.com versus .co.uk domains ?

[Stress Head]

Tweet

I have a .com affiliate site hosted on USA servers that I have just bought the .co.uk domain for. Having read some of the comments on here I want to move the .com site over to the .co.uk domain.

The question is, how is it best to redirect the current .com traffic to the new site? My hosting company offer domain aliasing so I can do that but I don't want to kill my google traffic by doing something they wont like.

Anyone offer the definitive method for doing this please ??

[BenKowaBunga]

This is basically the same as setting up a new site, rather than a redesign with new pages....eg. starting again.

I would recommend having two sites. The .com for global customers and then using your .co.uk to create a new site especially for UK customers. This way you don't lose the .com traffic, plus you can have a UK site dedicated to UK search engines and customers.

Don't copy word for word every page on the .com site to the .co.uk site though - this can cause search engine problems as they don't like duplication. UK customers are different to US customers so you should have no problem creating a 'different' site. You can use the same design, just different copy, eg. spelling, currency, language, bung a Union Jack in there, etc.

[Kandevil]

You could 301 redirect the .com to the .co.uk

[Stress Head]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Think I'll do the 301 for now and then develop the sites for different markets when I have a chance.

On the subject of 301's. Is it better to re-direct each page to the new page or just re-direct the whole site. I have read that doing it page by page can be better for google et al............

[BenKowaBunga]

I've never done a 301 redirect, but checking out this page - http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articl...1-redirect.htm - it states;

In the next update, the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one.

That means your old .com pages will eventually be dropped. I would knuckle down and get the .co.uk up and running now so you have both.

A new .co.uk page maybe duplicated and redirected from the old .com page - but you cannot duplicate the links to the old pages and the old site - that's why I would advise against a simple redirect.