I have an established .com site which whilst applicable to a global English audience, is primarily focused on the UK market. I have it set as UK in Google WebMaster tools, and I recently (c. 2 weeks ago) moved it from US hosting to UK.

We've always done quite well with google.com searches but never that great for google.co.uk.

Where should I focus my efforts in trying to achieve better Google UK rankings?

Thanks,

Richard

Make sure that your content is UK focussed.

Host on a UK IP.

Have it on a co.uk ccTLD instead.

From a quick look on google.co.uk against one relevant search term I can see that c. 50% of those on the first 3 pages have .com extensions. Many of these companies like ourselves are not based in the UK but focus on that as their primary market. They are also hosted in the UK (on a UK IP) like us. It seems therefore that we should be able to compete better with them even with our own .com

I imagine the change from US to UK hosting could take some time to have any effect? Do you have any experience of this? And if so, should I expect to see much effect?

should I expect to see much effect?

You may see SOME effect then again YOU may not, and what you see may not be what everybody else sees

I imagine the change from US to UK hosting could take some time to have any effect?

Probably some time after the next time the page is indexed.


Rankings are THE worst measure of how much effect your SEO and promotional work is having.
Check your logs for SE referrals and how those referrals convert.

Rank checking shows you nothing useful and simply distorts every search you do for the query words or similar search phrases.

Try promoting the things which are related to england on your site, that will work.