As an SEO executive I am expected to know a fair bit about SEO, i'm sure like most of you SEO experts on here. But there are always things that have me scratching my head, and still researching, learning and asking questions, well I wonder if someone can help me. Does anyone know the difference between ranking in .com and .co.uk, for a UK IP hosted website, and website selling products only in the UK. I am page 2 for both .com and .co.uk, but rank higher in .com, does anyone know why this is, and how I could switch the focus? Thanks
For me, it is the other way round - my rankings (for a co.uk website) are better on google.co.uk. I assume when you mean .com you are using google.co.uk and searching the web as opposed to pages from the UK. One way to increase relevancy for the UK results listings is to obtain more co.uk backlinks. Hosting on a UK-based Server helps too. Also, in Google's webmaster tools, you can instruct Google that you wish to target users in the UK. Generally, I'm OK with ranking slightly higher for the normal web results as opposed to pages from the UK, as many people probably don't bother to change it from the default setting (web results) when using Google to search the web.
I agree with simpseo, get more backlinks from .co.uk websites, it will definetly improve your rankings in google.co.uk
Be ethical to the rankings. Hosted on UK server. and check the ranking on Google.co.uk only Hope this helps!
You can set geo-targeting using Google Webmasters tool. It basically allows you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site, using a .com domain - Google would often not give the site any preference in the Google UK search results, unless it had a co.uk TLD. The Set Geographic Target option was suppose to give Google more clues about the site and help it rank better in the local that was specified with the tool