Forum Moderators: phranque
The site is built on a virtually perfect keyphrase .com domain. However, virtually all the traffic is UK. I just realized that the same domain is available in .co.uk
All the traffic is from SE, most is coming from MSN and Live .. Google is only about 20%. I don't troll any of the forums.
I'm thinking that a "UK version" of the site might do much better in Google than a .com
I don't want to create a "duplicate content" situation, so I'm wondering if someone a bit more creative than I could make some suggestions.
If I wanted to risk temporarily losing my traffic, I would move the content to the .co.uk domain.
Right now, I'm #1 on Live Search and about page infinity on Google. MSN/Live traffic is about 80% and Google 15%.
I think the shift would bring me considerably higher on Google.uk since my UK traffic is easily 90% of total.
As you suggested, I could keep both sites live and just do a .htaccess redirect, but I have heard that SE's, especially Google, really don't like that. And how would MSN/Live react to the redirect.
One option I'm considering is making the new site an extensive FAQ.
I'm hoping someone a lot smarter than me can fill in some of the blanks.
If it is possible, maybe you could target the content .co.uk site more directly to the UK visitors. Keep a similar layout and appearance on the two domains and make links between them.
The FAQ might be a good idea especially if you point out that the actual content is found in .com domain and link to that page.
Still, as a user I'd feel disappointed if I found out that "example.co.uk" is "just" a FAQ and the content is to be found elsewhere, especially if your domain name is right on the spot.
One last thing that springs to mind is that you could use british spelling on the .co.uk. "Colour", "centre" and so on. I'm not sure if this actually has any effect but it's a nice touch.
