The Domain Pointing Chestnut

[markd]

Hello all

I have been asked by a client to register approx 7 domains, all different TLD, and 'point' them all to one site. I think they want to transfer one domain to an ISP hosting a site and leave the rest with a domain registration company, using their facilities to 'point' the rest at the site.

I can't remember what the score is on doing this?

Will there be any kind of 'penalty' levied by SE for doing this?

Will they simply 'choose' which domain they use for pages in SERPS?

Perhaps somebody could bring me up to speed with the current situation?

Many thanks

[jonrichd]

There has been concern raised with multiple domains recently on two fronts:

1. Duplicate content issues ... if a SE sees that www.domain1.com and www.domain2.com have the same content, they could get, at best, confused, and at worst unhappy.

2. Redirection/Canonicalization. SEs seem to be having difficulty figuring out which domain owns content if one domain redirects to another improperly. (See the many threads in the Google forum regarding 302 redirects and 301 redirects. I believe that some domain pointing services do a 302 redirect to the ultimate target domain.

3. Improper link crediting. If someone links to domain1.com (your main domain), and someone else links to domain2.com (an alternate domain), you won't get the same credit as two links to domain1.com.

If I were in your situation, I would pick one domain as the main domain. Point all the other domains to domain1. Then (assuming you are on an Apache server), use a .htaccess to do a 301 permanent rewrite of the requests for all domains to the main domain.

This gives you the ability to use the other domains for marketing purposes, or to catch type-in traffic, but tells the SEs that your main domain is actually the domain you want. Check the Apache forum for exact syntax of the .htacess file.

HTH

[tedster]

Just a note that you can also create a 301 redirect on the IIS server. Suppose you are redirecting example.net to example.com

1. Select example.net website in Internet Services Manager, and enter the properties.

2. In the Home Directory tab, change the option button for "When connecting to this resource the content should come from" to be "A redirection to a URL".

3. Specify the URL as http://www.example.com/

4. THE IMPORTANT STEP:
Check the checkbox that says "A permanent redirection for this resource." The default is a 302, or temporary, redirect.

[markd]

Thanks Jonrichd and Ted!