UK and US Targeting Simultaneously - Domain Setup and Duplicate Content?

[james406]

I have a site that will be targeting the US and the UK. However, it will need to display slightly different content to the two. Should I use a .co.uk and a .com, or uk.themainsite.com for the UK, or themainsite.com/UK?

This is of course setting up multiple country targeting within Google Webmaster Tools. Am I likely to run into duplicate content issues?

[TomRayner]

I think separate domains would be the preferred choice in a perfect world, but of course we live in a far-from-perfect one!

You're quite right to flag a potential duplicate content issue. Two separate domains may help you to rank in two different search engines, but this would require you to have completely unique content for both sites.  Navigation and layout can obviously be the same, but the content within your pages will need to be unique, which, depending on your industry, may simply not be possible (there are only so-many times you can reinvent the wheel, or re-write it as it were).

With a localised site on a .com domain (you would be fine with either subdomain or subfolder, but if pushed, I'd pick a subfolder - www.domain.com/uk/page1.html for example) you may not need to rewrite as much content - as you can informational pages and other similar style pages sitting on the .com domain for all local subfolders to use, for example.  However, you will still need to rewrite other pages that would have similar content, such as products or services.

If you have the time and resource, I'd go for two separate domains.  There's definitely a lot of data and results to support that a .co.uk domain will have an easier time ranking higher in Google UK over a .com (although not essential), which can help get you going.  It will require a lot of writing and re-writing, but if you get it right now, at the first stage, it would save any headaches in the future.