[freelancr]

This just sucks!

I have been researching SEO for a couple of years now, so based on what I have learnt I decided to do the following to improve our natural search engine positions.

- Use a UK domain, and 301 redirect .com/etc to .co.uk
- Use a UK host
- 301 redirect [domain.co.uk] -> [www.domain.co.uk]
- Set headers, meta tags, and xml tag for content-language: en_GB
- Set Geo Position and ICBM meta tags
- Setup sitemap.xml and use Google webmaster tools
- Redevelop the entire website from scratch.

This worked wonders for the Google.co.uk search results, before we weren't even in the first 200 - the old website only managed to get traffic by spending a shit load of money on Adwords. Now for most of the search terms we check on Google.co.uk we are in the first 10, some are even 3rd or 4th, really happy with that considering the new website has only been live 3 months.

For the same search terms most of our competitors are on the first page of Google.com too, but we aren't even in the top 250! What the fuck? These websites are for UK companies offering the same service as us to customers in the UK only. It seems that any competitor with a .co.uk domain doesn't get listed on Google.com, and any with the .com domain are on the first page of Google.com and Google.co.uk. Eh?

The service we are offering is training of OGC frameworks, whilst this is internationally recognised training, the majority of training companies operate in the UK - so it's not as if we have lots of competition from other countries on the Google.com search results.

You may argue that this isn't a big deal, Google directs UK visitors to Google.co.uk - but it doesn't do it very well! I use Fedora Linux on my laptop, and when searching in firefox I get the Google.com results, it also doesn't redirect me from Google.com to Google.co.uk. This seems to indicate Google just checks the user-agent/language for british english - so this could happen to quite a few users who didn't set this or downloaded a US browser.

I have now seen a US host that looks ideal, Mosso, and we have a .com domain. Would I be bonkers to switch to this?

[sugarcane]

I used to work for a company based in Spain with a .com domain. I found it very interesting how we were appearing in various Googles around the world.

Obviously we ranked best in Spain, then almost identically for Google.com. Getting into Google.co.uk was a real challenge, but what worked for us was getting links from .co.uk domains and submitting to UK based directories. We had good reason to - part of our target market was the UK. Part of our target market was also Dubai, and I had a very similar experience with Google.ae as I did Google.co.uk.

I'm assuming the same link building technique would work in reverse so you may not have to get the .com domain and change host - just work on getting some decent backlinks from the US. If not, get the .com, host in the US and work on backlinks from the UK.

[freelancr]

I have looked more closely at our competitors who have good positions in Google.co.uk and Google.com - seems they host in the UK, but make use of both their .com and .co.uk domains. I have found another host that offers Cloud/Clustered/Grid hosting that looks very good, so might switch to them.

Load Balanced Clustered Web Hosting from Tsohost

[artofmagick]

Originally Posted by freelancr

I have looked more closely at our competitors who have good positions in Google.co.uk and Google.com - seems they host in the UK, but make use of both their .com and .co.uk domains.

Would you say google takes into account where the domain hosting is done, so in effect if you host in the usa you are more likely to rank higher in google.com than you would lets say if it was hosted in the UK.

Im trying to figure out whether it would be best to get a host in America for my website since my target audience is global.

Any thoughts?

[pedge]

Originally Posted by freelancr

I have looked more closely at our competitors who have good positions in Google.co.uk and Google.com - seems they host in the UK, but make use of both their .com and .co.uk domains. I have found another host that offers Cloud/Clustered/Grid hosting that looks very good, so might switch to them.

Load Balanced Clustered Web Hosting from Tsohost

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but freelancr, I was wondering how you're getting on with tsohost - the hosting company we're using (awardspace) has great features but recently seems to go down on a regular basis and we could do with moving to a more reliable host.

Would you recommend tsohost? Was looking at Rackspace but the prices are a bit on the steep side from what I can see.

[freelancr]

I was also looking at the Rackspace cloud, as they aquired Mosso, but was disappointed they only use servers in the US for the cloud. They do have plans to move to the UK apparently, but no dates set in stone for that service going live.

Tsohost have been excellent so far.

Cloud Hosting is definitely the future of shared hosting. If you don't need the control that comes with a dedicated server - then cloud hosting is a better solution imho.

The two problems I come up against with shared hosting (using a single server) are; servers being rammed full of users to the point your sites load really slowly, or an unreliable server leaving you up shit creek until someone fixes it.

With cloud hosting, there is less chance of a failure, and they can add more servers to the cluster if they need to serve more requests and more hard drives to the storage if they need to handle more data. These servers can fail independently of each other, and the data storage runs a live mirror, so not much chance of losing that either.

There have been a few times where services such as FTP or SSH have been down momentarily, but the sites were still up.

The support is excellent, you call them and get to speak to someone who knows their arse from their elbow straight away. If you prefer to send a support ticket, the usual response and fix is under 5 minutes. They are also very keen to implement new features, since I have been a customer they have added support for Ruby on Rails.

If you do go for it, can you use this link below as it might be enough to buy me a pint.
http://billing.tsohost.co.uk/aff.php?aff=606

[pedge]

Fantastic that's what I needed to know. If we go with them I'll use your link.

[freelancr]

If you have anymore questions about Tsohost then give them a call, will give you a good indicator of how quick their support pickup the phone. I think their phone support is off between the 24th-29th, but e-mail/ticket support is still active. 0800 024 2931

Or you could use their forums... it is quiet but the support staff use it.
Tsohost.co.uk Forums - UK Web Hosting - Powered by vBulletin

If you want an answer straight away then use their support tickets.
Tsohost - Powered By Kayako eSupport

[pedge]

You da man - taking a gander at their forums now, thanks for that m8...