Ok people, have that cup of coffee, wake up and see if you can figure this one out! Im doing an off-line to online campaign for one of my clients, CW Jobs, where the off-line ad asks you to Google the phrase getitornot. The idea is that the site we created (a just for fun IT test, concept being if you are in IT you get it and if you are not you dont get it) would appear 1st and 2nd in the Google UK SERPs. With the title and meta description tag, carrying over from the off-line ad, you still with me?
We chose the phrase getitornot (all one word, thats part of the concept, you get it if you type it all in one word) as it would be easy to rank for in a short space of time. Originally we wanted the .com as well as the .co.uk but right before our eyes (and only a week apart) the .com was snatched up (argh!!!). But seeing as the people that bought the .com hadnt done anything with the domain (except from putting a bog standard Joomla CMS holding page on there) we thought, nah it will be fine, we just want the ranking in Google UK anyway! Right? Doesnt seem too far fetched!??
Two weeks in, the .com is STILL ranking above co.uk! And Im banging my head against the wall, WHY oh WHY does this domain rank 1st and 2nd in Google UK?
1. Hosting: the .com is hosted in the US while we are hosting in the UK
2. Content: they have the phrase we are targeting once in the title tag, thats it, no more content related to the terms (except obviously in the domain itself)
3. They have NO LINKS WHATSOVER, we have nearly 100 links (some not so great, but some good quality links, AND a link from CW Jobs http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/ main site which is a high authority site (albeit the link we got is kind of buried http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/Browse/Browse/BrowseJobs.html ) Anchor text for incoming links varies between getitornot and technical test
4. Age of domain, both domains were bought in the same month (only a week apart) so age shouldnt have an impact.
5. .Com is surely duplicate content, how many sites must feature the standard Joomla holding page?? Ok yes fair enough our two pages are in theory duplicate contentish, but surely not as much as the .com is with thousands of other sites?
SO, after analysing this to death, and asking a million and one other SEOs, the only thing I can think of being the reason why this damn .com is ranking before the .co.uk is the power of the .COM. Which is totally freakin annoying, as you should think a .co.uk and hosting in the UK would be a massive hint to the bots that this site is UK targeted right? Which makes me think.are the Googlebots on crack or something?
Has anyone had any similar experiences where a .com (although hosted in the US with less relevant content and no links) have outranked your .co.uk site in Google UK?
Whats your take on it?
