Duplicate site

[Scotch Argus]

Originally I set up our site on a .com address www.greatglenhostel.com. However we received advice that it would be better for local marketing to use a local domain - i.e .co.uk - www.greatglenhostel.co.uk . I've left the .com site up, but in your web and SEO ebook, it says that you shouldn't have two identical pages with different URLs - will this harm our search rankings? Should I take down the .com pages and run a redirect to the .co.uk site. Also what would be the best way to do this.

Our page site appeared quite high on google after about 2 weeks for a straight great glen hostel search, but has now disappeared of the rankings. I was wondering if there might be any opinions as to why?

Thanks for any help

[uktrail]

When I started my site uktrail.com, I also registered uktrail.co.uk, and simply pointed the latter to the former. So I had two addresses where people could find the site, but only one site. I suggest you do this.

I was told that .com would look more professional than .co.uk for a site for international users. However .co.uk was so rarely used that I gave it up. Nowadays I dont think many people are concerned about this; if they find it in a google search or referenced in another website they just click on it, and never care what it is called.

I would quite like to change my present site to .co.uk instead of .com because the name costs much less, but I might lose my ranking status so I dont.

Everybody has a different opinion as to how to optimise for Google searches. I am always totally confused.

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by uktrail

Everybody has a different opinion as to how to optimise for Google searches. I am always totally confused.

Throughout mankind´s history, everyone had a different opinion as to how to please the gods. Countless wars were fought over that, millions died.

Why don´t The Lords in San Jose just reveal what we´re supposed to do?

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by Scotch Argus

Originally I set up our site on a .com address www.greatglenhostel.com. However we received advice that it would be better for local marketing to use a local domain - i.e .co.uk - www.greatglenhostel.co.uk

I would choose one or the other. Google doesn't like duplicate content and one of the basic rules of SEO is that one page of content should only have one possible URL.

Google is indexing pages from both domains:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%....co.uk&num=100
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...el.com&num=100

What are your traffic figures like? (send me a private message if you want and I could give you some specific advice)

If your search engine traffic isn't very high I might recommend redirecting the .com to the .co.uk with HTTP header code 301. That way people will be able to type in the .com or the .co.uk URLs and they will automatically be directed to the .co.uk domain in a search-engine-friendly way.

It should be done with HTTP header code 301 so that each page on one domain redirects to the corresponding page on the other domain.

For example,
http://www.greatglenhostel.com/walks.htm would redirect to http://www.greatglenhostel.co.uk/walks.htm
(or vice versa)

I could give you some redirect code to copy/paste in your site if you would like.

Originally Posted by Scotch Argus

Our page site appeared quite high on google after about 2 weeks for a straight great glen hostel search, but has now disappeared of the rankings. I was wondering if there might be any opinions as to why?

Which domain appeared in Google, the .com or the .co.uk? If it was a new domain it might be the effect where Google sometimes ranks new sites highly for a short period just after launch, then drops the rankings.

Whichever domain you use, you should eventually rank at #1 for the keywords great glen hostel. I don't recommend trading too many links, but for hostels you can safely do some reciprocal linking with a small number of other hostels' Web sites.

Make a links page and link to about 20 hostels. Contact the hostels and ask if they will trade links with you. Even if they don't respond, leave the links up. By the time you are done you should have about 5 to 10 inbound links and the rest will be one-way outbound links. That is a good balance.

Send them the following information:

Title: Great Glen Hostel in Scotland
URL: http://www.greatglenhostel.co.uk/
Description: [put a 1 or 2 sentence description here]

If they link to you with the link text "Great Glen Hostel in Scotland" you will rank well for phrases with those keywords in them. They aren't competitive keywords so it should be easy.

[Scotch Argus]

We would really appreciate some code to set up the 301 redirects. Where does the code go? Does it go on the page that's being redirected, or in a separate file? (If so, is it an .htm file or something else?) and were do I upload it to?
Thanks very much for your help!!

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by Scotch Argus

We would really appreciate some code to set up the 301 redirects.

I'll send you a private message with a solution. I just checked and you are on a Microsoft server so there is an extra step.

[Scotch Argus]

Originally Posted by Hostels

I'll send you a private message with a solution. I just checked and you are on a Microsoft server so there is an extra step.

Thanks a lot for that, I found something about it, but I thought it wouldn't apply to our MS based hosting. TBH I don't know a lot about all this, we basically had 3 weeks between the hostel here changing hands and opening, we were trying to get everything done at once. Now things are quietening down a bit we're looking at improving the website and rankings etc.

Many thanks again - your help is much appreciated.

[Scotch Argus]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Throughout mankind´s history, everyone had a different opinion as to how to please the gods. Countless wars were fought over that, millions died.

Why don´t The Lords in San Jose just reveal what we´re supposed to do?

I think the post here explains that:
Google founder Sergey Brin to become space tourist
When he gets up into space he can look down on us mortals like the God he is. The Greek gods always liked teasing the mortals and watching them fight for approval. And then dashing their hopes with a bolt of lightning. Or in this case a "tweaked" algorithm.