Google Search, Redirect CNAME and 301's

Site Redirection and Google Search

[sudie123]

I have some clients who are realtors. Many of them register domain names and then use cname to redirect their site to their realty provided site. That being said, here are my questions. Any input would be greatly appreciated:

One of those realtors recently hired me to do some SEO for him. I went out and did as much as I could, which is limited with no ftp access at the realty provided site. What little I did worked, and he was found in the google search when you typed in specific key words, on the first page, in the firs or second position, within a couple of weeks. He was ecstatic. 2 months later, he cannot be found again. These are not extremely common combinations of key words, so I don't think some other sites have "pushed him back down", I think something is wrong. I've assumed that it may have something to do with his using the cname redirect. I've considered doing a 301 redirect, but the client wants www.his_site_name.com to show up over www.my_realty.com/whatever. However, all of the content is at the latter.

A) Any ideas on what changed his page ranking and search results?

B) Any opinions on how to handle these types of sites for redirects?

Thanks for any ideas/help/responses.

[lammert]

A CNAME record only tells that a site can be found at the same IP address as another site. It doesn't carry any information which domain name should be shown in the SERPs of the search engines. That is what 301 redirects are for.

The main problem is that with the concept you describe, there is always a form of duplicate content. The realty site domain name will compete with your clients domain name to be the one to be shown in the search engines. If more realtors follow this concept of pointing extra domain names to largely the same content, the chances your clients domain name will show up in the SERPs will even get slimmer. SEO specific to your client's domain name may make that name appear in the SERPs, but rankings will tank as soon as the SE's duplicate content prevention algorithms kick in.

There is no real solution to this problem, except when the realty site voluntary wants to block access to its content when the search engines request the content via the realty's domain name. But honestly I don't expect that to happen as they also have probably a valid reason to be listed under their own domain name in the SERPs.

Pointing your client's domain name with a 301 to the central site will wipe out all the URLs indexed under your client's domain name and any link juice you have acquired so far to this domain with your SEO efforts will be added to the main realty site.

The only real solution to prevent this is to have a separate site for your client with content which is distinctive from the content on the realty site. But this may require a large amount of web development effort.

[sudie123]

Thank you Lammert.

That's sort of what I've figured.

I could set up a redirect for each of the links already indexed, but do you think that would that help?

Thanks again.

[lammert]

Setting up redirects from indexed URLs of your client to the central realty site will delete your client's URLs from the search engine listings. This is probably not what your client wants.

[sudie123]

hmmm...yes, but if i set up the redirects to his_page.realty.com, won't that be good? It will not be going to the main realty.com site?

Also, are you saying that the redirect will eventually no longer bring up his_page.realty.com when some one searches on his_site.com?

I really want to get this flat because I have quite a few clients that want similar help with SEO.

Thanks for your help!

[lammert]

Based on your first post I expected your client's own domain to point to www.example.com/client. That is different from pointing to client.example.com. client.example.com is seen as a separate domain by most search engines and can therefore also rank separately. If you 301 your client's own domain to client.example.com, then all SEO work you have done so far will have its effect on the client.example.com domain, not on example.com. You still have to be affraid of duplicate content problems if the content on the client.example.com is mainly the same as on client2.example.com, client3.example.com etc.

[sudie123]

Yes, I thought that it was as in my original post, but on double checking this particular client, it is as I had stated later. Sorry about that.

Your posts have been VERY helpful to me, and I thank you.