3 replies to this topic

[vazpazaz]

Hi,

I have a rather open ended question about SEO. I'm involved in a project to setup a US version of a UK e-commerce site. The current UK site uses the .com domain and we will NOT be moving to co.uk. The US site will look the same, but will be running on a totally different web platform. I am concerned there are many "gotchas" SEO wise as the current UK .com site is basically #1 in the ranking.

We have not established the URl format for the US site but it's likely it will be .com/US/. Unless advised otherwise... It's also likely there will be a plethora of other country sites coming soon eg. .com/DE/

What can I do to ensure the US site does not compete or comprimise the UK ranking?

Thanks in advance

[chrishirst]

A .com should perform equally across the board, it's more likely to where YOU are that makes the "ranking" differences.

Your IP resolves to a London based ISP so you will be seeing results biased towards the UK probably because your page content is biased towards the UK.

[Mikl]

It might be worth going to Google Webmaster Tools, and setting the geotargeting of the two sites to UK and US respectively. It won't make a big difference, but it would be a good idea if the US site is hosted in London, as Chris suggested. The site might still show up in searches on Google UK, even if the user specified "pages from the UK", but the UK site would probably appear higher in the SERPs, all other things being equal.

[vazpazaz]

...interesting, i'll investigate as you suggest

I guess I should offer some more detail.

The current site (UK) runs on Magento, has been managed for several years by various SEO agencies and is alway very high on Google. The new US site will have the look and feel of the UK site, but will be hosted on Demandware. My concerns, and i'm a relative SEO novice, is that the two different environments will cause problems. This surely will be compounded when we bring PPC into the mix...