How to effectively manage same site but different dot suffixes

[avatari]

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.

[esnail]

Is this an occasion where an addon-domain would be useful. Having the .com as an addon to the .co.uk and pointing it to the main .co.uk directory. I'm not sure how that would affect its Search Engine Optimization though. SEO is a dark science I think lol

[eUKhost.com]

Dear avatari,

Your concepts about duplicate content are completely wrong. We have multiple parked domains on our website hosting and if you take a look at this forum from http://www.eukhost.com/forum/ or http://www.eukhost.com/forums/ then you will see same forum but without any kind of redirect being setup.

both get indexed in google.

If you focus on multiple domains and try to improve rankings for all then none of your domains will get good rankings. Get focussed on a single domain and park other domains on top of the main domain. All your work should be focussed on the main domain only.

[avatari]

Thanks for your replies, guys.

eukhost, what you describe is not domain parking but having the same domain name with two folders that open to the same location - both http://www.eukhost.com/forum/ and http://www.eukhost.com/forums/ are the same domain! I'm talking about having a .com parked on a .co.uk.

In any case, i wondered if there was a solution to the serps problem with only having a .co.uk website hosting or a .com website hosting in regional rankings as opposed to both - but I take your point about concentrating on just one website hosting.

Anybody else got any opinions on this?

[eUKhost.com]

one other option would be to host .com domain on a US based server and .co.uk domain on UK based server. You can keep same content for both website hostings and make minor changes in navigation and look and feel.

Minor change is more than sufficient. Only thing you need to ensure is that both don't remain identical.