One site with multiple domain names pointing to it? 1

[THE4MAN]

I have a client who has inquired about registering and implementing multiple domain names for his Website in order to increase his search engine rankings. He attended some kind of business seminar where they recommended doing this but didn't give specifics. The idea being to use the keywords in the domain name itself.

I'm not even sure how to go about doing this, other than creating multiple identical websites on different servers for each domain name, but this seems like something Google would filter due to it being identical content. Not to mention having to update each of the sites indivdually which would suck. Then I was thinking there could be a way to mirror the one site to all the other servers to eliminate the multipe updates, but then we're back to the Google filtering I think?

I suppose I could simply have domain forwarding at the registrar for each of the domain names, but this seems like it wouldn't rank those names in Google because they aren't actual sites and therefore wouldn't be indexed, thus defeating the purpose, right?

So what's the answer here? Is there a proven way to use multiple domain names to increase search engine rankings for a single site?

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions!

Dave Fore

 

[ecobb]

This is extremely common and actually somewhat standard in some cases. I have this set up on MANY sites with MANY domain names. You don't have to do anything to your site, or mirroring, or forwarding. You would just be creating a massive, unecessary headache, let the web server do it's job. Just create one site and put it on your hosting web server. Make sure the DNS of all of the domain names point to the correct IP address of the site, then have your web server resolve the domain names to the same site/folder. For example, I have 1 web site set up in IIS that responds to 8 domain names.



Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[THE4MAN]

Thanks for the quick response!

So technically I see it requires little effort, but how effective is it in search engine rankings? Is it a good investment or does Google just filter all but one of the domain names since they all point to the same content? I mean if you did a search, would you effectively see all of those different domain names listed as search results in close proximity to each other in rank? Or is it more like the sum of all registered domain names that collectively boosts the ranking of one single name in the search results?

 

[ChrisHirst]

actually you are quite correct only 1 site will stand any chance of rankings all the others will eventually get ignored as duplicates. usually the domain name you want to rank for will be one of the ones buried. take a look in the SEO forum for more advice forum828 In reality for the reasons you state you want more domains it's a waste of time and money!


the correct way to have multiple domains is to have one site the point the names to that site using 301 redirects is the safest.

and using several domains for link building by cross linking them will get you a major penalty with ALL SEs.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[THE4MAN]

Thanks a lot for the info Chris and for the SEO fourm link! Just what I was looking for!

I suspected that there would be a negative impact in trying to implement this. Short term gain/Long term disaster.

Otherwise, every other Webmaster in the world would be implementing these tactics and then we'd be back to *nobody* having the edge in their rankings. Except those folks who have built solid pages and populated it with useful content that attracts users.

Using the 301 redirect seems appropriate for domain names that might be typed into a browser directly by a user. But what if you have other sites linking to these alternate domain names instead of the primary domain name? How will that look to a search engine? Will be interpreted as a link to the literal URL it's redirected to? Or will it index and try to somehow rank the alternate domain name because it's a link from another unrelated Website?

 

[ChrisHirst]

a 301 redirect is invisible to the crawlers\browsers so should be treated as a link to the final URL. However Yahoo currently have a problem with 301 redirects and their crawler where it doesn't always resolve correctly and ends getting treated as a 302/307 redirect. It is something they are working to fix though.

Obviously backlinks where possible should be changed to point at the correct domain.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.