Website moving to Australia - Help!

[TheBalanceBikeShop]

I have moved to Australia and have handed the keys of my business to my family. I now want to start the same business (www.thebalancebikeshop.com) in Australia. I have bought www.balancebikeshop.com.au domain but a little confused about the next steps. i guess i need to:
1) find a local hosting company
2) copy content from Uk site to local hosting space and change a few web details - currency, payment etc
3) SEO - submit articles to oz based sites?

Is this right? what have I missed?

Any help would be most appreciated

thanks

Nick

 

Hi Nick

When you say you have handed the keys over.. are they going to continue to run the business in the UK? If so then will they still need the UK site?

I notice your site is built on a Wordpress platform which enables you to import and export the content from one site to another quite easiliy.

Who are you currently hosting your site with? The location of the company isn't really a problem. I am UK based but all my sites are hosted from the US. (I use Hostgator).

Regarding the SEO, are the articles you refer to used to give information to people locally about your products or do you sell worldwide? It would still be beneficial to submit articles to the OZ based directories but you will need to update the articles submitted to UK directories as the URL will be incorrect (unless you forward the domain to the new .AU address)

Feel free to get in touch if you want further assistance with this.

Cheers

Brad

 

[AndyP]

.....The location of the company isn't really a problem.....

That's not strictly true. Current thinking suggests that this is a quite a serious problem. Yes, your sites will work but from an SEO perspective a UK site hosted in the US or an Australian site hosted in the the UK is a bit of a no no and generally unnecessary. Wherever possible you should host in the country in or from which you trade.

 

[webhostuk]

Yes thats true for your .au site make sure you host it on Australian server if you are targeting local market.

 

Hi guys - thanks for your input on the hosting query.

Can you tell my why this is the case as I'm not able to find anything documented that would suggest Google or any other search engine would give search preference to the physical host location.

From my understanding the only way that could be done would be through tracking it at the IP block level, and I can't see any particular merit to giving or taking away any weight based on the existence of an IP address in one block vs. another as the sole factor.

Speed of site response, yes. That impacts user expreience, so certainly a country host that relies upon a tin can and a string for connectivity would be a factor. But not on IP block class.

Would be great if you could point me in the direction so I could learn a bit more about it.

Thanks

Brad

 

[cmcp]

There is a member here - a plumber - who posts asking questions about redesigns and website stuff. He is based in Australia and may be able to help

 

[MASSEY]

Hosting location makes up a small % and is speed related. So if your hosting package is good and speed is quick then it wont matter where you host.

I would be inclined to create a sub domain au.thebalancebikeshop.com as seo for an older site is easier than working on a fresh domain.

 

[ColinR]

That's not strictly true. Current thinking suggests that this is a quite a serious problem. Yes, your sites will work but from an SEO perspective a UK site hosted in the US or an Australian site hosted in the the UK is a bit of a no no and generally unnecessary. Wherever possible you should host in the country in or from which you trade.

All of my hosting is via a UK company because they have excellent support and my domains are registered with a US company but I have trading websites that target individual countries for sales.

Hosting has absolutely nothing to do with sales in respective countries. All of my contact pages make it clear that my company is based in the UK. I have not had a single comment from anybody in 15 years of trading that this is a 'no no'?

 

[fisicx]

Hosting location is important if you are NOT using a ccTLD. See this Google forum thread:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2e61e49baa5a6eaf

If you have a country specific TLD then the server/host location may not be so relevant.

However. Google delivers local results so a local server is always going to be a preferable solution irrespective of any SEO advantages.

 

[Martfox Hosting UK]

Here is an article from Google Webmaster Tools which says:

Google's goal is to return the most relevant and useful sites in response to a user query. As a result, the results we show to a user in Ireland may vary from the results returned to a user in France.
If your site targets users in a particular geographic location, you can use our geographic target tool to provide us with information that will help us determine how your site appears in our search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. This data supplements our existing information, and setting a geographic target won't impact your appearance in search results unless a user limits the scope of the search to a certain country.
You can only use this feature for sites with a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Sites with country-coded top-level domains (such as .ie) are already associated with a geographic region, in this case Ireland.
If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll continue to make geographic associations largely based on the top-level domain (e.g. .co.uk or .ca) and the IP address of the webserver from which the context was served.
If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll rely largely on the site's country domain (.ca, .de, etc.). If an international domain (.com, .org, .eu, etc) has been used, we'll rely on the IP address. If you change hosting provider for a country domain, there should be no impact. If you change the hosting provider of an international domain to a provider in another country, we recommend using Webmaster Tools to tell us which country your site should be associated with.

 

[allington-marketing]

Hi
I have a related query. I am in the process of doing an ecommerce site for a client who has a lot of contacts in Ireland. I assumed that it would be best to host the .ie website with an Irish host and the .co.uk with a UK host.
Is this true and the best thing to do?
And would Google penalise me for having duplicate websites?
Thanks

 

[Martfox Hosting UK]

Hi
I have a related query. I am in the process of doing an ecommerce site for a client who has a lot of contacts in Ireland. I assumed that it would be best to host the .ie website with an Irish host and the .co.uk with a UK host.
Is this true and the best thing to do?

The IP location of the host server makes just a small % of the search rank. If your content and SEO is better as the content and SEO of your competitors and you will host the 'irish' site elswhere outside of Ireland, your can get better search results as sites hosted in Ireland.

And would Google penalise me for having duplicate websites

Yes, a 1:1 content isn't allowed by Google. One of your sites will disappear from the first 100, 1000, 10000 search results - or forever.

 

[shopintegrator]

Hi Brad,

You are also going to need to look in to the payment processing side of things and find a suitable payment gateway that has an operation in Australia and a merchant bank account which operates in Australia (unless you stick soley to accepting payments by PayPal).

You may wish to consider the eWAY payment gateway. It has its principal operation in Australia: http://www.eway.com.au/ (they do also have a UK payment gateway service if you ever decide to come back!)

eWAY Australia will process payments online in to your ANZ, BankSA, BankWest, Commonwealth, NAB, St. George, or Westpac Internet merchant accounts.

If you do decide to use eWAY, the ShopIntegrator hosted basket add-in allows your shopper to checkout with the eWAY payment processing service, so please do also consider our shopping cart add-in for your new website.

Good luck with setting up your new online shop in Australia.

 

[Martfox Hosting UK]

There is not need to use a 'local' merchant provider and pay some 'local fees' for the 'local service'. Nowadays 'everybody' owns a Master, Visa, Amex, Discover or whatsever. And one of the best CC Payment Gateways is http://www.authorize.net/

 

[Skateboard Express UK]

Hi - I am based in Australia and familiar with running sites here. I'm happy to help, so feel free to drop me a pm.

Some comments on a couple of things that you have mentioned:

Site location: I would definitely host the site in Australia. I can see that there are conflicting opinions and statements but the conventional wisdom from everyone that I have ever dealt with is that you get better seo performance by having the site based within your Geo. Also, remember that if the site is hosted in the UK but targeted at Aus users, then your user's response times will be impacted by delays associated with going via the Aus-UK links and anyway site speed impacts SEO results. This alone is reason enough to host locally.

Payment gateways: in my experience, the bank merchant account/payment gateway situation is very different between Australia and the UK. In Australia it took us 2-3 weeks to get our merchant account, in the UK it took a large bank six months to think about it and then say no. What I'm saying is that bank merchant accounts seem to be far more accessible and easier to obtain than in the UK, where the banking system's attitude towards online retailers and merchant account applications is somewhere in the mid 18th century. So I would apply for a merchant account with one of the major banks and get an external gateway product. I agree that eWay would be a good choice, in face I'd suggest applying for your bank merchant acct via eWay as they have relationships with the banks and can help with the process.

 

[TheBalanceBikeShop]

Hi Nick

When you say you have handed the keys over.. are they going to continue to run the business in the UK? If so then will they still need the UK site?

I notice your site is built on a Wordpress platform which enables you to import and export the content from one site to another quite easiliy.

Who are you currently hosting your site with? The location of the company isn't really a problem. I am UK based but all my sites are hosted from the US. (I use Hostgator).

Regarding the SEO, are the articles you refer to used to give information to people locally about your products or do you sell worldwide? It would still be beneficial to submit articles to the OZ based directories but you will need to update the articles submitted to UK directories as the URL will be incorrect (unless you forward the domain to the new .AU address)

Feel free to get in touch if you want further assistance with this.

Cheers

Brad

Thanks Brad,

Hosted in the UK. I will have to re-submit to sites with new url - good thought. I will reach out hen i get stuck.....thanks again for your comments and gives me a great starting point.

Cheers

Nick

 

[TheBalanceBikeShop]

Hi - I am based in Australia and familiar with running sites here. I'm happy to help, so feel free to drop me a pm.

Some comments on a couple of things that you have mentioned:

Site location: I would definitely host the site in Australia. I can see that there are conflicting opinions and statements but the conventional wisdom from everyone that I have ever dealt with is that you get better seo performance by having the site based within your Geo. Also, remember that if the site is hosted in the UK but targeted at Aus users, then your user's response times will be impacted by delays associated with going via the Aus-UK links and anyway site speed impacts SEO results. This alone is reason enough to host locally.

Payment gateways: in my experience, the bank merchant account/payment gateway situation is very different between Australia and the UK. In Australia it took us 2-3 weeks to get our merchant account, in the UK it took a large bank six months to think about it and then say no. What I'm saying is that bank merchant accounts seem to be far more accessible and easier to obtain than in the UK, where the banking system's attitude towards online retailers and merchant account applications is somewhere in the mid 18th century. So I would apply for a merchant account with one of the major banks and get an external gateway product. I agree that eWay would be a good choice, in face I'd suggest applying for your bank merchant acct via eWay as they have relationships with the banks and can help with the process.

Thanks for that. Who would you use to host my site and what would be the rough cost. Could i use paypal like the uk for the payment area?

cheers

Nick

 

[Skateboard Express UK]

Hi Nick - no problem. There are stacks of hosting providers in Aus (just like there are in the UK). I'd suggest just going to google.com.au and search for hosting providers and maybe check out some reviews. Then go to their sites and check out their payment methods. I don't think you'll have any trouble finding an inexpensive service that takes paypal - you might find that they are a bit more than the really cheap entry level packages that I have seen advertised in the UK & US but you get what you pay for. Also pay attention to the hosting control panel that they provide. There is a hosting provider called smartyhost that markets heavily but they use their own control panel that is pretty clunky. I've gotten familiar and comfortable with cpanel, so I make sure a hosting company provides that before going with them.