Show up in co.uk searches without co.uk domain or local ip

[evotsi]

We have a large retail site that does approximately 10% of our business in the UK. We have expanded into the UK and set up a small distribution center. I have searched through the forums regarding targeting local searches and the consensus seems to be to make a separate site with new content, hosted in the target country with the appropriate tld. The only problem that we have is that 95% of the content on the site would be the same. We do not want to make a duplicate site.

With that in mind we would probably just create 10 or so UK specific pages. Would it be possible to make these pages show up in co.uk searches? An option would be to give these pages a co.uk domain, but I am not sure if that would be beneficial to our visitors.

[FranticFish]

A UK hosted subdomain will show up in Google UK, and an overseas hosted .co.uk likewise. It's also a good idea to get some UK-hosted links to the minisite.

Just re-write your content to make it unique. I find a good method for this is to read the page and make brief notes. Then, using those notes, write a new page.

If you wrote the original content perhaps get a colleague to take notes and do the re-write. The difference between UK and US English might help, depending on your niche.

[piatkow]

A .uk domain would encourage type in traffic.

I agree with FranticFish about translating pages from American to English. Too many spelling "mistakes" will not give readers a good opinion of your business. IT professionals may be OK with it but not the general public. Similarly take out any cultural references that would be alien to a UK reader. (For example "football" always means Football Association rules)

[evotsi]

Those replies are very beneficial, especially translating US to UK English.

This may be out of the scope of this thread, but would it be considered spammy to setup a reverse proxy in the UK and keep everything on our servers in the US? We use various database and other systems that we would want to keep hosted in the US. From what I read, even with a co.uk domain, it is almost necessary to be hosted in the UK to be listed in the local results.

[FranticFish]

setup a reverse proxy in the UK

Outside my knowledge/abilities but I know it is possible. At my previous company we had a (UK based) client who hosted a .com in the states. Instead of changing server, the hosting company did something to make the domain appear to resolve to a UK hosted IP address to get it into Google.co.uk 'UK only' web results. This was done a few years ago, and it's still there today.