Using .co.uk or .com

[UKHost4u]

This post is deleted!

[TomRayner]

Hi Paul

Let's take PA and DA out of the equation here, for the time being.

My first question would be: Is your current website ranking for anything?

If it is and it is ranking well, I would question any site migration.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" springs to mind.

With that aside - let's consider the user experience element:

"Will you have more trust to UK customers with a .co.uk vs a .com?"

As a UK business myself, I don't think that buyers have any preferential trust to one TLD or another - so long that it is clear on the website that you are UK based (UK numbers, locations, £ signs etc).

"Would a .com domain be more suitable for international clients?"

If you have aspirations to grow the company and target international regions, I would say that having a .com would be more suitable than a .co.uk - given that it is the global TLD.  If this is a serious business consideration, that would make me lean more to the side of choosing .com.

"Will you rank better in Google.co.uk if you use a .co.uk domain?"

In short, no.  In long, no - not really.  Google uses many factors when deciding to rank a site well in a region or location - the TLD used is somewhere near the bottom of that pile.  The other elements I talked about - UK address, numbers, spelling, server location, local citations etc - they will have a much, much greater impact to ranking.  You'll see yourself that probably millions of .com sites are ranking well in Google UK.

I would look at all of those factors before I'd begin to think about PA/DA or the links a domain has.  I'll be honest, it sounds a pretty poor suggestion from your last SEO company - particularly if they did nothing to justify their reasoning.  Having a .co.uk domain is by no means a pre-requisite to rank well in Google UK.  I'd ask yourself all of the above questions before reaching a decision on whether to switch or not.

Hope this helps.

[UKHost4u]

Hello.

Thank you for your detailed reply. To answer your points:

1. I don't think the exension of the domain will make any difference at all to our customers.

2. Yes a ,com might be better from an international point of view but this is not a major point at the moment.

3. I understand that no exension will make a difference.

I think though that the point for me was that we were ranking fairy well for the .com but the .co.uk has never performed as well. The last SEO company did say this was due to Google's updates but I heard that excuss nearly everytime something didn't work out.

Really is there any way to tell if changing back to the .com would benifit or does google pass all the link juice over with a 301 anyway.

Paul