How to get UK-hosted site higher on Google.com

[markcity]

I manage two sites which between them get 500,000 unique visitors a month. One is a .com, the other a co.uk. Both are hosted in the UK but the content is international. I get 40% of traffic from the UK, 40% from the US (+ 20% rest of world). My aim is to get more US visitors while not losing UK visitors.

The research I've done using these Google links:

www.google.com/search?q=KEYPHRASE HERE&gl=uk

www.google.com/search?q=KEYPHRASE HERE&gl=us

shows me that my rankings on Google.com are worse for searchers in the US than in the UK. This is on both the co.uk and the .com site.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to improve US Google rankings if your site is not hosted in the US? I don't want to move hosting to the US and harm my UK rankings.

[edited by: engine at 3:10 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2007]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]

[glengara]

You could probably move the .co.uk to US hosting without damaging your UK listings and improving your US ones, not much you can do with the .com though....

[problemeditor]

I've got the opposite problem almost. My site is UK targeted, although is a .com domain name as the primary name (all the other derivatives including .co.uk are forwarded to this). My rankings are good for total searches on Google, but non-existent if you ask for searches from the UK only. So I get two problems, lots of US visitors for whom the site might be interesting but not relevant, and a shortage of UK visitors who would get both!

Does anyone have any ideas on how Google gets to know I'm a UK site? It's hosted in the UK so I don't get it!

thanks

Helen

[glengara]

Check your domain actually resolves to a UK IP, not all UK hosting use UK IPs...

[problemeditor]

I'm not entirely sure on this. I don't have the same issue on yahoo, only google. Do they use different systems for checking?

[rainborick]

The major search engines use two common criteria in determining geo-location: (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain Name ("CC TLD", as in "somesite.co.uk"), or (2) the physical location of the server that hosts the site, based on its IP address. Google used to say that they would look at the domain registration data, but they no longer mention it. But no amount of <meta> tags, incoming links or other factors have any effect.

It would be extremely unlikely that search engines would give domains two bites of the geo-location apple by using the CC TLD for geo-location for the corresponding country-specific Google, and then look at the server location for geo-location for US users of Google.com.

International SEM often seems to present this same challenge of ranking well in more than one country. It seems to me that you can either build the ranking power of a single domain to overcome the geo-location factor, or build separate, unique sites/domains for each target market. I lean toward the single-site choice since its often easiest for small companies, but for some niches the competition is so heavy that the geo-location boost is worth the extra effort.

[SEOPTI]

Incoming links from different countries also play a role.

[rainborick]

I'll believe that as soon as someone can show me a site with a generic TLD (.com, .net, .org, .info) that will appear in the 'pages from' a specific country whose server is based in a different country. Links might 'play a role' in rankings for searches that include the locale as a keyword where many factors contribute to the result, but not for geo-location which is an absolute attribute.

[glengara]

"It would be extremely unlikely that search engines would give domains two bites of the geo-location apple.."

True enough, however as G.com (US) has no "pages from the US" option, theoretically any domain (including CCTLDs) hosted in the US would qualify for inclusion with the "local" boost in those SERPs.

Though whether that actually works in practice, I can't say :-)

[rainborick]

Consider how often we hear people choose hosting services in the US because its so much less expensive than hosting in their own countries. If there were such a geo-location boost for US-hosted CC TLDs they would appear much more frequently in the Google.com SERPs. Certainly the .uk's and .ca's would appear regularly given the common language and idioms if this were true, and I can't say I've ever noticed it. Have you?

[Simsi]

This is a common problem based on Google's perceived and possibly illogical assumption that where you host is the primary market you want to target. World wide web - lol.

I'm surprised they haven't introduced recognition for a suitable META tag for target markets where you can put in primary markets you want to target, or even markets you wish to avoid. That way you could even tag directories and pages with priorities for certain audiences.

Seems to make far more sense for the webmasters to tell the search engines who their customers should be than the other way round.

[edited by: Simsi at 11:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2007]

[glengara]

I rarely look at the US G.com so my contention was mostly theoretical, however I think I've found an example that may fit.

On a "web search" on G.co.uk Page A (an Irish hosted .com) ranks above Page B (a US hosted .co.uk) however using a US proxy the positions are reversed on G.com.

[edited by: tedster at 6:05 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2007]

[markcity]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I've been advised that parallel hosting of the sites might help, so UK visitors see the version of the site that's hosted in the UK, and US visitors see a site hosted in the US (the pages they see will be identical). Does anyone have any experience of this?

We already have lots of links from US sites, so I don't know if this makes a difference.

It's very frustrating because I'm sure just a small bump in our US rankings would make a massive difference to traffic.