Geo-Targeting separate TLD's where both are .com domains

[jimmygs1982]

Hi

I have a client who owns two separate TLDs for the same brand (for the sake of this post, we'll call the two sites www.site-a.com and www.site-b.com). For site www.site-a.com the website has been around for a while and is their primary site for their US operations which is their heartland, is well established in the SERPS and is where they make most of their money.

As they looked to expand to the UK, they then created www.site-b.com and added the UK as a subfolder (so www.site-b.com/uk) and geo-targeted it towards the UK in Webmaster tools . The site has recently launched but they now find that, when a customer searches for their brand in the UK, they find www.site-a.com in position 1 (which, given it's tailored for a primary US audience, has a significantly lower conversion rate for UK traffic) and www.site-b.com in position 2. However, the client doesn't want to specifically geo target www.site-a.com to the USA as they feel it might affect where they appear for other international markets aside from the UK.

So the question is, how can they, with the existing infrastructure, help remove www.site-a.com from the UK SERPs without adversely affecting their rank elsewhere?

Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for your help.

James

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[jimmygs1982]

Hi Josh

Thanks so much for your reply. To clarify, am I right in assuming that using HREF lang tags will indicate to Google that the UK site is specifically for a UK audience and that the US site is for a US audience?

Am I also right in assuming that it might 'upweight' the UK site in google.co.uk but not remove the US site either from Google.co.uk or other international variations where they might want to maintain their presence?

Thanks again for your help

James

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[jimmygs1982]

Not for the the UK but they do get a fair amount of traffic from other parts of the world. Ideally, they would want to maintain ranks in other international territories

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[jimmygs1982]

That's great. Thanks so much for your help

James