US server and dot com domain

[Musicstrawberry]

Is there anything more I can do to help my site gain UK traffic?

My site is hosted on Shopify (US servers) and it's a .com (I do have the .co.uk but stupidly chose to go with the .com when I first set it up).

I've gone into Google Webmaster Tools and set it so that it's focused on UK Traffic.

Apart from moving to UK hosting and switching to the .co.uk (which I really don't want to do since the domain is now "out there") is there anything else I can do to help increase my UK traffic?

 

[fisicx]

If you rank well, have a good SM following and advertise you can get lots of traffic. But is it really traffic you want or do you just want to sell more stuff?

I suspect it's the latter - and to do that you need to change the site - a lot (see my review post).

 

[Musicstrawberry]

Thanks fisicx, I've replied on the other thread.

I think I need more traffic in order to sell more stuff. 0.1% conversion of 100,000 is still better than 5% conversion of 100. Of course I want to improve my conversion but I also want to drive more traffic to the site. I've doubled traffic in the past month, but I'm running out of ideas beyond the basic keyword changes and I was wondering if my US hosting and US domain was hampering me somewhat.

Thanks pickaweb. I will have a look at your link.

 

[fisicx]

It's far easier and cheaper to double conversions than it is to double traffic. If you get conversion up then you will find traffic improves as well.

 

[justinaldridge]

I haven't looked at the site itself but why not just change it to the .co.uk and redirect the .com to it?

It's relatively easy to do and it's definitely the way to go if it's UK traffic you are after.

If you can't do that then make sure your UK address is in the footer across your site (mark it up with schema too) and inbound links from UK websites would also help.

There are things you can do but ideally you should try to shift to the .co.uk domain.

 

[Musicstrawberry]

Thanks Justin.

I could do this, but I've been doing quite a lot of link building (getting bloggers to do product reviews etc) and all their links point to the .com.

Will that work be wasted if I point the .com to the .co.uk? (At the moment I have it the other way round).

I want the uk traffic benefits of the .co.uk but also the SEO benefits of the links. I wonder if it's too late now and I just need to continue with the .com?

 

[justinaldridge]

It's never too late! As long as you redirect everything properly from .com to .co.uk on a page level basis using 301 redirects then the value of the links will pass across. There was a time when you could lose a bit of a value when doing a 301 but these days it practically carries over intact.

We do this all the time and as long as the 301's are all in place it should be fine.

HOWEVER, and it's a BIG however...you may get some initial loss in rankings and traffic when you do the switchover. On some recent ones we've done, following the same procedures we've always used, we've had instances where traffic and rankings have dropped until the complete site has been redirected and Google has processed all of the redirects.

I don't know why it happens, it's as if initially Google doesn't apply the weighting to the new site until everything is transitioned over. It all does work out in the end but we never used to see this effect, it seems quite recent.

So just be aware then there may be a blip but it should only be temporary...4 - 6 weeks possibly depending on the size of the site. It can just be a bit nail-biting when you don't expect it!

 

[webhostuk]

You can even try to list your site on UK directories and classified services to get more of UK exposure for your domain.

 

[Nochexman]

I think I need more traffic in order to sell more stuff. 0.1% conversion of 100,000 is still better than 5% conversion of 100.

How much traffic are you getting?

 

[Miroslav Chodak]

If you are already ranking for stuff (i.e. it's an established domain), don't change anything. It's not worth it and there is no guarantee that switching to .co.uk would result in any improvement (it likely wouldn't). Also, redirects, while fine, don't always guarantee flawless transition of off-site SEO factors from one domain to another.

TLD is not that important for country-specific rankings (considering all other factors, it's likely towards to bottom of that list). Do a simple search for your key terms and see what TLDs are ranking. You will likely see a bunch of .com's.

Instead, focus on factors that might make a bigger difference: UK address, phone numbers, spelling, server location, local citations etc.

 

[webgeek]

For UK localisation, get links from UK citation sites, markup your location details with structured markup and get some backlinks from UK located sites/companies on .co.uk domains.