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domain relevance

by safe as houses
6 replies
When buying a domain for your local area, say florists in "town", if it is in the UK is there any need to buy a .com, even if it is available when the .co.uk is also there,or even though its for the UK market buy the .com above the .co.uk anyway, Mick.
#domain #relevance
  • Profile picture of the author aaron_nimocks
    I would get the .com if available and if not get the country specific TLD.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kezz
    I've played with this in Australia and without doubt I would say grab a country specific domain name. It can actually make quite a dramatic difference.

    All things being equal, if you have a UK domain name and your competitor has a .com, you will appear higher in the search results. I don't think you really get to see this effect in action so much within the US, but you do elsewhere.

    Additionally, where you host your site matters.

    I've had sites hosted on US servers and moved them to AU servers, then had an instant increase in local traffic. The reverse is also true when I've been targeting US traffic.

    So in short, get a local domain name and local hosting for the best possible local rankings. Then of course tie your site in with a Google Places listing for your area as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Cheetah
    if you are targeting the local area of a country then what could be better than the country specific domain name.

    Kezz: your second point of hosting the website locally is very interesting. I am also going to start my research on this one
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  • Profile picture of the author jacquic
    For the UK, definitely get the .co.uk. I would also get the .com - you can redirect it to the .co.uk, or use it as a mirror site and/or for testing purposes.

    Sometimes people remember the root of the URL and type it straight in but put .com instead of .co.uk (and vice versa).

    The thing is, there are people out there who will buy up the .com and then use it to try to sell to you at a high proce, or set up a competitor site. It doesn't happen that much but enough that you need to pre-empt it if you can.

    As Kezz said, get local hosting; in your case hosting that uses UK servers (some are based in UK but have servers out of the country!).
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  • Profile picture of the author adsenselive
    I am in the UK and personally I buy both if I can. Getting the .com one is good as if someone just types in "anyname" in their web browsers url bar and hits return then the web browser will by default go to "anyname.com" and not .co.uk - So you should game some free traffic if you have a good name.
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    • Profile picture of the author tfos4941
      I have always found it useful to buy both and then redirect one to the other, I am in the UK but I find that most people automatically think that domains end with .com. Having them both will stop you losing any traffic if the other domain is not registered.
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