Multiple site URLs and Adwords

[johngwms]

Our main domain name is www.TheDebugStore.com. It has been suggested that this can be offputting for UK customers who see the .com address and percieve "hassle", think it may be a foreign site.

I have registered www.TheDebugStore.co.uk and setup a 301 redirect to the main site (www.TheDebugStore.com). This now allows searchers to enter a .co.uk URL and they are redirected happily.

However, this workaround has now created an issue for my Adwords Ads. I have set the display URL to be the .co.uk address and the link to the same address. Adwords is now complaining because the display URL is not the URL of the actual site (.com).

I understand that it is possible to resolve this but I do not know how.

Over to you guys...

John

[Mike Hughes]

I think the issue here isn't a technical one but more about how you present your website to your visitors.

Are you targetting just the UK or a broader market? If just the UK then move everything to the .co.uk domain and focus on that. If a broader market then stick with the .com.

Whoever suggested that forwarding a .co.uk domain to a .com domain would give any customers greater peace of mind should go and stand in the dunce corner for 10 minutes. It just looks as if you're trying to hide something or pretending to be something which you're not.

Yes, keep the forwarding in place in case someone mistypes your domain but other than that decide which domain makes the most sense and stick with that.

Regarding adwords. Just send any clicks directly to the relevant page.

Mike

[leehack]

+1 for me.

[johngwms]

The issue is not quite as clear cut as you suggest.

Whilst our market is global, about 50% of our sales are to the UK and 40% to EU countries.

If our market was predominantly the UK, then I would agree that we should just have a .co.uk domain. The reason for having a .com domain was to fit in with our strategy of having an international market and I am happy with this.

I am not attempting to create an illusion, just make our offering more relevant to the markets we serve.

The main issue is (and we have had feedback to back this up) is that some customers at the Google searching stage perceived us as being a US company, which we are not bacuse of the .com domain. Those that continued to visit our site and make purchases soon realise that we are based in the UK. I am concerned with those who decided to stop their search because they perceived us to be a US company (with the associated hassles of shipping, customs charges, time delays etc).

I can, and have startyed to address rgis in our organic listing results by including "UK" and "Europe" in our page titles. The remaining issue that that of Adwords.

Adwords will not allow a .co.uk domain to be displayed in the display link if the root site is a .com domain. It is partly the display link that suggests the location of the site, which is why this is important.

Yes, I can include "UK" in the Ad text, which is what I have done in many cases, but it is only a fudge.

The other option I have considered is to have duplicate sites. I then run into the problem of duplicate content which is really bad news!

I hope this clarifies the issue?

John

[leehack]

Run a .co.uk and .com site, I have a handful of customers that do this. Have a flag on each site that can switch between sites in case they find themselves on the wrong site.

[johngwms]

Thanks Lee.

I assume that as the main site is the .com site, I should use the robots.txt file on the .co.uk site to make make it invisible to Google to avoid duplicate contents issues?

John

[Duncan Rounding]

Use an htaccess file in the root of the com site to the co.uk site.

Or visa versa depending on your target market.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi John,

In your case I think I'd just move the whole shebang to .co.uk.

As you say, any visitors to your site will realise you're UK based as soon as they get there. So I'm not really convinced there's a huge advantage to using a .com domain.

If the US was a big target then yes, but does a .com really help for Europe? The thing I find hard to understand is that if it's a problem for UK customers why is it good for European ones?

Mike

[johngwms]

Hi Mike

I do not think it wise to move to the .co.uk domain now as the domain has just been registered. The .com site is over 3 years old and already benefits from Google's site age factor.

I specifically referred to .co.uk but you are right. The same applies to other markets in which we have significant number of customers.

It does seem that the multiple site approach could work best, unless I am missing something? It will also allow me to promote local offers in different markets and do some local language work when the time is right.

If I do have multiple sites and taking up Duncan's suggestion of using the htaccess file, how can I ensure that the uk site gets indexed for Google UK and the german site gets indexed for Google DE? Maybe I need to get those sites hosted in each country.

I know this all seems like an overkill now. However, I makes sense to get the structure right now to avoid problems later.

Thanks for your input guys.

John

[Mike Hughes]

I specifically referred to .co.uk but you are right. The same applies to other markets in which we have significant number of customers.

This was pretty much what I was wondering about. In your case there are really only two sensible options.

1. just use a .co.uk domain

or

2. Geo-target for your important countries. In which case use .co.uk for the UK, .fr for France, .de for Germany etc.

Personally I always try and keep things simple unless there's a compelling reason otherwise. Never underestimate the advantages of avoiding extra work / complexity. It's far too easy to get bogged down working on the website(s) rather than promoting the business and building the customer relationships.

Maybe the phased approach is the best option for you. i.e. Build the .co.uk for Uk customers and then decide whether you need to roll out sites for other important countries based on the results and effort required.

Google will use the domain country identifier to place the search results in the right region. There's no need to host the website there.

Also don't worry about the duplicate content. Google will present what they consider the most appropriate content. At worst they'll just ignore any duplicate content which is all that would happen if you blocked them anyway.

Mike

[leehack]

I do not think it wise to move to the .co.uk domain now as the domain has just been registered. The .com site is over 3 years old and already benefits from Google's site age factor.

I know this all seems like an overkill now. However, I makes sense to get the structure right now to avoid problems later.

The above two sentences work aganst each other, that in essence is your problem. You want to make a long term look at things and set things up as they should be, but you do not want to effect what you have now and also you want to use the longevity of the .com.

That's what you call a stalemate.

What would you do now if you started the business today, double check that with someone, if right, then takes the necessary steps to get to that situation. Off the top of my head, i'd have thought a .co.uk for uk, a euro site for EU and a .com for USA or to simply block anyone from trading off that domain name.

Either that or move off Actinic and have one multi currency site on the .com.