Something has happened which is, well inexplicable to me... I'm stumped!
We have a client that has two sites which compete for the same keywords. One is a .com, the other is a .co.uk. They have different content so there's no dupe worries.
We have, for the past few months been carrying out SEO for the .com site. It's doing great. We don't do anything with the .co.uk site, which, incidentally dropped from 2nd (under the .com) to 9th after Panda for its main keyword.
The owner of the site has switched the .co.uk to Wordpress and now that site, with the same content, same links, same social signals, etc... (nothing was done to it except the platform being changed) has suddenly shot up above the .com for not only its main keyword but most of the others too.
What gives?? It doesn't even have a link from the .com site!
So, the .com which has undergone SEO is now being beaten by the .co.uk which hasn't. The .com is still directly underneath it. It feels like all of the things we know about SEO, all of the ranking factors and everything are being totally undermined here, just due to a change to Wordpress. Surely that can't be it?? The .com is an older domain, has more content, has always done well, has more links and from better places, and all the social stuff surrounding the business is targeted at it.
This isn't a penalization issue or anything like that, this is simply a matter of the .co.uk suddenly blasting above everything for no apparent reason.
Any ideas?? I know that there "might" be a tiny, tiny, tiny advantage of the country TLD but that's not enough to do this, and the .co.uk always did worse before.