Perhaps there is a wealth of information out there on domain aliasing and the effects it has on SEO, but I sure couldn’t find it.
Domain aliasing is by no means a new trick. It’s been used for years as a way to direct Web traffic to particular sites on the same domain.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, I’ll be happy to briefly explain it.
It short, domain aliasing allows you to host a Web site on one domain, and then direct other domain names to the same site. For example, if you visited originalsite.com, but wanted to direct secondarysite.com to the same Web site, you could use domain aliasing.
This is possible through a very simple server configuration. Both domain names (originalsite.com and secondarysite.com) head to the exact same place on the server. The Name Alias (on your server) will point to your Name Server (where your Website is hosted). Consequently, whatever is in that HTML file will appear on both sites, rendering both exactly the same.
The question is what sort of impact, if any, this has on search engine optimization.
Here is where I ran into some problems with my research. There doesn’t seem to be much out there about actual domain aliasing and the effects on SEO. I found some interesting posts about a 301 redirect and SEO, but that’s not what I wanted to discuss. Perhaps the best article was posted here by Zen Zoomie.
Under a forum, I found an older post about domain aliasing and SEO, and the general consensus seems to be to stick with a 301 redirect.
Most of what I read about domain aliasing, domain mapping, and indexing seemed to say the duplicate content created by the alias site would harm a Web site’s results within organic searches.
Considering the goal of search engine optimization is to improve the SERP, I have concluded the best approach for this kind of work is a 301 redirect. This means a permanent change in where a URL will take you. When you type in secondarysite.com, your URL will actually change to originalsite.com, and that’s where the content will be.
Does this mean you won’t have two sites out there to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that includes your business information? Yes.
But that’s not a bad thing. Virtually all search engines frown on duplicate content. The best case scenario for sites with duplicate content is that one will rank and the other will not. It’s entirely possible both sites will suffer in SERPs.
To avoid a negative response to your search engine optimization efforts, I would strongly recommend a permanent 301 redirect for a secondary domain that points to the primary. Don’t let both domains suffer because you want to “juice” the search engines for a slightly higher rank.
By: Zack S.
