Domain Name

redirect

[Tara101]

Is it worth redirecting my website when it is doing so well. My lawyer spelled my company name; so I went with it and bought domain to match miss spelling; I did not realize until I requested my file from lawyer he had gone back and legally changed to correct name the next day but sent me the original filing info. I bought the correct spelling domain but now since it has been up for a year; I am afraid to try redirect the domain so correct spelling domain will eventually take over.

I am getting mixed massages on other site but I do not want to start over getting it #1 when I have a big market in Nov. What to do? I know I cannot just make another site with correct spelling one site said it could cause me real trouble but I have seen site with Lineman & Linemen and it all leads to same website.

[HuskyPup]

So...you originaly bought example1.com but now have the correct example.com however example1.com is doing well in the search engines and you want to use example.com rather than example1.com without any pain?

Providing you have access to your domain registrar's control panel, this may be free or cost just a few Dollars a year or your registrar may have to do it for you, it is possible to point (URL forward) example1.com at example.com.

You upload the original site to example.com, wait for the global DNS to propagate and ensure the new site is fully visible, and then either you through your control panel, or your domain registrar, url forward example1.com and www.example1.com to example.com

Job done, any existing backlinks you have will automatically go direct to their new home, the search engines will love you for it being so clean and within a couple of weeks you should see no difference to your rankings.

The only provisos are to ensure that example.com does not have any Google/Yahoo?/Bing penalties otherwise you could be in trouble and that you intend to make no change to the structure whatsoever of the site...meaning the site will be identical except for the new name.

If you're really concerned about rankings then why not wait until after November?

Leave example1.com on a url forward to example.com for ever if possible.

[HuskyPup]

Oh...and you can buy as many names as you like and URL forward them as above, I have well over 150 doing this for keyword domain names etc.

[Tara101]

No penalties to worry about ! Great Thanks allot. Nov convention I wanted to have new domain with correct spelling so when I passed out business cards the new domain name would be on cards I just did not want to lose rank since anyone looking me up before Nov I wanted to show I was a popular site. I thought it would be no big deal I have seen sites do what you have done; but when I asked how it was done you would have thought I was committing web search fraud. lol Its not the name of company he spelled wrong he just forgot to put an S on end of what I do; so all the attention to my site has been from business cards and PRing on site related to my business; so I have a good ranking. If you googled companies in my business I would not show up; but that has not hurt me no one is looking up what I do; but I am selling so I need to have a site customer can see my products.

I am still wondering if I just move new domain to my server and just change a few things on site & post moved on old domain if that will be easier and just delete old one after awhile. I know Nov market business card being passed out I see a big difference on traffic so that is why I wanted to do this before Nov. and have new business card made up fast with new domain if it is better to do it that way.

I was going to tweak the menu bar to a different style but now I think I'll just wait till dust settles.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], Tara101!

you can get both domains forwarded to the same server and you won't likely get a penalty per se for doing so.
however you will then have at least two hostnames serving the same content and some of that content will typically get filtered.
so some urls of each hostname or all of one may be filtered in the search results to avoid duplicate content in the search results.

in general, it would be best if you implemented a domain-wide redirect from your old domain to the new domain.
depending on your specific situation with inbound links and pages currently indexed, it may be better to redirect a specific subset of your pages and let the rest get a 404 or 410 response.

[HuskyPup]

and just delete old one after awhile.

No, no, no, that's the worst thing you could do, you'll end up with a duplication of the sites and example.com will be demoted to the bottom of the SERPs in favour of the original example1.com.

You need to make your decision and stick with it, either stay with example1.com for the moment and make your changes to that site and then after November implement as I have pointed out.

If you have already printed material with example.com on it then simply URL forward example.com to example1.com until you are ready to change it to the way you want it to be.