In the following explanation I will use SomethingFoo.example (and variations) in place of my actual domain names, in order to comply with the rules of this forum. SomethingFoo is a play on words that makes sense in the context of the subject matter of the site, but it doesn't include a particular word (let's call that word "Bar") that directly relates to the subject matter of the site and is very important for SEO purposes.
I use SomethingFoo.example as the primary domain name and I use SomethingFoo.example and SomethingFoo for advertising and branding purposes. SomethingFoo.example is the domain I want people to see, type in, bookmark, remember, etc.
However, for searches for 'foo bar' I suspect that other websites are getting preferential ranking in comparison to mine just on the basis of including "Foo" and "Bar" in their domain names, while mine only includes "Foo". I also have the domain SomethingFooBar.example and I want to find out if there's a way I can get the benefit of having both "Foo" and "Bar" in that domain name while still using SomethingFoo.example as the primary and without running into duplicate content problems.
I can probably do pretty much whatever would be useful in terms of server-side configuration (e.g. HTTP redirection) and markup.
I was thinking of setting up SomethingFooBar.example to mirror (alias) SomethingFoo.example, but include <link rel="canonical" /> in each page pointing to the equivalent URL on SomethingFoo.example, then submit SomethingFooBar.example to search engines. Will that accomplish anything in terms of getting me the benefit of the keywords in SomethingFooBar.example?
I could also redirect URLs on SomethingFooBar.example to SomethingFoo.example using 301 or another status. If I do that and then submit SomethingFooBar.example to search engines, would that accomplish anything? Would that work better / worse / same as the <link rel="canonical" /> approach?
All else being equal, I'd rather do HTTP redirects, to encourage people to use SomethingFoo.example for all purposes instead of SomethingFooBar.example.
I'm wondering if it would accomplish anything for me to submit SomethingFooBar.example to search engines if right from the start it would be pointing to SomethingFoo.example using HTTP redirects or <link rel="canonical" /> . Would search engines factor in the keywords in SomethingFooBar.example, or would they just ignore it since it points to SomethingFoo.example?
I'm not really optimistic that either approach would accomplish what I want, and in fact I've seen some stuff on the web that specifically asserts that HTTP redirecting in the way I've asked about would not accomplish what I want, but it pisses me off that Google may be giving my competitors an advantage just on the basis of the words in their domain, when I'm trying to use a name that makes sense for branding purposes and to keep the URL length down. I've also seen some stuff saying that Google is supposedly going to ratchet down how much relevance they assign to the presence of keywords in the domain name, but who knows what they'll do or when.
How much advantage does Google give for keywords in the domain name vs. other parts of the URL, e.g. how would the following fare relative to each other, say for queries for 'foo bar'?:
SomethingFooBar.example
SomethingFoo.example/bar/
bar.SomethingFoo.example
[edited by: tedster at 4:40 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]
[edit reason] member rewrite - to make site anonymous [/edit]
