Opting for .eu or making two identical sites?

[Beatever]

Hi,

A client of mine will start a website in Belgium and in the Netherlands. Google will be very important for this website. We will develop 1 identical site, so if choosing for two domainnames, one with .be and one with .nl, we will face the duplicate content issue.
We could choose the .eu, but I don't know how choosing for the .eu instead of .be and .nl will effect the rankings when people search in Google Belgium or Google Netherlands? Does anybody have experience with the .eu?
Do you have to put in more efforts to prove that you are just as local as a domainname with .be or .nl?
Next question is where to host the site? Is the country where the site is hosted a very important factor in the rankings?

Thanks for helping clarifying this issue.

Best regards

[glengara]

Assuming the site is in "Nederlands" you could choose a .be and host it in NL or vice versa, it should appear in both Gs for " pagina's in het Nederlands" and " pagina's uit België/Nederland.

[Beatever]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer, but having a .be in Belgium and a .nl in The Netherlands is important, and builds more trust then a .eu, but I'm afraid of duplicating content.

These identical sites both perform very well in Google:
Search on elektronisch kompas relatiegeschenk (http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&q=elektronisch+kompas+relatiegeschenk&btnG=Zoeken&meta=cr%3DcountryBE)
en you find two identical sites on the first page:
http://relatiegeschenken.thecatalogue.be/relatiegeschenken_online.html
and
http://www.cave.be/us_basic.html (http://http://www.cave.be/us_basic.html), this one through a redirect.

Any idee how they do this?