Multiple Domains for One Site
-
We are building a site for a new miniature golf course. They have a long name, which they don't want me to mention, but it's equivalent to a name like Golden State Golf and Putt. They also have a restaurant with its own name and brand that will be a part of the mini golf course and its website, much how Hotel websites have their restaurants on their sites.
Before becoming our client they purchased golfandputt.com and want to go with this domain for simplicity sake.
In addition to this domain name they purchased 7 others that contain the bussiness' full name in some way, such as:
As well as:
- 3 variations of the golfandputt.com domain
- 3 variations of the restaurants name
They wish to have all of these redirect to the main website or the restaurant page to "help with SEO," as they told me.
From what I have researched on SEOmoz it seems better to simply optimize the website for Golden State Golf and Putt and the restaurant page for the restaurant's name. Additionally, I'm worried that redirecting the domains to the site will actually hurt them in rankings.
If someone can shed some light on what the best practices for this sort of situation are I'd be much appreciative.
Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation but its a bit of a unique situation.
-
You would want to implement the 301 redirect by going through the htaccess of your server. This redirect is the most effective. If you don't have access to the htaccess then a 301 redirect with php should do the trick. Also don't forget to do it for every page. A lot of companies actually buy a bunch of variations of their domain so that a competitor doesn't buy a second version for negative purposes or for link ads.
-
That's what I figured. Thanks a bunch!
-
Other sites will be able to link to the 301'd domains and this link juice (at least the majority of it) will be passed onto the dominant domain, so i wouldn't sweat it too much,as this won't harm your SERPs (assuming the links are good).
Its just a whole load easier if you are link building that you use one domain as it keeps things a whole lot simpler!
-
Thanks for the quick responses. I will make sure all link building is done for the main domain. However, individuals will still be able to link to the domains that are 301 redirecting if they choose so. So I guess we will just have to pay attention to this?
-
I agree with Justin. "Defensive" use of multiple domains to pick up misspellings or misremembered names can be valid strategy, but I would 301 them to the main site.
Trying to build links, social signals and unique, fresh content for each individual domain for SEO purposes probably isn't a good idea.
-
There is no harm in adding all of the addresses to the website, although i would certainly redirect via 301 to the master, dominant (or preferred) domain.
One of the main things you need to be careful of with multiple domains is duplicate content, Google will view the website for www.goldenstategolfandputt.com and www.goldenstategolfandputt.net as two different websites even if they are the same website but just reached via a different domain. Therefore if not addressed you would get penalised for duplicate content, to overcome this problem do either a 301 redirect or a rel=canonical to resolve this.
Also unless there is a very good reason, i would ensure from a simplicity's point of view that all linking, internal and external points to a single chosen domain as managing inbound links to multiple domains can be a real pain.
In essence, there is no problem with using multiple domains, plenty of people do it to protect their brand, to overcome misspellings, passing off etc etc.
Hope that helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multiple CMS on one website / domain & SEO
For a client we would like to work with a content hub, but their website is build on a custom CMS so we are limited in our options and if we aks their web developers they ask crazy prices to help us. So now we have the idea to build the content hub with wordpress and implement it next to their current CMS. for example on www.website.com/contenthub/ . As far as i know this is technically possible and there are no negative effects regarding SEO as long as we link the two sitemaps together. Am i right or am i missing something here?
Technical SEO | | Siphoplait0 -
301 Old Domain Name with relevant domain name
We have a number of historical domain names that we are thinking of 301 redirecting to industry relevant domains.
Technical SEO | | barry.oneil
Currently the domains we wish to redirect are not active and have been down since march 2018.
As far as we know there is no bad reputation on these domains, but we think there are still links out there in the wild on possibly relevant blog posts. Would there be any negative affect on the target domain? Thanks0 -
Disavow to all domains?
Hi there, I have several versions of my domain setup in Webmaster tools. Should I upload my disavow file against all of these domains? For example.....
Technical SEO | | niallfred
If I find a link pointing to: http://www.mydomain.com from: http://www.somespammysite.com do I need to add a disavow file in Webmaster tools for all my domain versions or only the version the offending links points towards? So... Only
http://www.mydomain.com
Or
http://www.mydomain.com
http://mydomain.com
https://www.mydomain.com
https://mydomain.com0 -
I noticed all my SEOed sites are getting attacked constantly by viruses. I do wordpress sites. Does anyone have a good recommendation to protect my clients sites? thanks
We have tried all different kinds of security plugins but none seem to work long term.
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Can we use our existing site content on new site?
We added 1000s of pages unique content on our site and soon after google release penguin and we loose our ranking for major keywords and after months of efforts we decided to start a new site. If we use all the existing site content on new domain does google going to penalized the site for duplicate content or it will be treated as unique? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mozfreak0 -
Redirecting an Old Domain
One of my clients has a newish e-commerce website that was just redesigned. Part of this new marketing push is shutting down an old yahoo store. The problem is that this old store's domain has a 10 year old link in DMoz and is there fore in about 200 other directories. Is pointing that old domain at the new website going to be enough to keep all of that link juice flowing?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Switch domain from one account to another at domain registrar
We need to move our domain from one account to another at our domain registrar (which is Moniker). Both the "from" account and "to" account will be at Moniker. The "from" account currently has privacy settings enabled and we'd also put these in place for the "to" account. Has anyone done this and see any impact on SEO? Is there any big or common mistakes that I should be aware of? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | evoNick0