Moving my .com site to a US server

...to make way for .co.uk on UK server

[yonnermark]

Is there a damage-limitation / standard way to do the following:

I have bluewidgets.com on a UK server.

Half my target audience is america, the other half is Europe (mainly UK) so I want to move the .com to a US server (and show prices in USD) and setup bluewidgets.co.uk on a UK server (and show prices in GBP).

I've spent the last 2 months working hard on SEO with my .com and I've achieved better results than I could've hoped for so I don't want to blow it all now.

Whats the safest way to do this?

THANKS for your time
mark

[Marcia]

Are you wondering about geo-targeting based on location of hosting?

Another thing - how close will the two sites be content wise, aside from different pricing? Close enough to be considered duplicates?

[yonnermark]

several reasons (in no particular order):

1. Geo-tageting.
2. Price display (£price.co.uk and $price.com)
3. More relevent content - ie. UK customers don't need to be told about shipping my products to the states.
4. I think the "site:.co.uk" google searches will become more and more popular and I am currently missing out on those serps completely.

thanks
mark

[TheDave]

You're biggest problem will be the duplicate filters. I tried doing this with a .com.au, and now google bots won't go anywhere near the .com.au since it found near duplicate content. So you do have to be Very careful or else you could lose a domain.

[Marcia]

The duplicate content issue is the main concern, but moving to a US server I think I'd make sure it goes on a dedicated IP. To be even more on the safe side, I don't think I'd put the new UK site on the same IP number as the other one has been - and I'd make that UK site as different as possible.

[yonnermark]

I thought this thread died but it was just that the auto-notify emails stopped coming.

Thanks for the tips.

I think I'd make sure it goes on a dedicated IP.

It will have a dedicated hosting package if thats good enough. It won't have a dedicated server? I'm not really up on what will give me a dedicated IP number. How is that achieved?

thanks
mark

[trillianjedi]

I'm not really up on what will give me a dedicated IP number. How is that achieved?

Hosting is on a dedicated PC (you rent a PC in their rack). No-one else can use it. It has it's own IP address. That IP address then belongs to your site and your site only.

Shared hosting is just that. You rent a PC in their rack and the cost is split among 20 other people all sharing the same PC. That's 20 sites with one IP address (sometimes called "virtual hosting").

Dedicated is more expensive, but better in the long run.

TJ

[yonnermark]

about 20 times more expensive I'd imagine.... thinking logically from the host's pov.

I'm happy with virual for now :)

[rossH]

the difference between dedicated server and dedicated IP is something I thought I understood, but I'm a little confused now.

I've had many hosted accounts that were on shared servers, but each account has had its own IP address.

I've done some domain parking where for convenience several domains were sharing the same IP.

In all cases when I do a reverse IP lookup it's quite evident when one IP has multiple domains, and the full list of all such sharing domains shows.

Equally, a dedicated IP for an account is unique to my account, and shared by no one, and this is what I see doing a lookup on some current accounts.

And from all the many threads here about Google and IPs and virtual versus dedicated, I've always understood things in terms of what I outlined above.

So...is there something I'm missing? I hesitate to think you might be mistaken TJ because I value your posts, but I would like to get this dedicated IP thing explained for the record.

ross

[chamade]

A dedicated IP means 1 IP address links to only 1 website.

On a shared server some hosting companies offer dedicated IP addresses for all domain names, but others co-host different domains on the same IP address.

You are right in that with a reverse IP lookup you will see if one or more domains are shared on any IP. If there is only one domain on the lookup then it's a dedicated IP (dedicated to that website alone).

[trillianjedi]

OK, so you can have "shared hosting" (in terms of your site being resident on one PC alongside other sites) but with a dedicated IP for your site?

Sorry if I caused some confusion - I didn't realise that was on offer by the hosting co.'s.

Out of interest, what's the saving with that over a dedicated PC in the rack?

TJ

[rossH]

well, at the low end, you can get a fine basic account for ten to twenty dollars a month with a good host. I don't want to drop names, but I just tried an account with pair, and got a second domain hosted on the same account, and I was astounded to see they gave me a second IP, for a charge of $1 per month - they must have IPs to burn, I had heard they were getting more scarce.

I think the reasons for a dedicated server are going to hinge on bandwidth charges and technical issues - and I'm at the limits of my knowledge now - but plenty of people have a dedicated server with multiple IPs running separate client domains, for example.

I'm sure a lot of people here, in the right forum, could offer better summaries of the economics of it.

[lbobke]

one problem with shared IPs might be that your IP may get blacklisted by filter software because of another site's content.

Happened to me once. Having said that, I have not yet gone the step towards a server of my own - with virtual hosting I don't have to bother about server maintenance and the administration of my domains...

Laurenz