"I have a question for the SEO community regarding my website's performance in different countries. Currently, my .co.uk site does well in the UK but not in the USA. I recently acquired the .com domain to expand into the US market. Should I keep the UK site as .co.uk and have the US site as .com, or should I use .com/en-gb for the UK and .com/en-us for the US with redirects or hreflang attributes? Option 1 is cleaner, but Option 2 could benefit the US site's domain authority. However, I'm concerned about potential negative impact on UK rankings with .com/en-gb. Appreciate your thoughts on this."
Using a separate .com domain for the US market is likely the best option for maximizing US rankings. While using a single .com domain with subdirectories for different regions might benefit the US site’s domain authority, there’s a significant risk of negatively impacting UK rankings. Keeping the UK site on the .co.uk domain allows for better targeted content and a more localized user experience, contributing to improved search engine performance in the UK.