SEO in the UK

[hwade]

Will soon be starting to do SEO for a client in the UK and wondered if there was anything I should do differently for what I do in the United States?

[RyanKent]

A few thoughts I would share from my experiences in England:

• England has VAT which is a tax on goods and services. The laws surrounding VAT are quite different then what we are accustomed to for taxation in the US. You may want to gain a high level understanding of how VAT works depending on your role in the SEO process.

• "British" English can be quite different from American English. I had serious communication problems when I first began speaking to people from England. One example is "Prices here are much dearer". I guessed that either meant more expensive or cheaper, but had no idea which. You may want to read a quick guide such as: http://www.effingpot.com/slang.shtml

• Do not just treat England as if it was another US state. The culture is quite a bit different.

There isn't any other more direct advice I have to offer.

[SteveOllington]

Haha, Ryan you make us sound as if we are aliens or something

[RyanKent]

I am probably sharing too much of my own personal experiences and expectations. Perhaps I lived a sheltered life

I had assumed working with someone from England would be like working with someone from another US state. We all speak English, right?

I never anticipated not being able to fully understand everything that was said in a conversation. Nor did I expect such a different system of taxation. These were two areas of culture shock for me.

[Marcus_Miller]

Mostly it's the same, but if you are targeting google.co.uk you will need to pay attention to the small details.

1. Language - the language is the same, don't worry about having to sound like someone from Mary Poppins, there is really little difference and colloquialisms really have no place in writing for a broad audience.

2. Spelling - watch your spelling, we do things a little different over here. Watch, your z's and s's and maybe get it read by a UK copywriter. This is important, if you have US spellings, you are telling google it's for a US audience!

3. GEO Stuff - You can specify the location you are targeting  in webmaster tools, obviously,  but you can also do more. Make sure the UK address is on the site, make sure you use the correct monetary units and any other localisation that is important to the business.

4. Link Building - You will want to find some UK link sources, ideally topically relevant ones as well. That's not to say you can't get links from the US, it's no biggy but you want  to make sure you have some quality UK ones.

Really, it's not much different, just the smaller details so don't sweat it to much.

Matt Cutts made this video about releasing the same content over multiple top level domains (TLDs) yesterday I think and whilst it is a different subject there are some good indicators of what they are looking for

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

Cheers!
Marcus

[firstconversion]

Give us an idea of the industry and what the monetisation is and we can be more specific

I second that the website language is not much of an issue, but spelling is! Also, set your html language to UK English

We do a lot of international content development and have a style guide for each so that anyone who works on a foreign site has a quick reference to turn to

Geo text and UK based linkbuidling should be standard concepts. You could try a few paid press releases via http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/

obviously, everyone in images should be wearing a bowler hat and all men should have a pipe

[Marcus_Miller]

Yep, bowler hats for sure!