.com VS .co.uk dilemma

[Noober]

Hi guys, im in a bit of a pickle at the moment.

Registered 2 domains for my product. 1 is perfect for my majority UK market- footballproduct.co.uk

The other is perfect for american canadian and australian customers, who make up a large portion of my ebay sales- soccerproduct.com

Now I'm having the site developed and am at a loss as to which one I should choose to develop the site on.

Most of my orders have come from the UK, but I feel the prouct has lost some steam here and may be more popular overseas. Also, as its apparently getting colder in Australia, 90% of my orders over last 2 weeks have been from there.

The ideal scenario: My domain ranks no.1 in google CO.UK and .COM for the terms 'footbal product' and 'soccer product'

I don't particularly care which domain I use, but I don't want to go for .co.uk if it will harm my international ranking and sales.

I don't want to go for .com if it will harm my UK search rankings and sales.

So what the hell should I do?

Everything I read assumes you're either targetting UK customers or customers from somewhere else. What if I want to target everyone?

Any advice appreciated.

Cheers guys

 

[Dave]

IMO if you're targeting globally then use the .com as your main site and then forward the .co.uk to the .com domain.

 

[howinfo]

Yes, it does seem that you are trying to capture global market so go for .com

 

[Noober]

thanks for the advice guys.

The problem with the .com is it doesnt contain my exact keyword... and from an SEO point of view it would seem stupid to ignore the chance of having an exact match domain.. (soccer term is rarely searched but football is)

but then again I need to rank internationally!

blurgh cant decide

 

[Yeodo]

Football is football not soccer though yanks call is soccer. I think you should use the .co.uk so be honest

Im surprised a better .com wasnt available relating to football. The trouble is when the yanks call football soccer (so they dont get it mixed up with other sports?)

I suspect a portion of UK customers would not buy from you if you use "soccer" domain.

 

[Peter]

All being equal the .co.uk will rank higher in the UK serps however the .com has a much better chance in the global serps.

Google's regional serps favour the domain for the local area over .com equivalent.

This being the case as most of your customer base is abroad then I would highly recommend the .com. I would not rule out also getting the .co.uk however and directing this to the UK specific pages/products (using the correct headers of course).