How should I set up a domain redirect

[davidmaxwell]

A client has 2 domains that he wants to use for the same site. At the moment one domain is just an abbreviation of the main domain (not sure why) as follows:

www.mygreatpropertycompany.com
www.mgpc.com (just redirects to the above)

He is complaining that when he searches for 'mpc' there are no results (at all) so I'm wondering what the best approach is.There is currently nothing on the main domain that refers to 'mgpc' in it's abbreviated sense - the only place it's being used is the company's email addresses ([email protected]).

The redirect is simply a html file in the root of www.mgpc.com as follows:

Is there anything I can do to help him out? (this is one of those 'doing a friend a favour' tasks!)

Thanks!

[dotfly]

if tppmc.co.uk has never been indexed and always (from the start) been redirected then yes...

[davidmaxwell]

Just wondering how it works when a user searches for the actual url as that is currently not showing in SERPs. so if a user searches for 'tppmc.co.uk' there are no results. Presumably this is due to the redirection?

[dotfly]

Ah, I see... well the theory behind is still the same then

[davidmaxwell]

Apologies, I should have mentioned, 'mgpc' is not the actual abbreviation & www.mygreatpropertycompany.com is not his site - just an example of how it's set up. I didn't feel it appropriate to mention the actual site at this point. His actual site is www.**.co.uk, which redirects to http://.com.

An SEO company did some work for him but simply created pages from important keywords to get ranked and the content on those pages is very poor indeed.

I agree tho, it might not be that easy to get ranked for *****, might do a little more looking around and see what I can dig up.

Thanks!

[dotfly]

why does he expect to rank for the term "mpc"???

I think it is not that easy to expect that you can achieve to rank for an abbreviation just by redirecting a domain that sounds similar. Even if he would redirect mpc.com this won`t do the job!

A website is ranking for its keywords or better for its unique content and the keywords associated to that. So if he really wants to rank for the term "mpc" then you have to create unique content that refers to this term. Turn mgpc.com into a landing page and create content that is usefully referring to the term "mpc" (cant see how this can be done!!!) or just focus the whole content of the website on that term ... that would be a possibility which I personally wouldnt recommend.

Its tough to become an authority for such a keyword and even if your are successful with that you cant expect to be more successful afterwards. Why should visitors expect this site when they search for "mpc"?

The only reason to do so and which I can understand is that this has to bee seen in the context of brand building but this aim is much too high to start with...

by the way: actually the site is down or temporarily not available