New Domain extensions for my main .com domain

how to use aliases to redirect to .com safely?

[AlexB77]

Hey Guys,

I have a website (mymainsite.com) with about 22000 of daily visitors. Few days ago I have decided to just open a new domains I mean same domain but with other extensions such as .co.uk, .org, .net, .us and so on. I have redirected them all to point to mymainsite.com in my control panel.

2 days after I have lost about half of my traffic.

I have contacted my host to find out that apparently I needed to register a domain with new extension and use it as an aliases on mymainsite.com.

I did this, but now I still have no sign of my traffic going back to normal and nor other aliases pointing to the mymainsite.com since I do not know how to redirect safely.

If I use 301 redirect from .org, ,co.uk ,.net, .us aliases would this change anything?

[HuskyPup]

I have redirected them all to point to mymainsite.com in my control panel.

Are you referring to your registrar's control panel or cpanel?

I needed to register a domain with new extension and use it as an aliases on mymainsite.com.

Why an alias? Are you trying to mask the original domain and serve precisely the same site yet showing your new domain names with a new title bar and meta description?

If so this is old, old stuff and won't get you anywhere in the search engines since they won't rank highly because they are duplicates, they won't be penalised, just very unlikely to rank.

If you want you example.co.uk to point at example.com you should be able to create a url-forward in your registrar's control panel.

Do ensure that it is a 301 and not a 302!

[AlexB77]

Thanks for your reply

Basically all I really wanted to do is to have this domains in my possession in order to prevent someone else buying it. this is a first thing, now the second I have registered them separately and had them as a different account each one of them, then decided to redirect them all on to a main .com domain instead of them being there and doing nothing, but the minute I did this I have started to loose traffic on my main .com domain. NOw I have removed redirection and also moved all of the domain as aliases of the main .com domain as it was suggested to me by my server host, but still no sign of my traffic going back to normal.

Are you suggesting to actually do a permanent 301 redirect to the .com domain even if my .com domain is still going to be always used as a main one?

[AlexB77]

Would that be a right way of doing it?

so the set-up is basically like this I have all this domain name as aliases redirected with 301 to a mysite.com domain.

Please tell me this is right.

Thanks

rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.biz [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.info [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.net [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.org [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.mysite.us [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,nc]

[TheMadScientist]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying, but my guss is the redirection isn't the cause of the traffic difference ... There's been a bit of discussion over the last couple of days about ranking changes in the Google Forum [webmasterworld.com] and your redirection looks alright, but there are some small technical errors, so I'd recommend posting it in the Apache Forum [webmasterworld.com] where you can get some great 'how to' advice and information on redirection.

[AlexB77]

Thanks for your reply I will have a look at both forums today