Multi Domain Strategies

[Mike_Scott]

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Hi

I'm running a number of sites with DOT COM domain names.
I also own the DOT COUK 'partner' domains for these sites.

Currently I'm just re-directing the .co.uk's straight to the .com's

Some sites are ranking better than others.........
Is this good practice? ( Am I hurting my rankings in the serps by doing this? )
ie) Would this be classed as duplicate content?

I guess its probably better to slap unique content on the co.uk's and add relevant text links, but I don't have time to do this on all my sites.

What other good strategies are there for getting the most from multi domains?

Thanks
Mike

[tbp]

Its good practice not to run the site on the .co.uk and .com's, because as you've said it creates duplicate content, so you've done the right thing there.

Make sure that the redirect is being properly done from the co.uk to .com , it should be a 301 (permanent) redirect.

[Mike_Scott]

Probably a dumb question...
But...
How do I tell if its a 301?

I'm redirecting straight from my host using an Http redirect thats all I know.

[tbp]

It mostly likely is a 301 if its done through a hosts control panel.

You can check though with something like the Live HTTP headers plugin for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829

Alternatively, there is an excellent package called Fiddler 2 which shows you whats sent between a server and your browser. You just run it, just your browser as normal and it logs all traffic, along with the headers etc:

Fiddler Web Debugger - A free web debugging tool

[Mike_Scott]

Excellent, thanks for the help as always.

I'm confident its a 301 like you said + I'm not doing any damage, which is good

May I ask is this the way you use your domains or is there a better strategy?

[tbp]

Yes, I normally do the same thing.

Google has got better now, and does recognise duplicate content from a site with different domain extensions, and doesn't penalise it. However, it won't list both sites in the index, and chooses itself which is the "main" domain, and the one it should list in the index. This isn't always the one you would pick yourself though, so a 301 redirect guarantees the one you want is indexed.

I saw this with a clients site the other day. They had domain.co.uk and www . domain . co.uk both going to the site, as an alias, so page.htm would appear under:

domain.co.uk/page.htm
www.domain.co.uk/page.htm

This looks like its 2 different sites to google, and it ended up picking the domain.co.uk version as the one it should list in the indexed. The client wasn't happy about this as they wanted the www. to appear, as its what people recognise most.

[Mike_Scott]

Then I'm happy to leave it the way it is.

If its good enough for you, then it will certainly do for me.

Cheers :tup Thanks for your time.

[Brendon]

>> How do I tell if its a 301?

Use an HTTP viewer - these will show exactly what data a browser request will get as a return, including the HTTP error code, cookie contents (if any) etc. Very useful tool for several things. I usually use Rex Swains viewer (Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer)

>> It mostly likely is a 301 if its done through a hosts control panel.

Maybe, but it's best not to assume it. On Windoze boxes especially, 203 is the standard forwarding method, and you can't always be sure how a specific hosting outfit sets up their boxes - it's always worth checking EXACTLY how the forwarding is being done. There are hosts out there who use wierd and wonderful forwarding methods because they know nothing about SEO issues - and some who do it because they DO know about SEO...

Few things are more depressing than realising your domain is being spanked because the host is framing your subdomains