Using brand domain for easy verbally said with 301 redirect to exact match.net for a site

[Zoolander]

I have recently bought an exact match.net for a keyword with no hyphens (on the fence about hyphens, read so many different views on here).

From looking around it seems that not all solicited links that I am interested in use anchor text, but more significantly exact match domain would be like automatic anchor text when anyone from the general population posts a link to your site.

I sell print books and am thinking of keeping the non-keyword domain in them so they are easy to say and type, while using the exact match domain for everything else online which the non-keyword domain would 301 redirect to.  I don't do any programming and will use cPanel on my webhost to do the 301 redirect, I already have one 301 to go to the www subdomain so that would make two 301's.

This might sound quite straight forward to many here but it's fairly new to me and I've not seen cPanel mentioned here yet, so was wondering if I am going about it the right way.

[Zoolander]

Thanks for the link to GWMT have book marked it for later.  I might not do the Exat match domain afterall, the domain for the site is simple and catchy.

[RobertFisher]

While you can have a 301 for the www to non or non to www (this is sometimes referred to as the "canonical redirect or setting the canonical domain), the easiest way is to go into GWMT (Google webmaster tools) and set the preferred domain. Here is the explanation from Google webmaster tools.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

If you are like me, you learn by doing; but, you must be careful with some of this as you can cause yourself problems. You are doing the right thing by being a pro member with SEOmoz as you can learn a ton here (I certainly have). If your site is important to you, you do want to be careful with making some of the changes you are as you can end up with a site that is not ranking as it is not seen by the bots.

Best of luck, read everything on GWMT, etc.

[Zoolander]

Thanks for your reply.  Sorry if I didn't explain very clearly, The 301 redirect on cPanel is to make it have the www. in there in front of the domain  I don't know what GWMT means.  There is nothing in SEO moz site crawl that says there's a loop it just mentions 301 as a "notice".

The name of the company / brand isn't very good for SEO so I have bought a domain with keyword and want to redirect the original domain to that.

[RobertFisher]

Arpeggio

First, you state you have one 301 going to the www sub-domain. So, you used a 301 to redirect the www to the non www (in preference for the non www)? Did you set a preferred domain in GWMT? (I am concerned that you may have created an infinite loop the way you did this in C-Panel.)

Given the way you stated that and your desire to use C-Panel for the 301, I am going to suggest that you may want to seek a small amount of outside help. What you are wanting to do should be done using mod_rewrite by adding .htaccess code. If that is more than you are aware of, if you are redirecting a site with a lot of pages, you really should get some help from someone. Sit next to them and learn or do it via online meeting and learn.

I hope this helps you out,

Robert