We are promoting property in Ukraine and have web pages that we need international investors to find in the search engines.
The dilemma is the word 'Kiev' it is on old word for Ukraine capital and i know people from Ukraine prefer 'Kyiv' . However we are trying to attract UK investors to the web pages about investing in Ukraine.I know most UK investors only know the Russian spelling Kiev. So what to do not to offend? We have had complaints from Ukraine people about our use of the old Russian spelling.

I presume that you will have both an English and a Russian version of your site?

So set up two different domains such as:

property-kiev.com
ishestvo-kyiv.ru (or .com.ua)

This way you get two bites of the cherry.

I am not 100% sure, but think that the big Russian search engines like Rambler and Yandex give higher weightings to .ru domains.

Good luck in registering a .ru domain though. I eventually managed it, but it took about a month of effort before I finally achieved it!

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EGYPT REAL - Your One Stop Shop for Hurghada Property

Author of: Propertastic's Complete Guide to Hurghada Property and Egypt's Red Sea Riviera Real Estate

Thanks for your advice I run an international real estate website covering 50 countries at 'homesgofast' so not looking to do this in russian thanks for the tip

If you're not setting up a site specifically for the Ukrainian market and looking for local buyers there, I wouldn't let it worry you.

I don't really understand what their problem is anyway. In the English language, the city is called Kiev whether they like it or not.

It's not as if British get their panties in a bunch when the French call the country's capital 'Londres' after all.

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EGYPT REAL - Your One Stop Shop for Hurghada Property

Author of: Propertastic's Complete Guide to Hurghada Property and Egypt's Red Sea Riviera Real Estate

LOL,

If you are after UK investors you should be more concern of the local laws and the way developers deliver their properites then a dilemma of Kiev or Kyiv!

If you having problems with complaints - tell them to lodge a complaint to the court against you! This is more political issue rather then anything else. And is not a place to discuss it here.

Listen to the advice of other people about setting up websites in English and make sure google picks them up rather then Rambler or Yandex. as UK investors mostly use google. on How to promote your site read "google SEO Howto"

hope this helps.

Thanks for the SEO tip but our Ukraine Real Estate Page is now page one Google.com 'investment property Ukraine'