Should I have one or more sites?

I would suggest co.uk for UK, .com for USA and .au for Australia.

PS Don't forget, though 3 times the work/expense, you have 3 separate sites that you could sell off, so each has it's own value.

I presume you are not trying to be a global company because that needs big bucks.

Hi Indizine, it depends what you mean by being a global company. If servicing multiple countries means that my business is a global company, then the answer would be yes. Otherwise I would say we a small business, maybe even a niche business that has customers based on multiple countries. It all depends on how you view it.

Secondly, I wasn't expecting your answer. So can I ask you to elaborate, why do you think it's a good idea to have multiple domains? What is your main reasoning?

I don't like the thought of producing same or same content 3 times, especially as I am looking to gain to publish content almost on a weekly basis. I also don't like the expenses of SEO times 3, but I can live with that.

Well you wouldn't duplicate the same content across 3 sites for starters.

If you are not global, you are not going to be well known; global as in well-known in your industry around the world. Not just that you will sell to anyone in those 3 countries. I can sell my services around the world but it doesn't make me a global company.

Haven't you asked your website company this question yet?

PS There is a reason .coms, .au's, .co.uk's, etc, etc, exist. That's the reason you choose them.

With Sandra on this, go for Country Level domains.

Our directory is .co.uk for here, and .com in the states. We were .us until I finally managed to get hold of the .com.

Advantage of country level code is Google knows straight away who your content is targeted at, regardless where the physical hosting is. eg we used to host our UK site in the States. This means until a site is really viable, you can keep your hosting costs down and run them all from the same box, as long as your transaction times are ok.

Is there a need to launch 3 at once and make loads of work and expense for yourself? Can you not get one going, profitable and let that launch the second site?

After our UK and US sites were running, we originally planned to launch across Ireland, Canada, Oz, NZ, South Africa and India (long story). But didn't appreciate the demands and costs of 1 overseas site, from customer service, lack of local support, lack of local knowledge, culture differences, timezones etc. So we stopped at the States, and in hindsight it was a good move, as it means we have more budget to spend on our current sites, rather than being watered down across a multitude of sites.

Personally, I think the idea of the three separate sites is a good one, but SJR makes a good point. Why not get one or two of them up and running and then continue to expand?

Steve, I already have hosting in the UK and USA. I have 3 separate hosting accounts. So that cost is not an issue. I was going to do exactly what you are saying until yesterday, when the thought of managing 2 or 3 sites seemed from "content point of view" seemed so daunting, that I am beginning to go back to the idea of 1 site. However, I think my original plan, and your comment is right. I will start with 2 instead of 3, a site for UK and USA and see how that goes. I suppose 2 is a good compromise.

Thanks

While we are discussing country level domains and SEO. I found it difficult to purchase the Australian domain .com.au because they ask you to prove your identity and that you must have an IBN number - a registered business in Australia.

So I noticed that both .com and .com.au domains rank well on Australia. So I bought a deprecate .com just for Australia with Australian based hosting. So if you imagine that my primary domains are something like:
livemail.com for USA
livemail.co.uk for UK
maillive.com for Australia

I reversed my words because Australia is down under. That was my thinking. I have hosted servers on every one of those countries.

One of things I forgot to mention is that there is a benefit to me operating in multiple countries - there is a different kind of economies of scale. I don't know how to explain it but there is.

I will just have to accept producing content for more than one site and SEO expense for more than one country. I will just have to accept that. Mostly paid professional writers will be writing anyway with me managing it.

Fingers crossed.

All sounds very interesting. So when is all this going to happen and you can tell us more?

...and best of luck

Just a quick question, if anyone knows the answer to this.

Say the 3 domains are targeted on Google Webmaster under country settings (where applicable) to the appropriate country settings. So under .com you chose USA, and .co.uk is set to UK anyway, and so on. So if you had a brochure site, 3 almost identical sites, but targeted at completely different countries, would Google look at that as negatively in any way? Would Google penalise you?