301 redirect entire site from .com to co.uk extension?

[fffggg]

Hi my market is 100% UK based. I just moved the hosting for my .com domain from the US to the UK and saw a massive improvement in the UK rankings. (put too much faith in google webmaster tools)

I am know thinking further improvements might result from moving to the co.uk version of the domain. (which currently points to the .com homepage)

If I redirect the whole site using 301 will my backlinks still hold there weight? Same question for new backlinks that might come through after the move

also is there much risk in doing this? if it doesn't work (i have top 5 terms i want to keep) if i remove the redirect, will everything go back to the way it was?

thanks in advance

[rainborick]

If you saw an improvement in your rankings in the UK, then it's a pretty safe bet that Google is recognizing your "new" geo-location and switching to a .uk TLD would not further improve things. There are two drawbacks to switching: (1) you will likely see a fall-off in your rankings during the transition which can last for several weeks, and (2) a bit esoteric, but... if you have a Country Code TLD like .uk, you can't use the Geographic Target tool in the Webmaster Tools console - which can be handy if, for example, you wanted to set up some pages targeted at another country. With a .com, you can set Geographic Targeting on individual directories or subdomains.