Hi everyone, I hope this is the right forum. I have two seperate questions/examples.
I'll try and explain briefly. Let's say, I have a hypothetical
website hosting listed as a .co.uk, MYSITE.co.uk I have also just purchased a .com of the same name (MYSITE.com) to support a) increased traffic from non-uk visitors, and b) to cover me when people, hearing of my
website hosting via non-online media (e.g. paper media, word of mouth etc), type in the address but might accidentally type .com rather than my preferred .co.uk.
In example 1, I want to make clear that I have no wish to change the content with this particular
website hosting to match regional variations in the Englsih language, slang or style (too time-consuming/risk of being seen as duplicate content if not varied enough).
Is there some way that I can get them to link up without listing them both with mirror content (and being penalised by the search engines) or by doing a 301 redirect on the .com? If I do a 301 on the .com, I get penalised by having crap rankings in .com search engine searches and only score highly in UK searches. If I switch the other way round, the reverse is true, which is even worse for my business (am I right in thinking this?).
In example 2, this time it's a different
website hosting (HERSITE) but the same story with owning both the .com/.co.uk versions. Only this time, I want my
website hostings to complement each other to reflect the fact that I am now targeting TWO different geographical regions (i.e. UK and USA/rest of world). How can I have both
website hostings, same HERSITE domain name, similar content (although with spelling/syntax/style/slang/pricing differences) without upsetting the Googlemonster?
Would it be ok just to provide a link on each
website hosting to the other site? For example, on HERSITE.co.uk I have a link on the homepage saying "US visitors, please click here to be directed to our sister
website hosting...". Or would I actually be better off simply having a subdirectory on just HERSITE.com (and simply 301 the .co.uk) which links through to HERSITE.com/uk and subfolders, thus having a
website hosting within a site?
Confused as hell. Maybe there is a better option I haven't mentioned. Crikey, I've written a lot - sorry for anyone making it this far. Prob like trying to read 'Moby Dick' online. Thanks.