Ranking in multiple markets

[scottmccloud]

I’ve got a site I’m working on at the moment where I have both the .com and .co.uk domains. It’s based in an industry that I have worked in for several years, and I intend to use my contacts to dropship items to both the UK and USA (and ROW eventually I hope).

I’m just wondering what to do about the .com and .co.uk? Should I have two separate sites (completely different to avoid Google penalising me for plagiarising myself), .com showing prices in $, .co.uk in £? Or would it be best to just use the .com, and have an intro page where you choose your country, and have the .co.uk redirect to it?

The latter makes more sense to me as it’s easily scalable if adding extra markets, but I’m worried that I would be penalised for having loads of duplicate content within my own domain, as product descriptions on the USA part would be the same as in the UK part.

I'm confused!

Any ideas and advice would be appreciated!
Scott

 

[retired_member36]

Or would it be best to just use the .com, and have an intro page where you choose your country, and have the .co.uk redirect to it?

I would personally go with this solution, 2 sites = twice the work.

 

[Blossom]

Agreed. Just have 1 site and have a currency switcher and include some code that detects location via IP (unless of course your products need more explanation than that).

 

[dashu1]

If you use a subdomain for each country you can set the country for each in webmasters tools.

 

[Obosh]

If you use a subdomain for each country you can set the country for each in webmasters tools.

If you can work for two site then go for two separate sites….but personally I would go with .com and use .co.uk as subdomain later….because working with two website at a time on same niche would be very difficult….so it would be wise to start with .com then see the result (geo traffic) then go for the .co.uk one…buy that’s my personal opinion…

 

[Blossom]

If you use a subdomain for each country you can set the country for each in webmasters tools.

But each subdomain will be seen as a separate site (regardless of setting the country), so you have the same issues & a worse situation because different extensions would be slightly more beneficial.