Apologies, I was meaning how to dominate google rankings in the UK even though we are a Irish based business. Steps been suggested so far a) .co.uk b) server based in UK d) ensure seo for keywords d) link building and article submissions with UK sites ... any other suggestions would be appreciated?
– Does google penalise you for having an Irish address in your Contact Details?
– Does google penalise you for having two sites duplicated but with .ie and co.uk?
– Competition being stronger in the UK, is the ability to conquer the UK google rankings much tougher than Ireland?
Thanks in advance
You don't need to have a UK server.
Google doesn't "penalise" you unless you've done something quite wrong - then you just don't rank. There's no other types of penalties per se.
Google is a bit complicated when it comes to duplicate content. It doesn't penalise you but does select one site of the other, which may look like you're not ranking and some people feel they've been penalsied. You should really localise content - it makes sense for users. If it makes sense for users, it'll make sense for Google.
Google won't penalise you for your Irish address, but depending on what you're selling, UK customers might...if they're looking for a local company.
Please respect people/the web when it comes to filling the web up with spammy articles/links just to promote your own business.
The UK has more sites - and they'll already have authority - therefore you'll be coming from the back. So it will be a lot more work. But the UK market is bigger too - so if you don't focus on vanity serps you may get enough traffic without the 2-keyword searches that so many people just have to have - probably mostly people who've never checked their keywords in analytics
Interestingly, in Yahoo & Bing (who still haven't learnt from Googles lead) your UK site may displace your Irish site in Irish searches (which happened with a few of my sites).