Parked Domains
-
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation.
The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work.
Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that.
However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications.
The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct?
Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
-
What I mean by one-to-one redirects is redirecting each page on one domain (the ones with incoming traffic or links) to the equivalent page on the other domain. They are standard redirects.
Ex: fullcompanyname.com/category/product1 to compname.com/cat/product1
Hope that helps.
-
Can you give me an example of one-to-one redirects? Or do you just mean standard 301 redirects? Or developer found a way to bulk redirect everything from fullcompanyname.com to compname.com, as long as the file structure is the same. Is that what you mean?
-
I suppose it is domain masking that I meant, not a parked domain. Thanks for the clarification!
-
I have to agree with Oleg in going one-to-one redirects of any pages with links or incoming traffic. Most hosting plans will let you have multiple domains so setup the one you're "not using" and just one-to-one them in the htaccess file. Remember - it doesn't need to be every page on the site, just the pages with links or entry traffic.
Speaking on links, when you're choosing the domain to use as the primary I'd be sure to very strongly consider which one has the best link profile. A bit is lost in a 301 so better not to lose that.
-
"if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects." -- what do you mean it will work? Where are your parking the domain? Do you mean domain masking it over the compname.com domain?
I recommend doing individual 301 redirects for the top content pages then doing bulk 301 to a relevant category or homepage for the rest. I would also recommend transferring all content from fullcompanyname.com to compname.com as it'd be a waste to just get rid of it.
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
-
Using one domain for email and another domain for your website, but redirects...
Hello - We are rebranding and our new name is fairly lengthy. We own all main domain versions of our brand name - .com, .new and .org - There is a very high search volume for the new brand name as it is a merger of 2 popular existing brands so want to take advantage of that and use our full name within our website domain name. However, since the name is a little long as mentioned - 25 characters - we also own the 3 character acronym of the new brand so we are debating on using the acronym for our new email addresses. ie [email protected] so it is user friendly. We would obviously redirect the acronym email domain to point to the longer website domain. Are there any negative SEO effects if we do that? Use the longer domain for the website and shorter acronym for our email? Thank you
Technical SEO | | KRBishopBh1 -
Moving to New Domain - Ranking impact
I understand that when migrating to a new site, even if done perfectly (page level 301s etc) that rankings will drop in the short term and each site will be impacted differently. I picked up the following comment and was wanting to get a few experts thoughts on whether I can quote this to my client: "In our experience, even when 301's are correctly executed, we see a short term fall back (7-30) days and then about a 90% carry through after that period for about 90 days and then back to full strength. "
Technical SEO | | steermoz80 -
Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain
My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AscendLearning0 -
Buying Expired Domains
Recently i was looking to buy some good quality Expired Domains. But while performing site and links query on such domains in google, none of the domains are showing any links or pages indexed in Google but the same domains are showing hundreds of links in opensiteexplorer for that domains. So does Google has started devaluing expired domains or will expired domains recover all their rankings after re registration by us.
Technical SEO | | amit910 -
Is Go Daddy a bad domain?
I heard today that Go Daddy is not the besting hosting domain for websites...it isn't crawled well by websites. Is this true? What is the best hosting domain?
Technical SEO | | CapitolShine0 -
I grabbed a better domain name. What next?
I have been trying to rank well for the key word "National Currency" forever and can't seem to make it into the top ten. I would really like to have the URL NationalCurrency but it's taken and can't be bought. My url is nationalcurrencyvalues. After reading the forums and various other SEO advice it occurred to me that National-Currency is as good or better than NationalCurrency for that keyword because it's seen as two words. (right) So, I grabbed that domain name. Now, my question... is there some way to make use of the National-Currency domain name without building an entirely new site? I don't think I want transfer all of my content from nationalcurrencyvalues. Would there be any benefit to my nationalcurrencyvalues if I set up 303's on National-Currency?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Exact match domain
Will buying an exact match domain and redirecting it to our main site a good idea, if such a domain is available ? What are the pros and cons ? Are exact match domains still powerful for ranking purpose ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
I Need advice in redirecting domains
I have tow domains (destination/town - travel websites), www.gansbaai.com, and www.danger-point-peninsula.co.za. The one, gansbaai.com is an old domain I bought under which I will be launching a new website in a couple of months. danger-point-peninsula.co.za, is another domain I acquired also about gansbaai, the area. I will we using the domain gansbaai.cm, but want to get the best link juice out of danger-point-peninsula. How do I merge the domains?
Technical SEO | | DROIDSTERS0