Lots of questions popping up lately about how to rank well on Google.co.uk vs. Google.com. Danny shared this nugget of gold at SEW today:
google uk is going to favor uk based sites by default, even if you don't use the pages from the uk option. you want to do well in google.com, you should be using .com. want to do well in co.uk, use co.uk. want to do well in both? i'd use .com hosted out of the uk.
I'd add that links from UK hosted sites (whether .com or .co.uk) can help and worldwide links can help at .com. Any other suggestions?
A bit late found this via a google search...
I would noramlly setup using a .co.uk (when targetting the UK) as far as I was aware there were several factors that let google know where a site was focusing on including: + Hosting location + Webmaster tools settings + Location of inbound links + The use of .co.uk / .com depending on the location you are targetting Would you say that (all things being equal) .co.uk domains rank higher in the UK than .COM.
And if that is the case, should those targetting the UK with .com's redirect to .co.uk's?
I hate to say this, but IMO the original question (how to rank well on co.uk and com) shows how largely SEO is still based on making assumptions (which in this case can lead to lower conversion, the opposite of goal) .
IMO the appropiate questions are: a) Do you know the ratio between co.uk and .com users - from experience I can say that europeans favour heavily local interfaces and domains. In non-english speaking countries the ratio is usually very high like 9:1 (9 referrals from national google, 1 referral from google-com), but from my limited experience the UK ratio is also relatively high especially when dealing with normal (non-geek) target /products.
b) Is it worth it ? Ranking in both can cost way more than ranking in only one. A good question IMO is it worth the attempt?
I'd agree with that.
I've done a bit of work for niche keywords in french in Canada and always tune for www.google.ca with the french interface.
The results are really not the same. In French I can sometimes get page 1 whereas in google.com or google.ca in english it is not and sometimes not close.