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US Hosting UK Sites (update)

Written by mbpage on July 11, 2008

In my post US Hosting UK Sites I discussed my realisation that my .com and .net domains targeting the UK were not being indexed in the UK and the plans I had to turn things around. I am pleased to say that these have been successful. The solution was similar to that outlined in my post on .info domains.

If you read that post you will know I use HostGator because of the exceptional value for money they provide compared to the cost of UK hosting. The disadvantage of this is that any domain with the exception of a .co.uk will not easily (if ever) find it’s way into the google.co.uk index. With Googles webmaster tools also failing to sort this out their are only two solutions.

Host country specific sites in the country you are targeting (not as easy as it sounds because in the UK the leading hosting company’s servers are located in Germany) and often expensive e.g. £9.95 per month per domain.

A much better and much cheaper solution is to use HostGator and just buy country specific domains. I bought .co.uk for my UK stores via Godaddy. Moved my existing stores and redirected the old domains as outlined in my previous post and low and behold they appeared between 2-5 days later in the google.co.uk index where they need to be.

Googlebot and .info domains (update)

Written by mbpage on July 9, 2008

In my earlier post Googlebot and .info names for build a niche store I discussed my challenges with getting indexed for one of my stores. After 8 weeks nothing. I’m pleased to say I found the solution. Many of you will be aware of this already but those who may have built many stores and think you’ve wasted your time the way out of the mess is as follows:

Buy a .com or .net domain, move the contents of the .info site to the new folder and then perform a permanent redirect on the .info name to help preserve any links you may have built.

Now this may sound technically complex but it is dead easy if you use HostGator (which is one of the many reasons I recommend them for Build a Niche Store users):

You make a copy the existing domain (.info) folder and rename it to whatever you called your new domain (.com) folder.

You delete the files under the old .info folder (but not the folder) and then go to cpanel add-on domains and redirect the .info to the .com. Don’t forget to back everything up first in case something goes wrong.

As a result of making this change my store was fully indexed in 5 days. Yes it’s going to cost $6.95 for a new .com but you should easily recover that in your first month if you’ve targeted a half decent niche.

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