Bit confused about this redirection I want to do

[Mr Bo Jangles]

I have successfully implemented a .htaccess redirection before on another site,but I now want to do something else and am a bit confused as to exactly how to do it - and would be grateful for a bit of assistance.

I have two separate domains for somewhat related products - and I now want to merge the two web sites together so that as far as search agents go, it appears as one big domain/web site - this is apparantly beneficial in ranking, and in this case, the 'principal' site has had more work done on it and ranks very well, whereas the other domain/site hasn't had as much attention and doesn't rank at all well - so I thought that combining them might be a positive thing - but how to do it.

Here is the current setup (by example):
Both sites are on the same server and mapped as shown:

widgetsemporium.com
mapped to: /usr/www/users/mycompany/

specialwidgets.com
mapped to: /usr/www/users/mycompany/specialwidgets/

So, all the web pages (including index.htm) for the 'emporium' site are in the 'mycompany' folder, and all the pages (including index.htm) for the 'specialwidgets' site are in a folder 'specialwidgets' in the 'mycompany' folder.

I believe all the pages are *already* in appropriate locations for achieving the merging of the 'secondary' site into the 'primary' site, BUT how do I effect the appropriate redirection from specialwidgets.com - where do I put the .htaccess and what would a line in it be like?

And just generally, do others think that this is likely to be beneficial in the long run, and above all, not detrimental in ANY way to any rankings I currentlly have.

many thanks - sorry it's a bit of a long post *_*

[Mr Bo Jangles]

anyone able to assist - or is this maybe in wrong forum?

Cheers,

[sitz]

It depends a bit on the nature of the content. As it stands now, you have access to the 'specialwidgets' directory, simply by accessing it at:

http://www.widgetemporium.com/specialwidgets/

This may or may not be what you're going for, of course. If it's not, you'll need to be a bit more descriptive regarding the goals. =)

[Mr Bo Jangles]

Thanks sitz.
Currently it is set up as two doamins, 2 web sites and I would think that's exactly as search engines would see it at the moment.
So how do I make it appear as ONE web site and handle the redirects for people coming from specialwidgets.com?

(and only improve things and suffer no penalty)

Cheers,

[sitz]

Which site in this example has the high searchengine rankings? Can't help without all the information. =)

[Mr Bo Jangles]

widgetsemporium.com does sitz

thanks,

[sitz]

Then it should be fairly straightforward, yes? In the DocumentRoot for widgetsemporium.com (/usr/www/users/mycompany/), place the following in your .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^specialwidgets/(.*) http://www.specialwidgets.com/$1 [L,R]

Optionally, you could use 'R=301' instead of 'R'; I personally tend to be leary of using permanent redirects, as you never really know when you might want/have to change something, but that's your call.

[Mr Bo Jangles]

many thanks sitz, I'll give it a go.

Cheers,