a unfair method forcing us to host our .co.uk site in the UK! This is a big frustration!

 

My webhost (1 & 1), are based in Germany but my sites still show up in "pages from the UK" in Google.

E.g.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hypnobirthing+midlands&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=nightingale+clinic&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=marie+mongan&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

(The sites are www.betterbirth.co.uk, www.nightingale-clinic.co.uk and www.hypnobirthing.co.uk.)

Anyone care to explain this?

Perhaps a .co.uk extension overrides the geographical location of the server? Would explain the problem with .com extensions.

Regards
Gordon

 

Although I agree with what Shawn has said I must point out that it seems to make no difference to us when our .coms are situated physically in the US but our searchs for example "skiing france" on the google.co.uk are the same as the KWT and our market is UK and US. Perhaps it is the text "france" that is assisting us here.

 

What about when you change it to search UK only- then it will, I believe.

 

No - I just did it to check before I posted - exactly the same

Amazing hey!

 

Heavy... so one of my .co.uk domains is physically in the USA and the KW for that site is targetted for the town where I live; but I've dropped from first page on G early this year to 5th page because sites "up north" have MY town as their KW on specific KW-targetted pages... That's the power of SEO for you. Time to *Lever* some of that back methinks...

 

Hi guys,

I was wondering about optimising my searchs for the UK, and when doing some searching on Google to find info, came across this forum.

It's already answered most of my questions, but I have one more.

I have a .com address, hosted in USA, but myself and my company are UK based. I guess this means that my .com will NOT appear when someone uses google.co.uk and clicks on "pages from the UK".

I have a .co.uk which matches the .com, and at present it is just parked on top of the .com If I submit the .co.uk to Google will it index the whole existing .com site as though it was a .co.uk site and will that then show up in "pages from the UK" ?

OR, would I be better to unpark the .co.uk and run it as a separate site, and submit it separately?

Many thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

David