Second Domain - Shorter - Domain Forwarding

We want to register a shorter version of our current domain - pitfalls?

[shawn]

We currently have a domain that is www.ourcompanywebdesign.com We want to register a second domain that is just the initials www.OCWD.com and set up a redirect that will point to the first URL.

1. If I set up one page on the domain and optimize it, I am guessing that is going to fall in to the door way page category - are thier any negatives to that could kill us?

2. If we just set up a redirect can we still submit that URL to search engines?

Shawn

[korkus2000]

If you set up a door way at some point the engines will castch it and may harm the entire site. Most engines consider this spam.

If you do the correct 301 redirect you will not be able to get engines to bother with it because the header tells the spider that the item they are looking for has permenently moved to the new location. They will not comeback after that. Your best bet is the redirect and not trying to do anything with both names, unless you feel like making 2 unique sites both having valueable content on their own.

[shawn]

korkus2000,

Thanks for the reply - our main purpose for the second domain is to give our customers a shorter URL to remember and to type.

Should I use a robots.txt to keep the new domian from being indexed and just set it up to point to our original domain. I beleive the term is domian forwarding.

I can't see how that will cause any problems?

Shawn

[davemarks]

Can you not get your webhost to map the domain to the same wesite/account?

Thats how I do it

[shawn]

Can you not get your webhost to map the domain to the same wesite/account?

Hmm..that might be better - looks like one site right?