Marketing to UK customers from the US

by aaallday2010

Posted: 12 years ago 4 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I have a keyword term for my particular niche that gets 20,000 monthly search results in the UK but only about 3,000 here locally in the US. Would I have to purchase a .co.uk URL and have it hosted in the UK in order to get better SERPS results?

Or does it really matter? I mean, as long as my site is relevant would it not still show up in Google UK SERPS, even though it is a U.S. based site?

Thanks.

#customers #marketing

alistair 12 years ago

I have a few sites aimed at the UK. My sites are hosted in the US and mainly .com or .net and they rank no problem.

Haven't really tried .co.uk, only one but gave up on it.

I made sure in webmaster tools that the geographic target was set to UK.
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- pollytoast 12 years ago
  
  Hi, I don't think it would make any difference where you are hosted, just treat the set up of your site the way as you would a US one, it's only the traffic that you will need to do differently making sure if you pay for trafic then it will be from the UK.
  The domain name being .co.uk will help in targeting UK customers too, I am from the UK and I know personally if I am looking to buy something online I will stay away from .com and go to .co.uk if it is a physical product as there will obviously be cheaper shipping, also if I am getting anything cooking related as American and UK measurements are different, so I guess the .com or .uk depends on what you are selling.
  Hope this helps, and remember the spelling differences so if you are writting articles for the site you will have to change words like favor to favour and labor to labour.
  Hope this helps.
  Regards Polly.
  
  I don't think it would make any difference where you are hosted - sorry, this is wrong, done some research after Alexas comment, I built a few UK sites about a year ago and the WSO author told me it didn't matter where they were hosted and I just took his word for it, sorry to be giving out the wrong advice,
  Regards Polly.
  
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  Alexa Smith Banned 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by pollytoast
  
  Hi, I don't think it would make any difference where you are hosted
  
  Sorry - please excuse an argumentative tone, but this isn't so at all!
  
  I've found that the domain-name alone does not do the trick: UK hosting in addition is highly relevant and makes a big difference.
  
  Not surprising, when you see what Google has to say ...
  
  YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
  
  Originally Posted by alistair
  
  I made sure in webmaster tools that the geographic target was set to UK.
  
  I think you may find that a .uk domain-name together with UK-hosting will be very helpful in this regard. It's pretty easy, by comparison, to rank highly on google.co.uk searches if you "play the game" as Google wants.
  
  Originally Posted by aaallday2010
  
  Would I have to purchase a .co.uk URL and have it hosted in the UK in order to get better SERPS results?
  
  Yes; you would.
  
  Thanks
  
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TBInternetMarketing 12 years ago

If I remember you can set it up in your analytics to target an area. I think the domain name will generally do the trick though if its a co.uk one.
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