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I currently have an ecommerce site which sells computers. Recently I have purchased a new, more keyword relevant domain.
At present I have the new domain pointing to the old one using a 301 redirect. Is this acceptable? And the new domain does NOT have any work done on it yet. No index page or meta tags. So how will the major SE's treat this? Can the new domain be configured for certain keywords etc? Or what would happen if I just leave it as it is?
All info appreciated on this confusing matter.
If all the domain does is 301 to another domain, the search engines will ignore it. It doesn't have any unique content or anything, so why should they bother with it?
If your first site is doing quite well, then I'd suggesting using that domain for a second shop. Reason being is that if the first shop crashes for whatever reason, you'll have the other site still up and running and making money (make sure you keep the second domain running through a different web host!).
Sure you could setup an information/content site with it on the computer products that your other site sells, but why not just put that content on the original site to boost it's rankings? Afterall, the new domain is going to be sandboxed for a while, so you might as well take this time to do something useful with it.
The only real reason that I would consider keeping it as a 301 redirect is for advertising campaigns, specifically Adsense since you are now only allowed to have 1 adsense ad per domain. With a second domain you could have 2 adsesnes pointing to the same location.
Thanks for the advice but its not going to be practical to start another shop on this domain.
I did create an new index.html file from my old site and put it on the new one but recently I read that duplicate content can result in banning. Any ideas?
Regards
I found this article as well which makes things even more confusing:
"The need for having a site redirected to another URL can be based on many factors. One valid reason for doing this could be if you have a website and if your company name happens to be the domain name for your site. In order to make your site more “keyword-rich” in the search engines, you might want to seriously consider changing your domain name to another one.
With the price of domain names falling almost constantly, the cost factor isn’t as much an issue as it was a few years ago. If your company sells flowers online, you make a search for “onlineflowers.com” and you might notice the domain name is available. You can register that domain name, and have it “point” to your other URL, effectively making both domain names functional.
The next step in this process is to find a “safe” method to redirect your newly found domain name to your old web address (your existing domain name). The “safe” way to do this is by using what is called in the industry a “301 Redirect.”
So this one says that a 301 redirect is fine?
