How To Redirect Multiple Domains To One Website

What Is A Domain Redirect

When a domain is redirected, the entire website users traffic moves from one address to another . On occasions when there is no redirection, each user who visits the closed or moved page will encounter a 404 error.

Does Having Keywords In Your Domain Help Seo

The simple answer here is, yes. If you have already established your domain name, and it has keywords in it, then it is a factor in Googles rankings.

As an example, this website is www.dog-obedience-training-review.com.

Ill give you three guesses on what their company is all about, and the first two guesses dont count. They rank well for all kinds of dog training information.

When my buddy set up his domain, he specifically wanted Bay Area in the domain name, because people search for SEO training in the San Francisco Bay Area where he teaches.

Its a ranking factor, and it helps him get found for my target search terms. How much does it help?

Who knows.

Focus On Inexpensive Acquisitions

There are many strategies you can use to pick up inexpensive domains. Powerful domains, with few characters and common words, tend to go for thousands of dollars . You dont need an arsenal of these to make use of a multi-domain strategy. Instead, turn your attention to variant spellings, synonyms and slightly more obscure domains .

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Create Unique Content When Possible

If youre going to use your new domains to establish entirely new websites, make sure youre creating unique content. Even though your domains may occupy the same niche or target the same demographics, duplicating or slightly altering your content is only going to work against you. Strive to create something new.

Do Due Diligence On The Domains The Client Wants You To Redirect To Their Website

• Backlink history: Is it clean? Anything good there? Anything scary? If it looks like the site was undesirable in a past life, consider not redirecting it to the clients website.
• Prior content: Is it directly related to your clients current website? If its not directly related, theres probably no value there.
• Any evidence of the domains being hacked or compromised in the past ? If yes, do not redirect!

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Primary Addon And Parked Domains

The primary domain on your account will always be pointed directly to the public_html directory. As you assign additional domains to your account, you can assign them as either addon or parked domains.

An addon domain allows you to specify a directory inside of public_html, which the domain will point to. A parked domain will point directly to public_html the same way your primary domain does.

For a more detailed description of the addon and parked domains, please see Parked Domains vs. Addon Domains.

When assigning a domain as an addon domain, you are allowed to use the same directory as another addon domain. This will result in both addon domains pointing to the same folder and website content.

Is Having Multiple Keyword Domain Names Good For Seo

A fellow SEO and friend of mine received an email a few days ago with a question from a web consultant whose client was solicited with an offer to purchase a keyword-rich domain name.

The premise is that because Google likes to see keywords in your domain name , having a keyword-rich domain name would benefit the clients search ranking.

Was it worth it, and was it worth the nearly $500 they wanted for the domain name?

I get this question every so often, and I even wrote a post about it way back in 2009. So whats changed in those ensuing years, if anything?

The standard consultant answer to these types of questions is, It depends.

Lets break it down a bit.

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Why Point Multiple Domain Names To A Single Site

There are a few reasons why people getmultiple domain names and point them to a single website. Frequently, this is to make sure that they own the 3 major international domainsuffixes of their name. Owning all the 3 suffixes is especially important if you want to develop your site usingeither the “.net” or “.org” extension, rather than the “.com” one. Many people, when typing in domain names, instinctively type a “.com”suffix instead of the other two, so if you don’t want potential visitors going to the competition, you’ll need to get all three andpoint them to your site.

Note for the absolutely new webmaster: don’t let all these possibilities paralyze you. Most people simplyget the exact domain name they want,and that’s it, without bothering about all the variants and suffixes. And they do fine with it. It’s sometimespossible to worry so much about what might happen in the distant future that you never even get started.

Correct Way To Redirect Multiple Domains On One Host

In this example I have 4 websites on 2 different CMS’s and 5 different domains.

a.comsub.a.comb.comc.com are on CMS1d.com is on CMS2

http should redirect to httpsa.comwww.a.comwww.sub.a.com to sub.a.comwww.b.com to b.comwww.c.com to c.comwww.d.com to d.com

Each domain has their own separate website which is handled by their common CMS. For example, this means that even though b.com and c.com use the same CMS, admin panel and root directory the pages which are served frontend are completely different. This functionality is handled by the CMS.

Due to this configuration I have 2 .conf files for NGINX, one for domains a-c and one for d.

Here comes the problem. Below is what I have come up with so far but doesn’t work the way I have outlined above. Domains www.a.com-www.c.com seem to all redirect to sub.a.com. www.sub.a.com doesn’t redirect to sub.a.com. Am I looking at this all wrong?

a.com.conf

server server server server server 

d.com.conf

server server server 

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Search Engine Ranking Consequences: Content Duplication

This method of doing things creates a search engine problem popularly called”content duplication“.I have written about this in the past, and one place you can find more information on this is from theHow to Createa Search Engine Friendly Website article.

Essentially, by making it so that all 3 different web addresses show the same content, it now appears to search enginesand casual visitors that there are 3 sites with identical content. This is not a problem in itself, but it becomes a problemwhen people find they like your site and start linking to it. Those who have reached your site using the”.com” version will link to the “.com” address, while others who have found it using the “.net” URL will link to the “.net”variation . And so on. Since search engines such as Google rely on the number of links pointing to your website to determineits importance, you will have effectively divided the links pointing to your site among the 3 different URLs. Theend result is that none of your URLs will appear to be as important as they could have, had all the links been attributedto a single web address.

If you have already pointed all your domains to your website this way, don’t panic. This problem is easily solved andreversed, even if you have been doing it for years. That is, there’s a simple way to tell the search engines thatall 3 domains point to the same site, and to add up all the links together and associate them with that site.Just read on.

Multiple Domains Good Or Bad

Taking a narrow view that only considers search engine optimization , the short answer is multiple domains can hurt your page ranking. Many still park multiple domains as aliases for their main website. That was quite popular approach in old internet days. Not today.Also there is no real benefit to having several keyword-rich domains pointing to your website. SEO is done on a single domain name and incorporates many things such as site popularity, the amount and type of content on the site, keywords in meta and title fields, and paying for a spot in the search engine database.

Exceptions can be considered when protecting your website name or business brand. As a rule of thumb, it makes sense to register similar, complementary domains closely related to your site name before someone else does. Ending up with multiple domain names is quite natural. They dont bring much of an advantage to website rankings but will guard your brand recognition and reputation. Additionally, after redirecting, they can be a good source of type-in traffic, given that the domain names are of a high quality .

Disclosurecommissions

~ NameCheaps Special Domain Offer ~

If your website serves a simple purpose, such as a portfolio of work samples, using multiple pages on the same site will likely be adequate. If the business model is a bit complicated, then its worth exploring how to leverage several sites. But a few words of caution before you start:

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Assigning Two Domains To One Folder

Before proceeding to the instruction below, please take note that Legacy accounts will feature a horizontal navigation bar at the top of the screen, while Bluerock account users will see a vertical navigation menu on the left-hand side of the screen. To learn more, please see Rock vs. Legacy to determine which steps to follow.

Bluerock

How To Point Multiple Domain Names To One Website: And How To Avoid Search Engine Problems When Doing So

A visitor recently asked me whether it was possible to point multiple domain names to one website, more or less the conceptual reverse ofwhat I wrote about in “Can I Create MultipleWebsites with One Domain Name?“. This article discusses why a person might want to do this, how it can be accomplished, and providesa practical guide on the additional steps you need to take in order to avoid losing potential search engine ranking as a result of doingthings this way.

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Using 2 Domains On One Website

I have a dedicated server

There is a primary domain that actually holds all the files like any other regular web hosting account. Another domain needs to forward to it, but with masking.

So domain2.com/filename.php, domain2.com/filename.php/432/r23-gjfdla-fdjslaf/ all need to show the corresponding content of domain1.com’s content, BUT the browser should still show domain2.com instead of domain1.com, and it also has to be detectable by $_SERVER so my server knows which domain was used to contact the website.

This is because I have 2 clients who are in a partnership, so they would like each visitor to retain whatever URL they entered for independent presentation but make the content unilateral without having to update two sites at once.

• jeffkeeJun 18, 2011 at 22:25
• I added the above lines as per some instructions but it’s not working. When charliecameron.com is typed, I just see the default hosting page of a blank account Jun 18, 2011 at 22:26
• 1When you modified the Apache config and added the server alias, did you restart the Apache process ?

What you need is Virtual Host feature – two virtual hosts pointing to one location.

Of course code of the page should be flexible enough to support that – for example internal URLs, if absolute , should also reflect the changes. But you probably already know it.

I have three directories for static content. One is shared content that is used for both domains, and the other two are site-specific, which include things like logos.

The Benefits Of Using Multiple Domains For Your Business

So, why would you want to complicate things by incorporating multiple domains into your business strategy?

Entrepreneur

You already know that choosing a domain is important. In fact, its one of the most important early decisions youll make for your business. Choosing the right domain can impact your visibility, your memorability and even your reputation. Its going to influence your marketing and advertising strategies for years to come. And for the right domain, you might need to shell out tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So why would you want to complicate things by incorporating multiple domains into your business strategy?

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Bad Redirects And Urls

When you arrange redirects, its important to note that theres a chance of losing some link authority, harm your SEO rankings, or give your visitors a bad experience. Note each of these consequences below:

Bad SEO

When you redirect a website, it should be done correctly otherwise, youll have some issues. For example, using 301 redirects too much can slow down the page. 301 redirects are considered great when SEO is in question. But still, redirecting links to landing pages must be avoided as much as possible since this might have some impact on your forward traffic.

Redirecting most of your pages to the home page is also not the best thing to do since it will confuse the search engines and lose some of your valued traffic. Alternatively, its better to redirect them to associated content so that the new page can have greater chances of increasing traffic.

Bad User Experience

When you forward your domain to another URL by changing the location of your content without a proper redirection, there is a chance for some orphan pages to be created. Such pages are no longer relevant and dont fit your website constitution. Yet, they still function and attract traffic, which can be detrimental. After some time, those orphan pages become outdated with irrelevant content. This delivers a bad user experience to the visitors and may cost you.

Loss of SERP

Loss of Link Authority