Geolocated .com vs .co.uk

The .co.uk that I want is taken, the .com is available... I could use webmaster tools and target the UK...

Thoughts and experiences?

 

Definitely reg it using the geo target might not get you higher that the .co.uk, but think about all the lose traffic you might.

 

Would you say this puts me on an even level with the .co.uk after some time or do you think I will always be at a disadvantage to the owner of the .co.uk ?

 

Actually if the geo target works well you might even have a slight advantage, that really depends on how well you develop the website and traffic. Usually when both is available I will reg both, can't bear losing traffic to the dot com.

 

Thanks Takwa, just what I was looking for.

 

On the same theme, I have a potential new customer who has a 5 month old .com site not optimised well, but indexed.

He also owns the .co.uk domain (parked).

He wants me to redesign and properly optimise. Should I just reoptimise (and redeisgn) the 5 month old .com site - or is it worth scrapping that and doing the .co.uk?

If it were a completely new website, I'd have suggested the .co.uk but hesitate to do this because of the new website "penalty".

Obviously, I'd point the .co.uk at the .com - or vice versa.

 

I did exactly that with my cot mobile website; ranks well in UK search engines.

I also own a .co.uk website and the .com owned by someone else dominates the search results in UK search engines so from my experience, .coms can target UK audiences just as well as the .co.uk. But I think the most important thing is to have better content than other sites.

 

Using your Webmaster Tools could be one option but the real thing is to gather some links coming from the UK domains because they would in the long term benefit your website the most, even if your domain is a .com extension but it is powered by a lot of UK based links, some top rankings and naturally traffic shares would be gained.