Should a company worry about how many domains it maps to the same home page?
-
I seem to be at logger heads with developers regarding domain mapping.
The scenario: I have a company with one site on a primary domain name, but all the other domains they own are mapped using a tool provided by their hosting vendor. But. what I see is a keyword loaded domain that shows it has been 'mapped' to the primary domain, but you can type into the browser this keyword loaded domain and it will serve up in your browser that same home page you see on the PRIMARY DOMAIN. So, picture this - you are looking at the home page on wwww.keyworddomain.com and see the same home page as www.primarycompanydomain.com - but if you select anything from the menu at www.keyworddomain.com you will be taken immediately to www.primarycompanydomain.com/page-you-selected
I just get a feeling this is not right as I can search Google for www.keyworddomain.com and Google lists the site home page on that domain. But when I click through from the listed result, I am taken to www.primarycompanydomain.com which is ideally where I want to be and I would want Google to focus on this domain, and I have told it to do so within the feature included within Google Webmaster Tools.
The developers say there is nothing wrong. There argument - why would a hosting company provide this domain mapping feature if it was not best practice. My argument - but Google is listing that domain URL (www.keyworddomain.com) despite the fact it takes me through to www.primarycompanydomain.com - will Google not think this strange despite me telling it via GWMT that www.primarycompanydomain.com is the one and only domain I am working on.
Tell me if I am going mad or not, and who is right and who is wrong. Appreciate all your answers.
-
Many thanks to both Hans and Moosa I have written again to the web developer that has its hosting account with their preferred vendor to look at this issue again, taking into account your valued responses. Really appreciate the input from both of you.
-
Hi Brian,
This seems to be the same problem I am facing with one of my clients. Maybe the answer to my question helps a little: http://moz.com/community/q/cname-vs-301-redirect
Your situation most likely will lead to duplicate content too. A 301-redirect seems to be the best solution here. Hopefully your hoster is willing to cooperate (and if not, maybe you should look for another one).
Hans
-
In my personal opinion redirecting keyword rich domain to the main domain is not a bad idea but if you are going to flood it on home page and all the targeted pages then you will be in the sure trouble because Google does not like the idea of using this for ranking boost!
This might end up getting a penalty from Google!
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
-
Why are my pages de-indexed?
<form id="form-t3_37nfib9dz" class="usertext" action="http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/37nfib/why_were_my_pages_deindexed/#"> Hello all, I am very new to SEO. For some reason many of the pages on my site were de-indexed. Specifically the ones linked from this page: However other pages, like the ones linked from this page and this page were not de-indexed. http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/car-accident-injury-lawyers/[1] However the pages linked from this page were not de-indexed: http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/slip-and-fall-lawyers/[2] http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/podcastresources/[3] That first page itself was not de-indexed, just the site that it links to. It just happened today, so maybe I am jumping the gun but I doubt it. When I enter the page into google webmaster tools again and press fetch, one of the child pages, it re-indexes. What could be the problem here? I had someone re-write the content for every city but I have a feeling that there is less differences in the car accidents pages? Is this considered duplicated content do you think? Am I making some other mistake I can't think of? Is it just a one day blip (I doubt it) Let me know, thanks. </form>
On-Page Optimization | | RafeTLouis0 -
Duplicate pages
Hi I have recently signed up to Moz Pro and the first crawl report on my wordpress site has brought up some duplicate content issues. I don't know what to do with this data! The original page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/blog/ and the duplicate content page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/author/david/ If anyone can point me to a resource or explain what I need to do thanks! David.
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
Page Speed
Google recommends a page load speed of 1.4 seconds, is it recommended to have that page speed for every page on the site, or just the landing pages. Is there a tool that will check the load speed of every page on a site and report the slow pages? The free online tools only check one page at a time.
On-Page Optimization | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
On-Page Report Card: Whats up with the TITLE of the page?
Started to fix the SEO issues on a customers website. When I run a "On-Page Report Card" It says that the title of the webpage:
On-Page Optimization | | maklarlabbet
www.visbymaklarna.se/visbymaklarna.html Is "visbymäklarna - Ditt förstahandsval på gotland." But if I check in the source code of the webbrowser the title should be:
name="title" content="Vi är mäklarna på Gotland som sätter människan i första rummet" /> (Actually this is with special encoding for the swedish characters. The title in coded text is: "Vi är mäklarna på Gotland som sätter människan i första rummet") Anyway the title of the webpage source code and the title of what SEOmoz reports is different. Why is that?0 -
301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page
Hi I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not: Old Page: example.com/old Target New Page: example.com/new After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added: example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL) This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL. So, if I 301 redirect example.com/old to example.com/new? (Intermediate page) and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?
On-Page Optimization | | Ankkesh0 -
Changing domain name
Hello, we have 10 websites in same niche, and plan to build one strong site by making a 301 redirect from all sites to one. We think to do redirect each site to subfolder like this: www.newdomain.com/site1 www.newdomain.com/site2 www.newdomain.com/site3 www.newdomain.com/site4 www.newdomain.com/site5 www.newdomain.com/site6 www.newdomain.com/site7 www.newdomain.com/site8 www.newdomain.com/site9 www.newdomain.com/site10 And in root domain place unique content updated daily. Is this would work? Or this is bad idea? Looking to hear from a qualified technicians advice. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | bele0 -
Landing Pages: New Domain or Sub Folder?
I use premise for landing pages. I have some extra domain names that are fantastic in my industry. I'm wondering if I should use those domains for these landing pages? The header, nav, footer, would be the same as my main site, the body and content would be totally different. will google penalize me if I have the same header and footer on a landing page?
On-Page Optimization | | homebizsmart0 -
Picking a Keyword to optimize for home page
Hi there, I have chosen a keyword for a bunch of my top pages based on relevance, traffic, competition etc, and am tracking in the Tool - so far so good. The issue I am having is with picking a keyword or phrase for the home page - all the suitable keywords I seem to have been allocated to 1 particular sub pages - basically product pages... Anyone come across this issue? Basically any keyword or phrase that I think might be suitable for the home page, I find a more precise page beneath the home page.... Help gratefully accepted!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0