They both need to be hosted together, so is the best way to point the second "brand name" domain name to a folder within the site? I've never dealt with two domain names for the same site, but with this one there seems to be good reason because of the type-in traffic, even though duplicate content needs to be avoided.
I'm not quite sure what the safest way is to handle this. What are the options?
if you don't link to the misspelling then it will never be picked up as a seperate domain or indeed a domain that even exists
even if someone links to the wrong spelling the main domain wont be penalised only the mispelt domain would be.
No, the singular points to an entirely different site; it's the plural we have to deal with. There can't be two domain names pointing to the same - it's too risky and since people are looking for the one with the plural, it's sure to get linked to eventually. The name that will be promoted will have a lot of links to it; chances are good that they will both be linked to even without tryiing.
Lisa, we have no control over the server, we've got robots.txt and .htaccess to work with and that's it.
i don't want to take any risks at all, so i tend to host the two domains separately using robots.txt on the second one to ban all engines. i also host the duplicates on a different server (i guess thats an advantage of owning multiple servers). this is fine for static pages, but if i have any dynamic content, the links pointing to these have the full URL with [domain.com...] etc - this will always take the user to the correct domain. every couple of months i check for sites linking to the wrong domains and contact the site owners asking them to change the links.
other people have suggested using .htaccess to redirect to the correct domain name or using it to ban robots on that domain (DENY?). i'm not an expert on .htaccess so i can't help any further on that i'm afraid.
you could also host the second domain separately with an instant META refresh to redirect to the real domain. that should be very quick and easy.
if all 3 domains point to exactly the same block of web space, then no matter which domain name is used, the same content will be displayed. if this is the case, then a meta refresh won't work as firstly it would refresh for all domains, and secondly, there is the possibility that the search engines could pick up all pages of the wrong domain. if all domains are like this, you will probably need to use .htaccess.
if you move the additional domain names to separate hosting space, you can use an index.html page with an instant meta refresh. any humans will then be instantly redirected to the correct domain. you should also use robots.txt to ban spiders from listing that page. spiders dislike instant redirects, but it shouldn't matter if you've used robots.txt (someone else might disagree with me there).
my choice would be to use a copy of the home page of the normal site but using full http links to the correct domain, and host it separately. this avoids the meta refresh redirection problem. again, use robots.txt to ban spiders from listing the page. this works for me and it's quick and easy, definitely far easier than trying to use .htaccess for redirection.
I can tell you how to do that in IIS, but I don't think you are interested ;). There's some magic in the .htaccess for Apache that will do it that has been covered here before.
if(strtolower($SERVER_NAME)!="www.domain.com"){
header("Location: [domain.com");...]
exit;
}
meta refresh I'd only use if nothing was available, like at a free host or one where nothing was working (like one now). And then, it would be 10-15 seconds with nothing more than a short brief reference to change bookmarks or links and a visible link to the forwarded page.
Xoc, I just saw the most awesome Win2000 hosting deal that has everything - cgi, ssi, perl, php, asp, net, the works - including a shopping cart and use of ssl. It almost seems like a hybrid with all it's got. Highly recommended, too. It's very tempting to take the plunge with one site.
Lisa what will that do if both domains are pointing to the exact same page if there are links pointing to both? It looks like it would be very simple.
Their is promotional value here those for inbound links and developing PR. If re-directed to main page of other site the PR will be superimposed onto that sites page (and a link back (301 if I'm correct)) will not affect PR on main pages of brand site.
OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PR SOLUTION! Can anyone find anything wrong with this!
It also has my post on how to do it in IIS.
I think what you want is to set up the correct spelling. Then on the misspelled domain, have no content at all, but just a redirect to the same page on the correct domain. No one should ever wind up at the misspelled domain, so they should always bookmark, link, or index the correctly spelled page.
The people at the company - widgetcraft.com don't sell the line - it can only be bought through distributors, which is why they don't care if the trademark is used in the domain name. BUT that could change, so the promotion and PR has to be for the non-trademarked for protection. If they got tacky it could always be converted into an affiliate site, but it's not likely the way it's set up. The plural is for traffic, but the company could change policy in future, it's happened with others I remember from old board posts.
If people are typing it into the address bar at that rate they'll most likely do it at search engines also. Now she took a paid Ink page, one for each site (homepage) but I think that should be changed quickly, before June 1, as nell reminded us we'll no longer be able to change domains. Ink doesn't like redirected pages, either.
Xoc, I'll look through that thread, thanks!
And fathom, I have to think through the point you're making.
if(strtolower($SERVER_NAME)!="www.domain.com"){
header("Location: [domain.com");...]
exit;
}
Any domain that doesn't match the proper www.domain.com website in the Address bar will be directed to www.domain.com. So "domain.com" or "domain-name.com" or "www.domain-name.com" or anything.
The code is ignored when the domain matches the proper name.
The best example of this is:
PEIPlay.com which is only a redirect domain name to the tourism guide section of the PEI Provincial governments web site. Which is actual at [gov.pe.ca...]
They (PEI gov) has heavily branded this domain such that the web sites have linked to it (but it still a re-direct.
In comparing link popularity the redirect has 1270 which bumps up the official page's own link pop.
I've never try this before, a similar question in another forum got me thinking.
On another note: typing in at address bar is realy the only concern. At a search engine - generally people have no knowledge of the companies domain (if they did, they would just type in at address bar rather than doing extra steps)
spelling considerations (targeted keywords) can be optimized over different web pages.
Originally, I was thinking of getting web hosting for all 3 sites which will point to the main site.
Crazy_Fool, is the following correct:
If all three domain names point to the same dns servers, then I need to use .htaccess so that google picks up www.maindomain.com, and not www.1stdomain.com, www.2nddomain.com or www.3rddomain.com.
(I believe only www.maindomain.com is in google. It has a PR1 on the main page and PR0 on all remaining pages. I believe this site suffers from some useless js animation, serious lack of content, and overuse of graphics where text would be much more helpful to the visitor. So far, my efforts to 'diplomatically' explain this to the site owner have failed. Time to be the real, brutally honest, me.)
However, if I set up web hosting for each of the 3 sites (neither of which are www.maindomain.com), then I can use meta refresh. I put a copy of the www.maindomain.com/index.html page on all 3 sites (gasp! duplicate content), however, I use a robot.txt file to prevent any spiders from indexing those 3 pages. So, only the www.maindomain.com/index.htm page will be spidered.
Is this correct?
RewriteEngine on
# redirect to canonocal hostname (not transmitted in http 1.0)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mydomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http;//www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
