Dual Domain Names

[Det]

Hi all

I've been told that using more than one domain name to point to the same site is a bad idea from an seo point of view.

Is this true?

[paulgl]

Big myth. Gasbuddy, go.com, and a brazilian others have
a brazillion number of domains pointing to the same site.
(just type in espn.com)

Like amazon.com even. Or ebay. Or icanhazcheezburger...

However, they are not trying to shmooze search engines,
although gasbuddy actually does in a round about way.
Gasbuddy kills a lot of myths.

The flip side is what is bad, more often. Having the same
content actually residing on different urls, looking like
pseudo-doorways, across the same domain. But even
that can be done right.

Paul

[tim_buchalka]

If you mean have multiple sites (domains) linking to another then it's not a bad idea.

On the same hosting, not so good an idea. Using the same content? Not so good an idea.

[dburk]

Hi Det,

It depends on how you do it. If you put in place a proper permanent 301 redirect from the extra domain to the main domain then it will be just fine. However, if you fail to do the proper 301 redirect it can create many significant problems.

The important thing is to make sure that the content is indexed on the primary website and the alternate content is not listed the search engines.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Det,

It depends on how you do it. If you put in place a proper permanent 301 redirect from the extra domain to the main domain then it will be just fine. However, if you fail to do the proper 301 redirect it can create many significant problems.

The important thing is to make sure that the content is indexed on the primary website and the alternate content is not listed the search engines.

Just did a 2 sample test. Did a search for espn.com, nothing comes up
except espn.go.com. That's Case #1.

Case #2, I actually have a site that I redirect the main domain.com to a subpage.
I do that using a 301. Did a search for that domain.com, and that domain.com
shows up, complete with a snippet from the forwarded site.

My guess is the espn.com is being forwarded, server side, not 301.
No content exists, nor the domain in actuality.

Looks like for purely SEO purposes, which makes sense, you want to
do 301 redirects, and not domain forwarding.

Obviously, espn.com is a nonissue as far as seo, nor is espn.go.com
for that matter.

You would do domain forwarding if seo was indeed a nonissue. Like
a good domain on a business card or print advertisement.

Paul

[adammck]

Just also on this. As an example, If I 301 redirected the domain www.firstkeyword.com to my primary keyword of 'First Keyword', would that raise my internal SEO/SERP result?

I heard something about it awhile ago but i never knew if it was correct.

Cheers

[Det]

Thank you all for the useful posts.

Just to clarify, I want to create a single website with a domain name containing my favourite keywords to help with seo, but I don't want to present a business card with a web address that consists of 10+ words. Obviously that requires something short and snappy so (a) people can remember it and (b) they don't have to write an essay into their browser window to visit me.

Links from places on the internet can be disguised through hyperlinks so can use the long keyword version hence only offline advertising will carry the short version.

The short version will be a secondary domain name that is redirected to the website. I don't need to do any seo for the short version as that will be typed into the browser as a direct link.