One Website or Two for Ireland & UK?

Zascar

If you have a business that targets both the UK and Ireland - what is the best way to do this with your website? My dad is currently trying to focus attention on getting UK clients. His current website is Ireland focused. He also has a similar domain name with .co.uk but currently it currently just forwards to the .ie

So, the question is do I get a new website made - similar content but a totally separate website and aim it at the UK market exclusively, or do I just have one website (ie or uk) and aim it at both. Is it possible to get good SEO form the UK with a .ie domain?

The current site I think isn't great - the SEO is terrible, I told him not to go with the designer in the first place - now he wants better SEO but trying to improve the seo on a site which foundations are so bad is pointless. I think just get a new one made properly.

What should I do?

Scotty #

Zascar wrote: »

So, the question is do I get a new website made?

Yes, a separate .ie and .co.uk site is the best route to take.

The seo on your current site is pretty poor. No <h> tags etc. Poor use of keywords/phrases.

Here's a txt version of your current site... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:franchiseyourbusiness.ie/index.aspx+franchise&hl=en&strip=1

and here's a competitors site... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fcy3D387XhsJ:www.whichfranchise.ie/+franchise&hl=en&gl=ie&strip=1

Both have the word 'franchise' highlighted. Notice the difference in density between the two sites. Also notice how your competitor uses the word in <h1> tags so much. (using all H1 tags is not necessarily a good thing either). You actually have the word misspelled on the first line of your site.

Personally I'd scrap the current site and start from scratch. It's not terrible... but it's not quiet professional looking enough for me to want to spend my money with you.

PaulPinnacle

Zascar wrote: »

If you have a business that targets both the UK and Ireland - what is the best way to do this with your website?

'Best' is relatively subjective.

In a perfect world, you set up the separate site on the UK ccTLD. However, it has cost and resource implications (you have to keep two sites maintained rather than one), so while it has significant SEO benefits it might not be as feasible from a logistics point of view.

You could look at setting up a UK sub domain on the site (you can then geotarget this subdomain to the UK via google webmaster tools - but doesn't help you with Bing [see their suggestions here]) with all of the UK specific information, but this does mean you've a little less flexibility than having an independent site (but far less overheads and work required so might be preferable).

As you're aware, the existing SEO is fairly poor on the site. There are dozens of basic things you could change quickly that would improve it, but if you have concerns over the site in general it might be a waste to spend any time running through them. If you do want a few pointers, toss the site up in the review section and I'm sure you'll get plenty of feedback.

The Corinthian

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

In a perfect world, you set up the separate site on the UK ccTLD. However, it has cost and resource implications (you have to keep two sites maintained rather than one), so while it has significant SEO benefits it might not be as feasible from a logistics point of view.

Actually, ongoing maintenance need not be an issue. Depending on the CMS you use, you can have multiple versions of the same site, that may have effectively the same content, but laid out differently. All tld's would point to the same site and the site would be rendered according to the tld requested, prioritizing, say, UK content for the UK site and putting IE content further back and vice versa.

Naturally, there will be extra content to be written, but this can be largely minimized for a UK versus IE setup.

Zascar

Thanks. Yeah you can manage multiple wordpress sites from one login, that would work. I hear google penalalises you if you have duplicated content so would each site have to have different/original content?

So, If I want to get two new sites designed, and SEO has to be the number 1 priority - how should I go about it? What cms platform etc would be best to use? Wordpress? I use wordpress all the time so it would be handy for me. I have a little experience with Joomla too.

I'm thinking of putting it on oDesk or eLance - however its kinda hard to know who to pick to do your project. Yes it would be nice to get it done by an irish designer so I have someone to talk to on the phone etc - but I think it would cost a fortune...

Advice welcome

The Corinthian

Shop around for a CMS that allows you to change your content based upon criteria such as domain requested, browser language, etc. I would be surprised if one, or a plug-in for one, did not exist. Another possible option would be to handle this at the server, so that requests are directed to a different landing page accordingly.

Alternatively, you could develop a bespoke CMS for the job, but that naturally this would either require that you have the skills in-house or that you pay for it.

cormee

Zascar wrote: »

I hear google penalalises you if you have duplicated content so would each site have to have different/original content?

Google only penalises if you are using duplicate content, blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate rankings. In the worst-case scenario for what you are suggesting the only 'penalty' would be a wasted Google budget (Google gives you a certain amount of crawl time/resources depending on your ranking) but because you're talking about two different domains and two different sites it's probably not a concern.

Have a read of this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

In my opinion two different sites would be your best option - your designer would probably do the two of them for 1.5x the price of a new site if you were to use a similar design for both.

tomED

Firstly, I would say don't worry about recreating the site. Although it's not perfect and doesn't have solid foundations, you can still make it rank by performing some of the items suggested here. You don't need to go back to the drawing board unless you've little or no control.

I've personally been involved in a number of sites that have had this situation where they want to target multiple countries. We've done things such as /subdirectory, sub domains, seperate domains etc etc.

So far the best performing has been the sub domains - but a lot of work went into promoting each sub domain individually.

In an ideal world, I would seperate out the sites entirely if you have the time and resources to manage both from an SEO point of view - ignore the content management side of things, because that's not really a huge issue. As you can see from above there are many solutions there. The point being that anything you do from a SEO perspective, must be duplicated to include the OTHER domain.

That sounds quite simple - but the reality is that it's not.

I've currently launched a site of my own that has over 3,000 products and I've used the sub folder method in conjuntion with geo targeting in Webmaster Tools - I'll let you know how well that goes as soon as it embeds. The early signs are looking pretty good. It's a brand new domain with complete duplication of content. Good testing bed I'd say!