Focus on one domain
Why you should be focusing on one domain name for one site
Often you will find yourself buying a domain for your project (eg: example.com), however these days to secure the brand you have to buy all the associated domains (eg: example.net, example.org, example.co.uk, example.info, etc).
I then find that visitors will end up entering the sites at different points from different domains, depending on how they find it, or what they have been told.
The problem with this is its confusing, and its confusing for the user. The solution is to decide on one domain name, and focus on that, then simply redirect all traffic from the other domains to your main domain name.
This will also help enforce your brand name by ensuring the user always gets redirected to the correct domain, even if they visit the others by mistake.
In addition to this, Google states “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.“, therefore by redirecting traffic to one domain, rather than having duplicates you stand more chance of your domain not being marked as “bad” by search engines. (Also see What’s a preferred domain?)
On a very similar note, another common problem is the “www.” prefix on domains, sometimes people include when visiting a URL, other times they do not. The problem with this is that “www.example.com” is considered an entirely different domain than “example.com” by search engines. By redirecting traffic that is NONE “www.example.com” we can still continue our focus and maintain our brand name.
How?
One method is using 301 redirects to redirect from other domains, to your main one.
We can do this by using mod_rewrite for Apache or ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS.
Apache mod_rewrite (.htaccess)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]
Note: The QSA flag will append the query string to the rewritten URL.
IIS mod rewrite using ISAPI filter (mod_rewrite.ini)
RewriteCond Host: !^www\.example\.com
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www\.example\.com/$1 [I,RP]
Note: Some find ^(.*)$ works, others find ^/(.*)$ works. I’ll let you decide which to use.
Related posts:
- Does registering a domain for a longer term increase your search engine rankings? Recently I come across a claim by Network Solutions stating:...
- Inveis.com .cn domain scam Today I received the following email from [email protected]… [Note: If...
- Domain example.com has exceeded the max emails per hour (200) allowed. Message discarded. Got this error with cpanel? Domain example.com has exceeded the...
- Friendly URLs (revisited) Turn dynamic URLs into friendly URLs I’m sure we’re all...
steve said,
March 25, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Hey, I have a domain name that is related to a certain niche in only 1 state. There are 5 domains that are available that I would like to register. It is a small niche. The top person that is in google for the keyword I want only has 580 link backs. Each of the 5 domains has over 5,000 results when I search for the domain name.
All of the domains are not really “main” domains. Should I be just using all of these domains for only se results and pick another domain that just maybe has my company name and redirect all of these se domains to that domain?
I am just not sure what to do about having a bunch of domains that all want to goto the same place. I don’t want to be banned by google or them thinking I am trying to spam the se or something.