Help Uk website with US host??

[jamel]

Hi,
So keep reading/hearing if I marketing to the UK (my home country) I should have a UK host so I will get picked up by google when people search at google uk. At present though I have a bluehost account (from a while back) already set up so what gives? if I stay with bluehost am I causing myself problems from the start with being placed infront of my required readers/buyers?
Want to save the hassle of moving but not if it means it could hurt me in getting my pages ranked to the uk for my keywords.
By the way my domain will end in co.uk

Any info on this would be greatly recieved :)

[AlexNewell]

Jamell - if you were running a local business it would make sense perhaps to be in the same country but for most of us doing information marketing it makes no difference.

[russell]

there could be a very slight down side to not having hosting in your local territory, but I doubt its worth worrying about.

There are many other SEO factors that make a bigger difference.

I wouldnt worry about it.

[jamel]

Hi, thank you for the replies as I thought it seems mixed answers, but I have decided to have a UK host too. mostly when I researched this on the net it swayed towards having a host in your chosen country. Of course it is not the be all and end all of website traffic but it is proberably best I start as I mean to go on. I have done the research now and got it down to two hosts I feel would be good.
Thanks again :)

[AlexNewell]

I'd be interested in your shortlist Jamel. I don't know many UK hosts but I've had experience with 1 and 1 which I would not wish on others!!

Good luck

:-)

[StephenT]

You really have decided and that's good. What I understand about this is that the host makes little difference, but the domain name does. Your domain should have the .uk instead of .com so that it is picked up by local search engines.

[jamel]

Hi,
My shortlist was justhostme.co.uk, vidahost.com, tsohost.com I did alot of research and read alot of reviews and asked on some Uk forums and they all came up highly over and over. The prices were reasonable too. I then checked fully what they offer for the money as I had a list of what I would need at first. I am 90% decided on justhostme just waiting for a reply from my last questions to them,they have been very helpful upto now. Plus I am at the point now it's just time to take the dive as nobody is perfect I have to start somewhere! I am 50/50 myself on the host in your chosen country but I decided to try and have all going for me as best as possibleas on UK affiliate forums it was 80% it was better to, and others had mixed feelings. I also before I started gave myself 1 week to research and decide on a new host or to stick with my original one in the US for now IF I could not find a good host with reasonable prices, as I did not want to take forever on one thing. Plus I knew I could change at a later date if I wanted. Thank you all for your help though. Love this forum :)
ps justhostme replyed while I was writing here that was like within 8 mins! they are so good!

[DebraLloyd]

It is the extension .com or .co.uk that identifies your site to a consumer as UK based. Google delivers "local" search results based on the geo-location of the person searching. Search results will show sites serving the consumers location. Having a .co.uk extension will definitely ID your site as UK based if that is who you are targeting. It is SUPER important though to secure the .com version of your domain also or you may find yourself building business for someone else if they buy it out from under you then put up a site to steal your traffic as most people automatically think dot com.

[Clare Swindlehurst]

I host with Hostgator and I'm in the UK. My .co.uk sites are picked up by Google based on the TLD not where my host is based.

I try wherever possible to go with .com anyway as you're more likely to rank on the US Google and the UK Google. Some people mistakenly think that .com is a US site and .co.uk is a UK site - the former actually stands for company and can be used in either country.