I am wondering whether this is, in fact, the best way to go about this or whether anybody has any better/alternative suggestions, please. My client is clearly concerned at getting the best possible exposure in the UK engines.
Oh and welcome to webmasterworld!
To get listed on UK engines you need to either have a .uk domain or to be hosted with a uk IP address.
I am not sure i agree. This does help yes, in my UK area I work with a website from India, that beats the rest of the UK website on that topic...
I think it would be a good tip would be:
Get incoming links from other UK websites.
Make sure the content is UK related.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Particularly this one
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
Anyone who thinks different is barking up the wrong tree.
I had a client who had his .com site moved from UK located hosting to US located hosting by his ISP without his knowledge and the first he knew was a loss of visitors over about 6 weeks down to about 10% of his stable figures.
When he came to me, the first and only thing I did was relocate the hosting to the UK and wait. Within 3 weeks an upturn started and after 4 months 90% of previous was reached.
He lost about 45% of a years Web generated business.
I charged him a fraction of what he expected for a very extensive SEO exercise and he has since refered 10 clients on the basis of "Problem solved and not ripped off"
I have many other clients who have relocated a .co.uk site from the UK to US located servers and there has not even been a blip in the stats.
1. Construct one page, which would reside under www.myclient.co.uk but would redirect (using a permanent 301) to www.myclient.com/uk, or maybe even just www.myclient.com, or
2. Just point, or redirect, the domain name to www.myclient.com/uk.
Ultimately, it would clearly be best for my UK based client have their own web site with their own unique content and this is likely to happen further down the line. However, meantime, I am wondering what the best fix is in order to get their section of this global site indexed by the UK engines.
Phew! Hope that makes better sense! I'd appreciate any ideas.
Incidentaly Redirects is another can of worms that may/could tarnish the www.myclient.co.uk domain and handicap its future developement into the full standalone site it should be when the Global dictators see sense.
My experience is that if your domain is hosted in say US, then ALL content will be deemed as US from google's point of view, even www.domain.com/uk
I can think of quite a few big brand names who use the structure you mention e.g. www.domain.com/country however in country specific Google SERPS they get beaten by merchants and resellers.
I know, I'm one of the merhcants who sell big brand widgets in the UK - we have a .co.uk hosted in UK. Our supplier, the big brand manufacturer also has a well developed e-commerce site selling their products to UK. However due to their choice of www.domain.com/uk they don't appear anywhere in top 50 for SERPS in google.co.uk under a 'uk' search.
So I guess your client just has to work out the commercial impact of not being found (easily) in x countries should they go for /country all hosted in the one country.
Think of some big brands and try them on google.co.uk with the 'uk' option - this will give you some examples of the impact of what your client wants to do.
miam
I can understand why your client would want to manage this all under one domain but it might not be possible to achieve this work within Google's GEO location factors (domain name and IP addresses). You would be better to link to international sites from the home page with a .co.uk domain, hosted in the UK.
A 301 re-direct to a .co.uk site might work, I have not seen it done.
They rank almost equally on 'international/web' searches and UK only searches.
I don't know why or how this happens - we optimise their site generally and specific pages for targeted keyphrases - and seem to get great coverage across the board.
Yes, we may be 'lucky', but I wish I knew how this happened or the answer to the 'UK' or even the international .com question - ie. how do I AVOID .co.uk results and appear in international searches only?
I shivver when a client says that they want to target .co.uk engines only - I personally do not think that there is a definitive answer.
This is ironic, because you would think it to be in the interest of SE's to make it clear what needs to be done to ensure their results are even more relevant to the searchers.
As a large proportion of UK users use the .com versions of search engines, any company that could just target UK engines (yes, I know that's currently impossible for natural SERPs) would be doing themselves out of potential business.
I guess I just need to try as in most things concerned with SEO :-0
What I've never understood is how a site which is hosted in the UK and uses a .com can compete seemingly equally with US/international sites also using a .com in non UK searches?
I know that's slight OT, but maybe the answer could be 'reversed' for a UK only strategy?
Could you get permission from your client for a micro site, hosted in the UK with another .co.uk domain which would contain sufficient content to be relevant to your clients' keyphrases and managed by you?
We too have a client which has just implemented a pan EU CMS system for their web site. Even our UK client has agreed it's total rubbish.
What we are going to do is run bespoke online marketing campaigns (including SEM) using a microsite which will link into the main corporate CMS driven site.
I know that the centrallised 'corporate machine' often takes no account of local marketing needs of their county-based offices.
.com is an international tld and should be treated equally no matter where the company is based and the site is hosted.
The difficulty comes because many US people see .com as being US rather than international. This includes many search engines, who could significantly improve by having a .us version which only lists US sites.
This is exactly what my UK client is going to do - they do understand this is the only real way forward. It was just that whilst we're sorting out the global politics we wanted to see if we could make the best of a bad job.
