having two domains on a site

but they will serve different portions of the site

[Skhan00]

Here is my current scenario:

I have a site that was particular to one merchandise, so the domain name refers to that merchandise in its name.

For example: we sold transmissions
domain is: transmissionsUSA.com

Now we have many departments selling Engines, Body Panels, etc.

we have another domain let say CARPARTS.com

we want to have carparts.com as the main domain to all those other channels and transmissionsUSA.com to transmissions section.

how would we go about this?

[benevolent001]

I guess you are heading for duplicate content issues with this settings

Why not make separate folders and host sites separately if you are having two separate domains

I am sorry if am wrong but SE may see a page for example

ford.html

as both

CARPARTS.com/ford.html

and transmissionsUSA.com/ford.html

I am sorry if am getting you wrong , but am seeing something fishy over here.

[Quadrille]

You are also risking dividing your links and page ranks between two sites.

But, most of all, you risk confusing your visitors, and are much more likely to make navigation errors, as you send people back and forth between the two domains.

I really can't see a single advantage in what you propose ... why not have it all on one site?

[Skhan00]

the original site selling the merchandise that we originally sold at the beginning still accounts for 90% of our sales. Google has ranked it very high and we would hate for that to change. I am afraid that changing the domain entirely can affect rankings because the original domain is over a decade old + has the keyword term in it relevant to the main merchandise we sell.

so basically all items within transmissions will be on transmissionsusa.com while carparts.com will have everything else.

couldn't a mod rewrite rule fix what benevolent001 mentioned? so that if any pages are for a different part than transmission it would rewrite the URL to match it if the user enters it differently?

[Quadrille]

I don't think that will work on two sites.

If it's really impossible to add the new stuff to the old site, then you'll need to think carefully about the risks and benefits of moving all to the new site.

While that is never a first choice move, and there's no guarantee of a smooth change, the damage can be minimised with careful planning, and the right methods.

[jdMorgan]

You can easily host two domains on one server and (if you have a unique IP address for your server) in one hosting "account". Keep all of your pages for the two domains separate, except for the "corporate pages" where you may opt to describe the relationship between the two domains.

You can either "merge" the two domains and get rid of "transmissions" by redirecting all pages in that domain to same-named pages in "parts," or you can keep them completely separate -- separate domains, and apparently-separate companies.

Anything "in between" is going to confuse both customers and search engines, to your detriment.

You could cross-link the sites (judiciously, not on every page!) to cross-market to your customers.

Jim