Thread: Importance of correct domain name suffix

I think this is the right place to post this thread: if not I'm sorry and you can slap my wrist.
Through ignorance I did not realise how important the suffix of one's domain name can be and I walked blithely into the heffalump trap. I thought that given the choice .com rather than .co.uk looked much better. So my site is www.jamesbartondesign.com. This is fine for the world wide search engines to find: my rankings are OK and I'm getting business. Trouble is, in the UK, where the vast majority of my customers are I am all but invisible. All stems from having a US host combined with a .com address. If I had a UK host with .com address or a US host with a .co.uk address I would be OK (so I have been told). If this is the case I think that this should be strongly flagged by Voda somewhere. Of course it may be, but I certainly have missed it if it is. (another slapped wrist?)
Does anyone know the best (and, if possible, the easiest) way that I can re designate my site to jamesbartondesign.co.uk (I own the domain name).

Hmmm .. interesting ..

Well if all that you have discovered is correct, and it were me, I would republish my website, keep everything the same, to the .co.uk domain, then delete the published pages from the .com extension, perform redirects on all of them - and begin marketing your .co.uk domain because this is essentially what you want .. this is the least work right now too. You can always begin to think if your site calls for a sub-site so to speak - perhaps a portal for something else that leads to your .co.uk site anyway?

No one, when you buy, asks who you are targetting your business for. That's like what type of webbuilder should you use? That's not up to the hosting company either. Those are things you need to know.

I wouldn't do a subsite- but it would be easy enough for you to buy a .uk.co and redirect - and keep the built site. Not a biggie, and you can get the traffic from the world.

Thanks Bethers. As you say, it is not up to the hosting company, but Voda gives a huge amount of help but this particular problem passed under my radar. I agree that there are things that one needs to know, but when I started there really was alot that I was unaware that I needed to know (hence the cock up) and anything that highlights crucial issues at the absolute beginning is a godsend to the novice site builder: ie me and scores of others like me. Anyway you have allayed my fears that I was going to have to spend alot of time on this. I have learnt much from building my site: certainly enough to know that I will not be switching careers to become a web site designer!

I have been looking for relevant info on some other threads. So, if I redirect jamesbartondesign.co.uk to my existing site, jamesbartondesign.com it looks as if I need to publish a blank page (called Index) in the .co.uk site with a redirect script in the header.
1). What would be the code for the redirect script?
2). The purpose, as stated at the beginning of this thread is to make my site visible to UK search engines. Will this redirect have that effect?
Thanks.

You don't need to publish anything to redirect that domain to the .com one. You simply need to redirect the .uk domain to the .com domain where you have the domain sitting.

Thanks again, Bethers; have done the redirect. Now is there anything else I can do to tempt the UK search engines into thinking I should go to the top of the class?

I'd get your address including UK in it - in your footer on all pages. Mentioning UK or England, etc in the text on the home page would also be advisable. You have British on the page, but I think you need to use all the variants you can - but at least the address ending in UK in the footer - will help.