What is the best way to set up two sites on the same hosting package?

[proboscis]

I have one domain and my host allows me to set up a second domain on the same account for free. All the files for the second domain are located within a folder on the first domain, then the contents of that folder redirect(?) to the second domain. They call it an overlay.

It's set up and it works, now I'm just wondering if any ranking problems can come from this kind of a set up?

For one, the site is available under two addresses: 1domain.tld/folder and 2domain.tld

[Hoople]

I would set up a 301 redirect from 1domain.tld/folder to 2domain.tld to enhance their separation. Ensure that there is no link to 1domain.tld/folder from anywhere on 1domain.tld/ --- only link to 2domain.tld or the targeted page.

[steerpikegg]

I would ask myself if the prospect of saving a few quid is worth risking the integrity of both sites. From what I understand, a slight error with linking in the one site could cause major serps problems for both if you are not extremely careful.

[HuskyPup]

If I understand you correctly you have two sites serving the same information under two domain names from the same IP?

Is that correct?

If so Google should merely discount one of them as a duplicate and only one will rank. Which one is a guess but should be the older one unless you launched them both at the same time.

[proboscis]

Thanks guys,

There is only one site but it answers to two different domain names on the same ip.

I thought that doing a 301 from one domain to another was a bad idea and that it should generally only be done within one domain. Is that correct?

I'm not sure what to do. Pay a little more and move it, or just leave it where it is?

[Terabytes]

a 301 redirect is the proper way to direct 2 domains (or more) to a single site.

You need to choose which domain name will get the credit for the domain. (should be the one that you're already using)

when the "other" domain(s) are used the 301 specifies:

- that it should be changed to the "primary" domain

- any credit attached to that "other" domain should be given to the primary domain.

there's lots of info on writing the 301 redirect here, it's pretty simple.

[HuskyPup]

Others may disagree however the search engines like what I do and most registrars include this facility for free or at the most a few Dollars a year.

Note this is not at your hosting provider.

In your domain name registrar's control panel hopefully you will see an option to "url forward". Simply point example2.com, and www.example2.com if necessary, at example1.com

Job done, anyone typing in example2.com will automatically go to example1.com PLUS the search engines will recognise example2.com as your valid domain and automatically deliver example1.com in their SERPs.

Well, that's been my experience with about the 150 domains that I've done like this.

Is that what you needed to know?

[netmeg]

When I have multiple domains pointing to the same site, I use PHP to serve the robots.txt such that it denies spider access to all but the main domain. I do sometimes get a few odd urls in (with no description tags) but for the most part, only the main domain goes in. Seems to work okay.

[Robert Charlton]

The problem with the same content displaying under multiple urls is that the duplication ends up splitting your inbound link vote. There are many discussions on the forum right now about using various methods to get around this... including noindex, nofollow, robots.txt, etc... none of which I recommend.

While some of these methods are better than others, none of them addresses the question of the split link vote.

IMO, 301s with proper canonicalization are the only approach that's not going to come back to bite you.

[tedster]

The problem with the same content displaying under multiple... urls

There's another one, too. If the problem is extreme then the sitercan have a very poor crawling and indexing experience. A robots meta tag will not fix that problem, either.

[proboscis]

Thank you everyone. This is a brand new site so if I set up the 301 now there probably won't be any split inbounds or crawling/indexing problems, I think?

Sounds like this is a common problem with lots of fixes, but are the fixes just as good if done correctly - or is it really better for each site to have it's own hosting package?

[g1smd]

Yes. Don't allow site1.com/site2 to directly return content.

Either redirect to site2.com or block access to those URLs.