Domain targeting advice needed please

[Grumpy_Carl]

I would be interested in hearing the views of other seomozers on this issue please.

I have a web server hosted in The Netherlands which I currently host my sites on, it is super fast (16core 24gb ram) and in 8 months has had 4 mins of downtime! On this server I wish to build a couple of ecommerce stores. However this is where my issue lays

The first store I launch will be targeted at the UK market, however the domain I wish to use for it is a .com domain which has a moz ranting of about 36 (better than most of my competitors, worse than a few so it's a good headstart). The problem I would then have is a .com domain hosted on a Dutch server targeting UK people. Even if I was to set the webmaster tools location to UK it would not be ideal. Also, when it comes to launching the US site I would then be looking at using a .us domain which is far from ideal

The other option I have is to use the .co.uk domain for the UK site but this is new and lack any decent moz score.

Given this I am now pondering the following set up....using the .com domain on the Dutch server but putting the UK store in domain.com/UK and the future usa store in domain.com/usa. Would this be the best work around? I could then set the location of folders in the webmaster tools?

Also, I plan on using geo redirecting on the domain so if a uk page happens to rank in the USA listings the user gets automatically redirected to the nearest matching product available in their country in the /us/ folder. Would this be easiest to work with on just one domain as it wouldn't technically be redirecting people to another site as per using two domains.

Any thoughts would be good. Not even sure I have managed to explain it very clearly hehe

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi Carl,

First, hosting location isn't a massive factor in terms of SEO - this wasn't always the case - however as sites are hosted in locations that they don't target (e.g. UK sites hosted in the USA) I think this is largely ignored. As such I'd suggest your hosting location shouldn't cause you major heartache.

In terms of the US vs UK question - it really depends on how much time / resource you have. If you have the time to devote to content creation, linkbuilding etc for both the .co.uk and the .com then great - if not focusing your efforts on one site and going down the subfolder route - /uk and /us is probably the best option for you. Do be careful not to replicate the sites in the UK and US folders though - you'll need to create separate, unique content for each.

Finally, re the IP redirect - this really isn't a tactic I favour. The issue with implementing a redirect based on IP is that as Google bot crawls from a US IP you can effectively render the UK version of the site invisible to bots. As such I favour the approach taken by CheapFlights. If you hit the .com version of the site from a UK IP you get sent to this 'choose your country' page - http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/. This allows users to select the appropriate site for them and allows the bots to crawl both versions.

I hope this helps,

Hannah