.UK SEO Experiment

JMI · Apr 26, 2020

Nothing that new here to some of you seo pros, but I recently sold a .co.uk on a WP had very decent traffic buyer not fussed at all about site or having .UK, so cloned the whole site on the clean unused .UK, and it seems to have popped back into G serps pretty decently, I'd say about 70% of where the .co.uk was (it was a shame I couldn't have 301'd the .co.uk sooner with hindsight and all that)

Do you think it would it have done this if i'd fresh regged new-widget.co.uk, maybe its just the link juice. Part of me wants to believe G going to give the .UK some extra love

I think now I'm moving all sites off .co.uk 301 to .UK now so I can maintain traffic sites, as I keep selling to these "know-it-all" domain investors who kind of don't want to know or accept the .uk exists, and seem to think once they have the .co.uk its job done when in actual fact I'd say its going to bite them on bum in 3-5 years when .UK becomes widely more adopted. To me its ludicrous risk to invest in a .co.uk without the .uk

Paullas · Apr 26, 2020

Interesting read above. I am building a site on a .uk at the moment as someone else owns the co.uk. At the moment i have had the site live 2-3 weeks and slowly seeing results in the engines. The big challange and proof in the pudding will be in a few months to see if the .uk can outrank the .co.uk but time will tell i suppose.

dazc · Apr 26, 2020

JMI said:
Part of me wants to believe G going to give the .UK some extra love

Let it go, as the song goes.

3gmedia · Apr 26, 2020

I'll give that a go

Ben Thomas · Apr 26, 2020

SEO is relative to the amount of work you put into the content on the domain, not the domain name.

JMI · Apr 26, 2020

Yes it was just a pure punt and I will probably get smashed by G in a few weeks. I was surprised it let it straight back into the same spot for a few key search phrases - kind of looked like G was saying to me "I can see you're replacing the domain with this new (better ) one, and I'll let you carry on doing all the good your doing!" Of course I realise I'm probably living a short term fantasy out and I will be happy to accept the fate.

There's no doubt it will be annoying for future development of the original .co.uk years to come in the future though, because that's the end game for a domain in most cases, and its goign to take time, effort and money to make it happen. It certainly makes you realise how hard it is to rank a site in a competitive top 3 organically and I think only certain people in the Web industry recognise that.

JMI · May 13, 2020

Quick update on this. The site seems to have tanked a bit from pages 1 and 2 to page 4 for everything. I've done nothing to the site since.

I guess this is the point where one has to decide if it's worth putting some considerable SEO effort in to try and save it before it slides out to page 10+ into oblivion..

dee · May 13, 2020

JMI said:
Quick update on this. The site seems to have tanked a bit from pages 1 and 2 to page 4 for everything. I've done nothing to the site since.

I guess this is the point where one has to decide if it's worth putting some considerable SEO effort in to try and save it before it slides out to page 10+ into oblivion..

I guess one question would be if it would do the same if you'd 301'd to say a com ? There must have been experiments on that ? Or am I missing the point

Paullas · May 13, 2020

dont forget the big G did an update recently https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-update-analysis/367604/

Ben Thomas · May 13, 2020

That's the thing with SEO, it never stops. Once you stop nurturing a plant, it dies. Don't forget also that Google is now Mobile-First Indexing

Admin · May 13, 2020

@JMI you are, like most people who play about with SEO ...pissing in the wind

. Don't need to guess, ask an SEO pro. A .UK site wont rank better than .co.uk ceteris paribus....

Ben Thomas · May 13, 2020

contentus est rex

aZooZa · May 13, 2020

Romani ite domum.

JMI · May 14, 2020

I used to do lots of SEO up until about 2005 before you had to try

I've always maintained google is as thick as they come because its ranked plenty of my rough old sites for decades with little or no work while the competition who offer a better service don't seem do that well.

But to be fair I have seen a change for the first time in the last 6 months, seems G toughened up and finally giving big slap..nothings forever in the serps right?

I'm gunna go for it.. old school seo style for next month see if we can get it back up. Old school means..

Tidy up mobile friendly theme, speed etc.
Slowly add about 5k worth of new articles
Clean up internal links and page meta data.
Get more backlink juice from good sources.

Any other suggestions.. SEO 2000 is SEO 2020 right!?

P.S. I forgot to say the content is king cliche

I shall report back

JMI · Jul 4, 2020

Just a quick update on this. So the site has move up to about 4th on page one for the main search terms which I'm quite chuffed about, but the catch is that the back link profile must be strong as the parking page on the sold .co.uk domain has been indexed by G and now ranks at 3rd spot

I shouldn't think it will last that long, kind of disappointing in 2020 G still ranks shitty parking page which is why I maintain Google algo is still stupid.

So only one of the 3 main search terms has completely collapsed out of serps not even on page 10, collateral damage is to be expected.