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It's perfectly possible to get a .com ranking well in the UK - there are lots of sites that use a .com and rank just fine.
However if time is of the essence (and when is it not?) and you have the .co.uk domain then switching now and building further links to the .co.uk is probably a good option for you 
Hi Kate,
In my experience you may have problems with getting your sites to rank in their respective locales. I've also seen sites like this treated as duplicate content (even though they shouldn't be really).
There's a couple of things that I'd recommend that you do:
Target the sites via webmaster tools to US / UK as appropriate see - http://www.seo-chicks.com/1463/geotargeting-on-the-same-domain-using-xml-sitemaps.html
Take steps to ensure you're targeting the right keywords (there are plenty of differences between US and UK English)
Implement rel-alternate hreflang see - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
Include local signals - e.g. local telephone numbers, bricks and mortar addresses etc to help the search engines understand which locales you're targeting
I hope this helps,
Hannah
Hi Sara,
The GEO-IP redirect isn't an approach I favour.
As Google normally crawl from a US IP it can cause indexation problems.
As such I prefer something like cheapflights.com implement - if you visit cheapflights.com from a UK IP you are pushed to this international choice page - http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/
This allows user to select the appropriate site (nicer for users) and allows both versions to be crawled.
My recommendation would be to implement something like that rather than a hard redirect to a specific language version.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
Hi Keith,
If I were you I'd stick with the .com - I've not seen any evidence to suggest that using a .co.uk makes any difference to UK rankings. I don't think you'll see any major issues with CTR either.
I'm assuming that you're not having any US v UK issues right now E.G. - you're ranking better in the US than the UK, receiving more US than UK traffic etc. However if this is the case you could implement geo-targeting via webmaster tools, claim a Places listing (if you haven't already) etc to send some more signals about where you're located.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
Hi Neil,
Ranking for a person's name in the US with a 'name.co.uk' is possible - for example I think if you do a search for 'Jane Copland' in the US you'll see janecopland.co.uk ranking 1st.
Do you know how well or otherwise the site is ranking in the US right now?
Essentially the ability to rank will likely be impacted by how common or otherwise the person's name is and how strong their site is.
In terms of actions from you I wouldn't be inclined to change hosting as that's unlikely to have an impact on it's own - however if as you say you're looking to change the hosting in any case then moving it the US probably wouldn't hurt. I'd also encourage you to build links to this domain to strengthen the site.
I guess I'm saying it's not necessarily impossible, but in an ideal world you'd get some sort of generic domain (.com / .net etc).
I hope this helps,
Hannah
Hi Guido,
This sort of issue isn't unusual unfortunately - however, just so you know I suspect that your location is affecting the results you're seeing - as when I search Google.com from here in the UK I'm seeing your English content ranking. However, when I search Google.es I'm seeing your Catalan content ranking so either way there are a few issues.
I suspect (although I can't be 100% sure) - that part of the issue is the Catalan vs Spanish content - as they do also speak Catalan in parts of Spain - it may be that Google is struggling to figure out which is the best content to display. There are two things that you can do:
NB - you can only do this if you are targeting specific countries - not languages. If for example you want to attract UK and US English visitors then do not implement this.
In terms of implementation you need to place the tag on all versions of the page -
So on http://yourdomain.com/page-whatever you'd need:
So on http://yourdomain.com/page-whatever you'd need:
Hi Marcelo,
Providing you've marked up the page appropriately - see http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/right-to-left.html - the bots shouldn't have any issues with understanding your content
You can see an example in the wild from Wikipedia here - http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/علم_المعلومات
I hope this helps
Hannah
Hi Matthew,
The hreflang tag which SEOBrent mentioned below may help here - if your content is duplicate.
In terms of implementation you need to place the tag on all versions of the page -
So on http://yourdomain.com/us/page-whatever you'd need:
http://yourdomain.com/uk/page-whatever; /> http://yourdomain.com/us/page-whatever/>
And on http://yourdomain.com/uk/page-whatever - you'd need:
http://yourdomain.com/us/page-whatever; /> https://plus.google.com/u/0/115984868678744352358/posts/9zA3a96XahN
Please also note, you need to pick one canonical version - I've picked the US as I've assumed you get more US traffic - obviously if you get more UK traffic then that should probably be the canonical version. See here - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5299f52953459957&hl=en&fid=5299f529534599570004b9a18f1d46fe
Re your GEO-IP redirect - this isn't an approach I favour - as Google normally crawl from a US IP it can cause indexation problems. As such I prefer something like cheapflights.com implement - if you visit cheapflights.com from a UK IP you are pushed to this international choice page - http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/
This allows user to select the appropriate site, and allows both versions to be crawled.
I hope this helps,
Hannah