replicating or mirroring a website

beebaw

what is the best way to copy an existing website in ireland that has the option to sell in Stg and Euro. We sell into ireland already but i am interseted in selling into the uk.
I have registered the .co.uk domain already but i am confused as to what is the best way to host the .co.uk domain. I obviously want the best solution so that google will pick up on our site as a uk site also.
from research and my understanding the uk site should be hosted in the uk but this means maintaining 2 sites rather than 1 with double the work.
if the site is hosted in Ireland and the uk domain is pointed to the irish hosting it will not preform in a google search well.
so i am looking to see what google actually looks for when it returns results and also if anyone has experience in hosting a irish and uk site simultaneously.

TsuDhoNimh

beebaw wrote: »

what is the best way to copy an existing website in ireland that has the option to sell in Stg and Euro.

The real answer here is "Don't do it". Splitting the domain authority between two duplicate domains will do you far more harm than good.

If you intend to have two independent domains targeted specifically to the users (with unique content for each) it's fine, but if you're duplicating pages they should only be one master version with the duplicate passing this information to SEs via a canonical tag.

beebaw wrote: »

if the site is hosted in Ireland and the uk domain is pointed to the irish hosting it will not preform in a google search well.

A site hosted in Ireland and geotargeted to Ireland (so a .ie or else a gTLD with Irish hosting) can still perform well in UK search, it just won't gain the same geotargeting benefits that it would have as a unique UK domain. If you're not keen on going down the route of maintaining the two independent sites, your best option is to use a gTLD (e.g. .com, .co, etc. - this is more to benefit user behaviour, where a UK searcher might ignore a .ie domain) and hope the search engines pick up its relevancy to both markets (easier said than done at times, but it can be successfully achieved).

smcgiff

How would a www.enternamehere.co.uk website that linked back to your Irish www.enternamehere.ie work. Probably not good for SEO.

TsuDhoNimh

smcgiff wrote: »

How would a www.enternamehere.co.uk website that linked back to your Irish www.enternamehere.ie work. Probably not good for SEO.

How do you mean by 'linked back to'?

If you mean a 301 redirect...
There's no real SEO benefit there (unless the .co.uk is an existing domain with links already pointing to it), but there's also no negative impact. It's good to have the protection of owning the domain and it'll help ensure you get any misplaced direct type in traffic (also great if you could pick up the .com too for just that reason).

If you mean it's simply linking back...
It's not the route you want to take. It's simply splitting up your links and marketing efforts across two domains and hurting your overall performance. The slight geotargeting benefits you might see for having a UK hosted/.co.uk domain would be greatly offset by the negative impacts.

tricky D

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

The real answer here is "Don't do it". Splitting the domain authority between two duplicate domains will do you far more harm than good.

This. Pick your primary location/market, point any other tlds at it and stick with it. Anything else is a Bad Idea.

beebaw

Great thanks for info. I also have a .com domain registered that we mainly use as our advertised site. Obviously these are both pointing to the same DNS.

Our problem is that as we would want to trade as default in STG it would cause problems with the mirroring having the alternate site as default currency being STG.

I would be more concerned about the google search results that would be assigned to the server location and other associated elements that google looks for

TsuDhoNimh

beebaw wrote: »

I also have a .com domain registered that we mainly use as our advertised site. Obviously these are both pointing to the same DNS.

That isn't obvious and really shouldn't be the case. In your scenario, I'd have the .ie domain redirect (301 redirect) to the .com.

beebaw wrote: »

Our problem is that as we would want to trade as default in STG it would cause problems with the mirroring having the alternate site as default currency being STG.

This isn't an SEO problem, it's a web dev one. Speak to your developers about this. They should be able to set the shopping cart up to pick up on the users details and default to the most relevant currency for the specific user.

beebaw wrote: »

I would be more concerned about the google search results that would be assigned to the server location and other associated elements that google looks for

All search results have an element of localisation, some more than others (where the search query shows a semantic link to locational information). It's a relevant point but in your scenario picking a single primary domain and focusing your attention on that is your best bet. If you have an established .ie domain you could use this, if you have an existing .com that you use as your primary marketing domain that's even better (when aiming for dual geolocations) or you could even switch over to making the .co.uk your primary (though you'd suffer some losses on existing link equity you've earned). It comes down to which market is the most important for your business and where you believe you can gain the best results.

mneylon

Use a .com or a .biz

Use on page indicators to show that you have a UK presence (even if it's only virtual)

NomadicMe

I have 2 sites in 2 different countries with exactly the same content and no issues- yes, they are hosted in their countries and they need individual maintenance but I got it cleared with Google if the domain names remained exactly the same, if we could just copy it over- much less of a hassle.

TsuDhoNimh

NomadicMe wrote: »

I have 2 sites in 2 different countries with exactly the same content and no issues

Technically it won't cause any major issues, but it's not the most efficient or best practise way to approach it. I've worked with a number of sites who had been using this type of setup for years, all saw dramatic improvements when moved over to a single consolidated domain.

NomadicMe wrote: »

... but I got it cleared with Google if the domain names remained exactly the same

This sounds very unusual. Cleared with Google in what way?

Other than posting a request on their official webmaster help (where the vast majority of responses will be from non-google users), they don't provide SEO related advice on specific cases. While technically it's true you can do this, it isn't the optimal way to approach it and I'd suggest sticking to the advice given by myself, Tricky and Blacknight to achieve the best results.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

As usual we have lots of unqualified experts offering opinion as if it's solid advice.

From the OP's post the URL seems to be the same with the TLD different based on GEO targeting which is the correct way to approach this. Hosting in the UK might help slightly but a solid server here is capable of doing the job depending on the on page speed optimization. Amazons EC2 server farms are based in Ireland to cover all of Europe without SEO punishment.

Google ofcourse do provide SEO advice, it's just not personalised, so rather than me explain the why's, I'll let Matt Cutts from Google do this part to avoid people arguing opinon vs fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

To be sure head into your webmaster tools and set your Geotargets so they understand where you are aiming.

Hope that helps.

TsuDhoNimh

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

As usual we have lots of unqualified experts offering opinion as if it's solid advice.

I'm not sure if that's aimed at me or not, but if it is I'll remind you of it the next time we bump into each other Ronan

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

From the OP's post the URL seems to be the same with the TLD different based on GEO targeting which is the correct way to approach this.

I'll disagree strongly there. As Matt says in the video it's one way to do it (one which won't necessarily cause duplicate filtering and won't cause web spam issues to arise), but from personal experience it's most definitely not the best way to approach it. He never suggests that this is the optimal way, just that it's an 'acceptable' way (again, he's speaking from a web spam pov when making that comment).

In the same way having duplicate versions of a home page (be it www vs. non or having / vs /index.php) won't cause major issues, they do cause problems in terms of the efficiency of both crawling and canonicalisation.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Hosting in the UK might help slightly but a solid server here is capable of doing the job depending on the on page speed optimization.

Not really required unless you're using a gTLD and your primary focus is the UK market. If you're already using ccTLDs then the benefits gained from UK hosting compared to a high quality Irish host is negligible at best (even if you are using a gTLD many Irish hosts will offer UK blocks of IP addresses if required).

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Google ofcourse do provide SEO advice, it's just not personalised

Google provide SEO technical information, which in many cases is far from giving a best practice or a most efficient way of doing something.

The only way to know for sure is to test the different options and with comparative results check which outcome provides the best results. This is however a little more complicated than it sounds, as with so many ranking factors that will impact on results it can be difficult to isolate a single factor and ensure this is the only variable between two sets of results.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

I'm not sure if that's aimed at me or not, but if it is I'll remind you of it the next time we bump into each other Ronan

Haha That sounds like a threat. Should i be avoiding dark alleys for the next while? Ps. I have no idea who you are, for all I know you could be the top SEO fella or a cowboy selling first page on google listings to gullible shop owners

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

I'll disagree strongly there. As Matt says in the video it's one way to do it (one which won't necessarily cause duplicate filtering and won't cause web spam issues to arise), but from personal experience it's most definitely not the best way to approach it. He never suggests that this is the optimal way, just that it's an 'acceptable' way (again, he's speaking from a web spam pov when making that comment).

True there's better ways to SEO content, but to sell product, In my experience TLD's help Conversion optimization as does localising content, contact numbers and millions of other factors. When i expand .ie stores internationally i do change the TLD's.

TsuDhoNimh

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Haha That sounds like a threat. Should i be avoiding dark alleys for the next while? Ps. I have no idea who you are, for all I know you could be the top SEO fella or a cowboy selling first page on google listings to gullible shop owners

Haha, far from a threat. The encounters we've always had to date have been nothing but pleasurable and great craic, but we've still never grabbed that pint we've mentioned more than once.

I'm not sure I'd classify myself as either of those two extremes, but from comments you've made in the past I don't think you'd describe me as "unqualified experts offering opinion as if it's solid advice".

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

True there's better ways to SEO content, but to sell product, In my experience TLD's help Conversion optimization as does localising content, contact numbers and millions of other factors. When i expand .ie stores internationally i do change the TLD's.

From a CRO point of view, having the relevant ccTLD is a valuable asset. That said, many of the other extremely relevant trust factor elements can be achieved with nothing more than picking up the user details from HTTP requests and defaulting the settings to the user and a tailored CSS file (e.g. prioritise the local contact number and local mail addy, while still retaining the other addys for transparency).

(Just a quick note, as this type of tailoring often raises questions over 'cloaking'. As long as you provide the same information to googlebot as you do to the users, cloaking isn't a concern. The one thing the dev team need to be aware of is that googlebot will, in the vast majority of cases, crawl the site from a US IP. In order to get localised versions of pages, whether that's in terms of mail addresses, currency information or some localised content, you need to ensure that you have links to the other localised content that will override the defaults and allow someone browsing from another IP to browse the localised content.)

In this specific case, I'd personally suggest the OP take a (relatively small) hit on the CRO benefits and instead try to maximise the organic results having a consolidated domain. A small increase in conversion rates on a low level of traffic is far less beneficial than a larger increase in traffic with the lower conversion rates. If they get to the stage of being able to maintain and promote individual domains (like Ronan can and does successfully), they could reconsider their situation at that point.

(On the CRO points: my own results show that a .ie targeting the UK takes a major hit, a .co.uk targeting Ire takes a lesser but still significant hit while a gTLD takes a far less considerable hit [and a gTLD set up correctly with local contact number/addresses/some localised content takes a very small hit relative to the individual ccTLDs)

J_Wholesale

We sell to the UK, Ireland and Europe from a single site, with options to change currency between sterling and Euro. The site is hosted on a UK server and its Google geo-targeting is the UK, where we rank well. We've also managed to rank number 1 for our key phrases in Ireland.

Google seems to be eternally confused by where we are, despite the geo targeting. We never did understand how we managed to rank so high in Ireland when we put all of our efforts into ranking high in the UK - our primary market. Might be down to our contact page, which contains addresses in both countries.

There is no absolute right answer here, and Google doesn't make it easy by being so unclear about what actually matters when it comes to localised searching. Any time the issue of ranking locally comes up on forums, there are 10 different answers.

If you're gong to have two sites, you should at least host them on the same server so they feed off the same database, otherwise you could run into stock control issues with two or more stock databases.

Having said all that, we do have a German site that mirrors our .com site, but even though the layout and stock is the same, we consider it to be a completely separate site as all the text and urls are in German.

My recommendation: stick with one site, and focus most of your SEO on the country with the greatest potential.

maxer68

I do what the OP is looking to do. I looked at all sorts of options and decided on a longterm plan than short-term.

In Ireland, we are market leader, have great .ie domain and set to do well over €1m sales this year.

In the UK we started last October and don't expect any real sales or great seo listings until next October. A lot more competition, (about 15 good sites) but most run the website from a retail store and don't pay enough attention to service whereas we operate from 6000 sq ft of warehousing and have specialised in web sales for 5 years.

We have a .co.uk domain (different to the .ie ) we host in UK with fast2host. We initially copied all files from the Irish site into the Uk site and then made manual adjustments to pricing, terms & changed name where required, however with about 200 new products coming on stream each season, these are updated seperately to each site and gradually means the UK site has its own content. In the next month or so we will set up a UK facebook & Google+1 page with specific UK content.

An 0845 phone number gives a local call option in uk (0845 numbers are included on most inclusive call plans by mobile networks) but we do state we operate from Ireland - and that is an advantage i think.

At present we appear on page 3 of google when the brand in question is keyed in - up from page 7 in November, on target for a page 1 ranking by October this year.

Back-links are very important and it can takes months of tedious work and promotion to get them set up.

We expect to lose about 50k in the UK this year and break even next year and then be profitable from then onwards - its a long process, but ultimatley it will be well worth it.

Chet Zar

Forget about using a .ie for the UK! Depends on the industry you are in, which you don't mention - but likely your best bet is to snag the .com or .co - don't go for a .biz - they don't look the best.

It's not a problem for you to mirror the site in the UK. The duplicate content issue that people are warning against above is really for identical content across multiple domains - this gets a slap from Google when it is genuinely duplicate content. With your plan you will (or should have) unique page URLs, customised content on the various pages, a country-specific blog, etc.

TsuDhoNimh

Chet Zar wrote: »

The duplicate content issue that people are warning against above is really for identical content across multiple domains - this gets a slap from Google when it is genuinely duplicate content.

Duplicate content across multiple domains is the most obvious case, as it leads to the visible filters as Chet mentioned, but it's not the only one to be aware of or to actively try to avoid. (When mentioning duplicate content here it's only in relation to sites owned and controlled by you. Anything relating to copyright infringement, syndication of material, article spinning and the likes is an entirely different discussion)

Duplicate content on a single domain can lead to horrid inefficiencies in crawl rate. This hurts how well search engines like Google can pick up (crawl) the information from your site, especially from the less important pages a few clicks deep from the homepage, and if they're hitting nothing but duplicate pages they won't find the valuable information to index (so it won't be included for future search results).

(In most cases of this nature it's not even that the content has been intentionally duplicated, it's just that the content can be reached by two different URLs that render the same page. The most common example of this are sites that allow access to both the non www version and the www version [one should always redirect to the other], but lots of other things on a site cause a similar issue [e.g. compare http://www.boards.ie/index.php to http://www.boards.ie/])

Dispersion of link equity, the authority gained from having other sites link to you, is the major issue for duplicate content; both on a single domain and across domains. Having 5 links to a version of a page on one domain and 5 different links to the 'same page' on a different domain is far less beneficial (i.e. the SEs will disregard one of the versions and the associated links) than having the 10 links point to a single URL.

The algorithm changes over the last two years, from notable big changes such as Panda right down to the daily small tweaks, mean that having an authoritative domain is more valuable and more important than ever. Consciously choosing to disperse this authority across two TLDs (even where they share a domain name so won't suffer 'penalties', for want of a better word), where there is no intent to customise or localise the products, services or copy, is a questionable decision.

Having said all that, it really depends on the specifics. In some cases, where certain target users give such a strong preference to local TLDs, where localised results require a site to be geotargeted to a given country to be competitive or where there is little promotion of the site to begin with for dispersion to be felt strongly the impacts this would have would be neglible. In such cases, the gains of the local TLD and user benefits it brings could be enough to warrant the decision. In most cases, the advice is as given earlier to go with a single (gTLD if possible) domain, with onpage signals showing relevancy for the multiple markets and promote it heavily in the target markets to gain relevance there.

Chet Zar wrote: »

With your plan you will (or should have) unique page URLs, customised content on the various pages, a country-specific blog, etc.

Just to note, the advice I've given here is in the case where the OP (at least from my reading of it) doesn't intend to have customised content or country specific material. If they do, then it's a more nuanced discussion and there are (potentially) far more positive reasons to go with the multi TLD approach.

blue4ever

Im doing some work with a company with three TLD, one of which is a .ie
host in the UK
geo target sach site to its relevant TLD
Dup content on each site bar price, delivery (etc), T+C's, phone numbers and contacts.

I can safely say that there are no real issues. Each site performs very in its own jurisdiction and site "a" never turns up in search results "b" if you get the drift. The results seem to be confined to the searchers local.

If i amd in .ie land - i'd prefer to buy off a .ie - but that's personal

Chet Zar

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

Duplicate content across multiple domains is the most obvious case, as it leads to the visible filters as Chet mentioned, but it's not the only one to be aware of or to actively try to avoid. (When mentioning duplicate content here it's only in relation to sites owned and controlled by you. Anything relating to copyright infringement, syndication of material, article spinning and the likes is an entirely different discussion)

Duplicate content on a single domain can lead to horrid inefficiencies in crawl rate. This hurts how well search engines like Google can pick up (crawl) the information from your site, especially from the less important pages a few clicks deep from the homepage, and if they're hitting nothing but duplicate pages they won't find the valuable information to index (so it won't be included for future search results).

(In most cases of this nature it's not even that the content has been intentionally duplicated, it's just that the content can be reached by two different URLs that render the same page. The most common example of this are sites that allow access to both the non www version and the www version [one should always redirect to the other], but lots of other things on a site cause a similar issue [e.g. compare http://www.boards.ie/index.php to http://www.boards.ie/])

Dispersion of link equity, the authority gained from having other sites link to you, is the major issue for duplicate content; both on a single domain and across domains. Having 5 links to a version of a page on one domain and 5 different links to the 'same page' on a different domain is far less beneficial (i.e. the SEs will disregard one of the versions and the associated links) than having the 10 links point to a single URL.

The algorithm changes over the last two years, from notable big changes such as Panda right down to the daily small tweaks, mean that having an authoritative domain is more valuable and more important than ever. Consciously choosing to disperse this authority across two TLDs (even where they share a domain name so won't suffer 'penalties', for want of a better word), where there is no intent to customise or localise the products, services or copy, is a questionable decision.

Having said all that, it really depends on the specifics. In some cases, where certain target users give such a strong preference to local TLDs, where localised results require a site to be geotargeted to a given country to be competitive or where there is little promotion of the site to begin with for dispersion to be felt strongly the impacts this would have would be neglible. In such cases, the gains of the local TLD and user benefits it brings could be enough to warrant the decision. In most cases, the advice is as given earlier to go with a single (gTLD if possible) domain, with onpage signals showing relevancy for the multiple markets and promote it heavily in the target markets to gain relevance there.

Just to note, the advice I've given here is in the case where the OP (at least from my reading of it) doesn't intend to have customised content or country specific material. If they do, then it's a more nuanced discussion and there are (potentially) far more positive reasons to go with the multi TLD approach.

It definitely does depend, but I'd warrant there are few cases where there are two tlds that someone wants to promote with identical content, and where they expect each to perform well in the relevant markets with that kind of set up.

I guess summing up - best case scenario is get a general tld, if not possible then get local tlds and make sure you are serving your distinct audiences appropriately and sufficiently (a foundation for good SEO in any case!).

MOH

Having two sites might make sense if you had a different product range or different language for each market.

But if your only difference is currency, it's a lot of overhead. As has been pointed out, duplicate content isn't the main problem, you have to build and maintain two different sites, and do double the SEO.

Why not just use the .com as your main domain, 301 redirect the .ie and .co.uk to that. Use geo targeting and the referring domain tld to determine which currency to default into. If in doubt, default the currency to whichever your largest market is. Just make sure it's obvious how to switch currency.

maxer68

MOH wrote: »

Having two sites might make sense if you had a different product range or different language for each market.

But if your only difference is currency, it's a lot of overhead. As has been pointed out, duplicate content isn't the main problem, you have to build and maintain two different sites, and do double the SEO.

.

I think it also depends on what you sell and what your target market is. If its mainly B2B, then most business won't give a damn where you are vased as they are interested in product & price.

If its a consumer product and the UK has great potential for you, I think its very important to have market specific site, hosted locally in the UK with local news and local content to ensure confidence in the site especially if you have competitors in the same field.