301 redirect issue

Hello I've also posted this in the spider crawlers section but no replies so I'll try here

I hope someone can share their views with me on my current situation.

I have 2 domains for the same website a .com and a .co.uk. The .com is used as the primary that I do all the link building for the .co.uk is just a mirror.

The problem began when I realised that for a specific search term I was appearing in google.com but not google.co.uk. I have done some research and apparently the main cause is server location but I checked and my server and hosting company is UK based.

Then I discovered that duplicate content may be a problem as google may think the .co.uk is duplicate because of the mirror. to correct this I am thinking of doing a dynamic 301 redirect to the .co.uk from the .com.

I want to know if a) my link building exercises for the .com domain will go to waste? Will the pr and link juice be transfered to the .co.uk domain?

b) if I do the above should I now start building links to the .co.uk instead of the .com or will this just dilute the .coms pagerank and serp?

c) If I should leave it alone and just redirect the .co.uk to the .com therefore just removing the mirror.

My mains goals are to preserve the work I have already done and to get listed on google.co.uk.

Thanks in Advance,

Tom

a) 301 redirect tells Google that your site has permanatly moved to a new domain and is the only redirect that is SEO friendly. This should transfer all of your PR and link juice although thier may be a brief dip in rankings for a while before they go back up.

b) Yes start building links to the new site, all your old links will now be redirected to .co.uk

c) Either way you can redirect .co.uk to .com and the result will be pretty much the same.

thanks for the reply.

I've just changed my geo location in webmaster tool for the .com.

So I'm thinking....

add the .co.uk to webmaster tools and verify the site. Set the .co.uk to geo location UK. Put a 301 redirect on the .co.uk to the .com. Then on the .com don;t set a prefered geo location.

In theory (or my head!) do you think it will have the following result:

The .co.uk domain will have a better chance of getting listed in google.co.uk (because I will have removed it as a mirror site and put a 301 in place) and there target UK customers better.

and the .com will remain unaffected in international google.com effectively driver international traffic to the site.

This is the dream scenario but I want to know if I can put it into practice.

If you are targeting international traffic you should stick with the .com not just because it is possible that it may rank better outside the UK but also from a users point of view. You are obviously wanting international traffic so I would just 301 the .co.uk site through to the .com site or create different content on each site and start building natural links to them both. If you did the latter successfully you have a chance of getting 2 spots in the top ranking positions

Good points.

Its an e- commerce site and what I would be offering to all nationalities is the same products. But products that are not available in the US are on the site and products that are not available in the UK are on the site available to US customers if you get when I mean.

Do you think its good practice to add both .co.uk and .com to google webmaster tool and verify them both? at the moment on .com is on there? Or wont this matter if a 301 is in place?

By the sounds of things you need 2 seprate sites to sell different product ranges and avoid disappointment of customers.

If you have a 301 redirect you only need submit a sitemap for the site that your traffic will end up on. Google will give an error for the site that has the redirect on it anyway.

I think you should sit back and really plan what you want to acomplish from your site(s). Do you want to sell different products to different markets? if so you need 2 sites.

I hope this helps

Nope same products to world market.

maybe I did explain it clearly above. The point I was trying make was that I want the .com listed in google.com and the .co.uk listed in google.co.uk.

This way UK customers can find me (as most are now auto redirected to google.co.uk even though they type in google.com)

and International customers can find me on google.com.

The problem is at the moment only my .com is listed on google.com and it isn't listed on google.co.uk. The point of the redirect was to keep my listing on google.com but try and rank on google.co.uk.

This may help, I've written an SEO case study on how Google treats 301 redirects.