UK Strategy

Best way to approach

[nell]

I would like to have a presence for a single domain in the UK market.
A couple of questions if I may.

(1) Is it more advantageous to have this domain a co.uk domain rather than a .com?

(2) Any advantage in having the domain hosted by a UK hosting service?

(3) Is a paid Looksmart UK listing for the domain the best first step approach?

Thanks for any direction you can offer.

[FreeBee]

1) Assuming that you're targeting the UK market (I see that you're already established in the US), definitely add a .co.uk domain. It'll give you access to filtered results in the UK and could be well utilised for link pop etc. Take care not to duplicate content to the letter and use a UK spell-check (poms get anxious when the Queen's English is abused).
2) No advantage hosting it in the UK in our experience so long as you're on a good host in the US in the first place. Last time we did the sums about 18 months back the US was less expensive for comparable service as it was 3yrs and 4yrs ago. (We use US hosts for our UK sites)
3) Answer follows....

[engine]

Hi nell,

1. To be sure of not getting filtered out, you should have a .co.uk for the uk market. The .com will work, but, will be filtered in some services that don't automatically give you the option to search uk only or world. Also, other services will only accept listings from .co.uk sites.

2. UK hosting will help you provide a faster connection to your UK customers when the trans Atlantic traffic slows US-hosted sites. This is noticable mostly in the evenings here in the UK. Probably when a lot of UK consumers are online. A wlow site will soon lose it's traffic as surfers click away.

3. Absolutely, a Looksmart UK listing will help your UK site.

Hope it helps!

Added. Looks like FreeBee and I were posting at the same time.

[angiolo]

Having two domains (.co.uk and .com) of the same site (a mirror site) could be considered spam?

Could you be automatically penalized or banned from searchengnes like Google, Fast or Altavista?

Thank you

[engine]

angiolo is correct, be careful not to create a mirror of the .com site.
Changes to the text for the uk site will help.

I'd echo what FreeBee said about choosing a good host. A bad host can destroy the opportunities for a site through downtime, slow servers and poor internet connectivity.

If it's an e-commerce site it's best to make sure it's a good host.

[nell]

Any suggestions for a good UK hosting service? (Shared server space - not too expensive)

[Eric_Jarvis]

nell:"Any suggestions for a good UK hosting service? (Shared server space - not too expensive)"

[bigbytez.co.uk...]

gives a comparison of most of them

[InfoSponge]

I have a US hosted .com with a uk hosted .co.uk forwarding to the .com.

Am I disadvantaged running under the .com based in the states. The site is uk orienatated with uk content.

Just to complicate matters, my site is dynamic with lots of url parameters and '?' characters. Will any of the spiders crawl me or should I make static equivalents of my key pages ?

[engine]

Infosponge - welcome to Webmaster World

>Am I disadvantaged running under the .com based in the states. The site is uk orienatated with uk content.

Your disadvantage is with the UK search engines that filter out the .com

>Will any of the spiders crawl me or should I make static equivalents of my key pages ?

If you want to be sure of spidering, static equivalents are the answer.