.com or .co.uk

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
mclarke60416
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.com or .co.uk

Post by mclarke60416 »

Hi all, new member to your website, must say really impressed by the info available on here.

My question is .com or .co.uk?

We have an apartment in Turkey that we are planning on setting a website up, any advice on which one to use. I imagine that most people looking will be UK based, but also want to try and catch the German, Russian Market as well. We will probably use HR or HL.

Or does it not really make to much difference as we are unlikely to be anywhere near the first page on Google.

Any help/advice gteatfully appreciated.

Mike Clarke
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

It's not very expensive to have both domain names Mike. If you have hit on a name that might be sought after, then it's also a way of giving yourself a bit of extra protection too.
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Essar
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.com or .co.uk

Post by Essar »

I agree with GiddyGoat get both if they are available, also think about .net too.
Create your website with just one and re-direct the other url address to the "real" one.
I use www.one.com for my host and provider of urls, very cheap at the moment £10.90 including VAT (admin charge) the url's free and you get 3000mb space and they have a very basic webcreator package included (it is very basic!). Oh you also get £50 Google adwords coupon to go towards a pay per click campaign.
I use Xara.com for my software but WordPress is excellent and it's free!
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LPC
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Re: .com or .co.uk

Post by LPC »

mclarke60416 wrote:Hi all, new member to your website, must say really impressed by the info available on here.....

I imagine that most people looking will be UK based, but also want to try and catch the German, Russian Market as well.
Welcome to the forum, Mike! Turkey is very popular with Russians, as there is not the same complicated "paper chase" as with EU visas. Definitely target Russians. If you need help later with translating, just PM me.
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justininspain
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Post by justininspain »

If you are mainly targeting the UK market then go for .co.uk. You will rank much better in UK searches. That why HL, HR, etc, use this TLD.

If you want to target different markets in different languages then you would want to consider creating different language sub domains off of this main domain. In Google Webmaster Tools you can tell Google which country you want to target with each language sub domain.

That's probably your best bet.
tandrash
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.com or .co.uk

Post by tandrash »

This depends on where your audience is. Use .co.uk if you are chasing UK visitors. You can register both and point the .com to the same place using a 301 redirect (the service provide will do this for you).

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donafe
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Post by donafe »

If your target audience is in the UK - go for .co.uk

As it's been mentioned already - if you can get both .com and .co.uk - just set a permanent redirect from .com to .co.uk

As for the other markets - it's worth considering using their local TLDs, e.g.: .de for Germany. Thus the hosting geolocation won't be that important as your intentions will be very clear from the TLD.
NewquayGetAway
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Location: Cornwall

Re: .com or .co.uk

Post by NewquayGetAway »

mclarke60416 wrote:Hi all, new member to your website, must say really impressed by the info available on here.

My question is .com or .co.uk?

We have an apartment in Turkey that we are planning on setting a website up, any advice on which one to use. I imagine that most people looking will be UK based, but also want to try and catch the German, Russian Market as well. We will probably use HR or HL.

Or does it not really make to much difference as we are unlikely to be anywhere near the first page on Google.

Any help/advice gteatfully appreciated.

Mike Clarke
.co.uk don't tend to rank to well outside of the uk, so as above get them both if you can.
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ourinns
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Post by ourinns »

More important than .com/.co.uk is where your site is hosted.

To give an idea of how significant that is, we originally hosted in the US ('cos it was cheap) but moved to the UK. Within 6 days, we had a 30 fold increase in the hits (our guests are mostly from the UK).

This happens as google give higher priority to local sites. So, if you're in the UK and search then you will get UK hosted sites before sites hosted in, say, Germany (that's about a trebling we found: 1and1.co.uk being in Germany vs a proper UK host).
NewquayGetAway
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Post by NewquayGetAway »

ourinns wrote:More important than .com/.co.uk is where your site is hosted.

To give an idea of how significant that is, we originally hosted in the US ('cos it was cheap) but moved to the UK. Within 6 days, we had a 30 fold increase in the hits (our guests are mostly from the UK).

This happens as google give higher priority to local sites. So, if you're in the UK and search then you will get UK hosted sites before sites hosted in, say, Germany (that's about a trebling we found: 1and1.co.uk being in Germany vs a proper UK host).

Very good point - your site is likely to be faster for your customers too if it is hosted in their native country as there will be less lag....
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