Forum Moderators: open
I need some advice on how to handle alias domain names. I have looked at a number of earlier message strings on this subject, and I just want to confirm that my planned course of action is correct. Please forgive my terminology; I am very challenged on the technical side.
My client hosts their own site. The client’s company is the result of a number of mergers and acquisitions. Their current website covers all the former companies, and they shut down the old individual company sites sometime ago. As a result, they have quite a number of domain names, which have all been pointed to a single IP address at the DNS level using separate A Records (in one case a CName under one of the A Records). The domain names include the old legacy companies and some niche names.
Search engine results are showing one of the old domain names rather than the domain name of the parent company. In order to correct this and to avoid search engine penalties, they have bee advised to use 301 redirects to redirect all the old domain names to the parent company domain name.
Will this correct the problem of the old domain name showing up in search engine results?
Will this prevent search engine penalties?
In some of the earlier discussion of this topic, there was mention of problems with the 301 redirects. Can anyone elaborate on the problems encountered?
Thanks, sorry to be so wordy.
Will this correct the problem of the old domain name showing up in search engine results?
Yes. You should also get the incoming links to your old site(s) updated to point to your new site if possible.
Will this prevent search engine penalties?
This will prevent SE penalties related to duplicate content on multiple domains.
In some of the earlier discussion of this topic, there was mention of problems with the 301 redirects. Can anyone elaborate on the problems encountered?
I can't address that, because I have never had a problem with 301's used for this purpose.
HTH,
Jim
