Alternate domain name redirects

[obsos]

We have a second registered domain name (eg www.experience_our_city.com) pointing at a subdirectory of our main domain (eg www.our_city.com/visitors_guide.htm).

What are the impacts of that - what do search engines incl Google frown upon and what's okay?

[jonrichd]

In the ideal world, the search engines would realize that the two pages are the same, and will decide to rank one page over the other. They don't want to have both pages (domain.com and otherdomain.com/guide) show up in the SERPS, since that would be presenting duplicate content to the user.

The problem gets even more complicated when there are additional duplicate pages that can be reached from both domains.

Since the search engines aren't perfect, one solution is to use a 301 redirect to redirect domain.com to otherdomain.com/guide. That assures that only one copy of your content will be in the search engines at any one time, and should eliminate a possible duplicate content penalty. If you don't do this, chances are you won't get a penalty - it just depends on how cautious you want to be.

Your visitors can still type in www.domain.com, and get to where they want to go. This type of situation is ideal when you are trying to do non-search engine marketing, say through email or other advertising, where it's easier to remember domain.com as opposed to otherdomain.com/guide.

[obsos]

Hi ... thanks for that.

I'm kind of gathering that with all that I'm reading.

Just to clarify though ... there is no content in the domain that's being redirected ... just the domain name with the redirect in the header.

Cheers
Robyn