Many companies today have multiple domain names. For example, if you get thirsty for a soda and decide to visit Coke.com you are automatically over to the company’s official website at Coca-Cola.com.
Purchasing additional domain names and pointing them to your primary website like this can offer many benefits. For example, you can redirect domains for misspelled versions of your company name to the correct website, or provide customers with a simple domain to type in (such as SRLaw.com instead of the user needing to type out SmithfieldAndRabblesteinLawFirm.com).
So there are many uses for having multiple domains, but what is the best way to redirect those domains?
Let’s check out the options one by one:
Javascript: One option is to redirect visitors with javascript code placed in the HTML of a webpage. This option allows you to create a highly optimized landing page and then redirect a visitor to ANY other site, essentially spamming search engines. Consequently, search engines – in their efforts to return top quality results – penalize this approach heavily.
Parked Domains: Another option is to park your domain and point it to the server for your primary website. This will allow visitors to navigate your website through the parked domain. However, it will ALSO allow search engine robots to navigate your website through that same parked domain. Search engines penalize duplicate content on websites, so if they catalogue the two domains as two separate but identical websites then your ranking will drop.
302 Redirect: There is this nifty file called ‘.htaccess’ that tells visiting computers how to handle specific requests. This file can tell web browsers or search engines that a web page has temporarily moved through what is called a 302 redirect. Many times the URL forwarding offered by domain registrars employs this type of redirect. The trouble with it is that – due to its officially temporary nature – some search engines do not properly pass on the credit for incoming links to the final destination URL. This means that important search engine rank is lost.
301 Redirect: We are finally there – the 301 redirect. This is also done through your ‘.htaccess’ file and functions similarly to the 302 redirect, except it is a PERMANENT redirect. This is the approach endorsed by search engines and consequently it transfers the maximum site popularity from the redirected domain to the final domain. But don’t take our word for it; here is Google’s opinion and here it is from Yahoo.
