Domain Forwarding Question

[Name Trader]

Is there a right and wrong way to forward one domain to another to avoid any duplicate content issues with Google. Anything else to consider?

Should I forward the domain permanently or temporarily, and with or without masking.

The purpose of the forwarding is for several domains to share one website.

I presume using my registrars forwarding service is the best way to go?

 

[DylanButler]

Your best bet is to use permanent redirects, and don't "double hop" - i.e. don't redirect oldsite1.com to oldsite2.com to newsite.com; instead, redirect oldsite1.com to newsite.com, and oldsite2.com to newsite.com. It really doesn't matter which method you employ to effect the redirects - as long as the spider is correctly sent a 301 followed by 200, you are good.

 

[Name Trader]

OK Dylan. Thanks. I wondered why this question wasn't getting any replies.

 

[Rado_Ch]

Wouldn't a simple "parking" of the domains in the host's cPanel do the trick? As far as I understand you want multiple domains to open one and the same website. So it does sound like you simply need cPanel -> Parked Domains . The 301 redirects would be appropriate if you redirect the content from one domain to another. Of course, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong as I might have misinterpreted the question (a little late here, yawn)

 

[Name Trader]

What are the differences with 1) Forwarding using your Registrar, and 2) Parking at you WebHost?

For me. I feel it would be more straightforward to use the Registrar forwarding, and presumably quicker, because you are not forwarding to your WebHost and then having them forward to the ultimate destination. Or am I using wrong thinking?

 

[Rado_Ch]

I am sure we are talking about practically same things, it will just take a little more explanations to see if we are on the same page

Let me see if I get this straight. Just to be sure you want to have a Website A that is opened with Domain A, Domain B and Domain C for example? If that is the case its pretty simple:

You have Website A on your account with your webhost. Lets say you bought the package with a free domain tied to it (Domain A). All good. Now you want to have other domain names opening the same site. Now, it doesn't matter if Domain B, C, D... are registered through your webhost, or with 3 different registrars. What you need is to simply get the nameservers for your hosting account and go into your domain panel(s) for B, C, D where you change the DNS settings to point to those nameservers. Once this is done, you simply go into your webhost's cPanel and add Domain B, C, D as parked. This way, whichever domain is typed it will open Website A. There are no redirections of content, nor masking involved, quite a simple procedure that webhosts should be able to help or handle very easily.

If its anything else you had in mind, excuse the long explanations

 

[Name Trader]

Yes. That is exactly what I want to do.

However, DomainA is an account on my WebHosting. Not the main WebHost account. DomainB-D haven't been setup with WebHosting. Will this parking still work?

I wonder. If there is no redirection, how does Google know these are not duplicate content and not penalize them as duplicate content.

 

[Rado_Ch]

However, DomainA is an account on my WebHosting. Not the main WebHost account. DomainB-D haven't been setup with WebHosting. Will this parking still work?

I am just trying to understand this part. What do you mean by "...an account on my WebHosting, not the main WebHost account...". Does that mean that DomainA is not the main domain of the account, but just an addon domain? Still, I think both ways it should be problem to park the additional domains through the cPanel.

As for the redirection question, you have got a point. Previously the rules were more vague and such parks worked differently. This has changed in the recent years. Even though all the domains are practically opening one and the same content (which exists only once) Google might still perceive it as duplicate. This is why, even with the parking option, I always recommend doing a 301 redirect in other to cover your bases :gl:

 

[igalvez]

In the end, you'd want to perform an HTTP 301 Permanent redirect from http://oldwebsite.tld/ to http://newwebsite.tld/

From what I have seen, redirect/forwarding services will perform a HTTP 302 Temporary redirect by default unless you explicitly set it to do an HTTP 301 redirect.

So, you need to watch out for that.

 

[Name Trader]

So you are suggesting to do the 301 Redirect from my Registrar? This would eliminate any risk of a duplicate content penalty? Google would rank the domain I am redirecting to, and not rank at all the redirecting domain? Is that correct?

 

[igalvez]

Technically, it does not matter which server performs the 301 Redirect. It could be your registrar's server or your own elsewhere. To clarify, most registrar's offer a "URL Redirect/Forward" service which simply points the domain to one of their server's (via DNS) which then handles the redirection.

So, if it would be easier to set up the redirect through your registrar, then that will work.

A 301 Redirect tells search engines that the redirect is permanent and to consider both URL's as the same website (with the destination being the main address, of course).

So, YES.

 

[Name Trader]

Thanks for the reply. It was the answer I was looking for, before proceeding.