Best way if you own multiple domain names?

[AndrewP]

If you own multiple domains what's the best way to handle these.

In apache we have:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www.domain1
ServerAlias www.domain2
ServerAlias www.domain3
ServerAlias www.domain4
ServerAlias www.domain5
</VirtualHost>

Problem with this is domain 2 seems to be the one thats getting indexed instead of domain 1 which we want.

How do others go about handling multiple domain names?. Would you recommend just putting a 301 redirect on all your additional domain names?. Can this not be considered spam?

[Wail]

The 301 is the way to go. Have all the secondary domains (with their 3rd or 4th levels; ie example.com as well as www.example.com) redirect via a 301 to the main domain.

It's not spam. It's spam if you place content on the other domains and use JavaScript or a meta refresh for the redirect.

[Robert Charlton]

You absolutely should not have "mirror" sites... ie, identical content showing up under different urls. You should set up the domains so they all point to one main domain, and, in your case, 301s are probably the way to do it.

I say "probably," because if you have a lot of domains redirected to one site, that could create problems. I'm sure that 5 domains won't create these problems. Whether 30 or 50 or more would create problems is another question. See....

Pointing multiple domain names to main site without mirrors
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