How do I tag a .com web site to make it show up in Yahoo UK search results?

Question

My business is based in the UK and its main domain name ends in .com. However the web site is hosted by Microsoft which obviously means that the server is based in the USA.

The web site is currently performing very well in Yahoo's search results for the whole web but if a searcher tries a 'UK only' Yahoo search, my site doesn't seem to come up at all.

How do I tag the site to tell Yahoo that I want this to show up as a UK site? Google's webmaster tools allow me to do this - I can associate a specific geographic region with the site and it's now showing up well on Google UK results.

I do also own the corresponding .co.uk domain and have got this hosted by a UK web hosting company, but simply with an automatic redirect to the .com site hosted by Microsoft.

I realise I could make the .co.uk site my main site instead, and get the .com version to point to the UK; but I was just wondering first if there is a simple way to tag a .com site to tell Yahoo that it's UK content.

Answer 1

How do you redirect the .co.uk to the .com?

Make sure you use a 301 redirect (through .htaccess) rather than meta refreshing etc. - that way the properties of yourdomain.co.uk will apply to your .com - and it will do better in the UK search results.

It sounds like you're using your hosts redirect feature or something, which will not achieve this, infact it will penalise you.

Also make sure in your meta tags etc. you say you're "Based in the UK" or things of that nature, this also helps.

The above two things should help, as well as marketing the .co.uk domain once the 301 redirect is in place (on UK sites perferably!) but don't expect overnight change in the search engines. May take a few months to get the desired results.