Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
-
Hey,
I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck.
So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G.
It looks like this:
www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain
I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com
I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com.
My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record.
What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless?
Thanks,
Anthony
-
Michael, you might want to open a new question for this, as old threads don't get bumped when new content appears.
If you don't have any content or anything on the exact match domains, the 301 really isn't going to help you.
-
Is it black-hat SEO to send bluewidget.com, redwidget.com, and greewidget.com to widgetbrands.com (send all to the same page, or same domain home0?
Since the domain name matching with keywords is important, this strategy makes sense. It is allowed? How many domains can I 301 redirect to widgetbrands.com if I want to target all the colors of widgets?
-
Hi Anthony,
I'm going through older questions in Q&A. Were you able to sort this out, or are you still looking for answers?
-
When I've needed to do this, I've been able to go to the control panel at my registrar (godaddy, namecheap, 1and1, etc) and have those domains forwarded with a 301.
-
If you are doing this at the the DNS level (i.e. CNAME) you actually want an A Record to point all the domain names to the one IP Address. You would then need to do a ReWrite to handle the 301 redirects. You would also need to ensure you verify all the domains in Google Webmaster Tools and set the prefered domain to www.mainsite.com (note you we need to use settings -> prefered domain in site configuration). I would also add a canonical meta tag to the head of each page.
Since you have the .au is you site Australia wide or international. If it is Australia wide you should have the .com.au as the main web address.
-
Do you have access to .htaccess on your server?
You could set a simple redirect to redirect all traffic to your website root to the domain you want.
Try this.... http://www.affiliatebeginnersguide.com/domains/redirection.html
-
Hi
A CNAME is not the best way to point a 301 redirect. ( often called poor mans redirect) To know which way to make a 301 rewrite, you first have to know if you are using an Apache server, you are working with PHP,ASP, Cold fusion or ISS.
-
Hi there
Actualy your website host should be abel to handle this for you, if not you have a seriusly shitty surplier
What you need to have them set up is more commonly known as a "domain alias" so you set up the webhotel with the primary domain and then have them set the other domains up to be aliases to that domain.
Or you could use the geeky way out. Set up all the domains to point to the server on where your site is hosted. Have your host setup your server to accept the in coming domains. and then setup the .htaccess (on appache platform) to 301 all other (including subdomains www) to the primary domain.
But the easier way out is clearly to have your hosting company set it up for you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Meta name Author
Hello! I have a problem. I'm using Rank Math for WordPress. But I can’t configure a basic thing such as <meta name="author" content="" />. I had to insert this code manually using the hook. Does anyone know a normal way to do this markup? Example page: https://b-shoes.com/foot-shaped-shoes/ Thank you!
Technical SEO | | WayneM.0 -
Truncated product names
Due to the restraints of category page layout many of the products in certain categories have the product titles truncated, in some cases missing off 2-5 words depending on the product in question. The product name which displays on the category page is lifted straight from the product page itself, so not possible to do something like "product name including spec..." to place ... to indicate a bit more. I'm assuming not but just wanted to check that Google will not frown on this. Text is not being hidden it just does not render fully in the restricted space. So there is a scenario of 'bits of' text in the source not displaying on the rendered page.
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Schema.org product offer with a price range, or multiple offers with single prices?
I'm implementing Schema.org, (JSON-LD), on an eCommerce site. Each product has a few different variations, and these variations can change the price, (think T-shirts, but blue & white cost $5, red is $5.50, and yellow is $6). In my Schema.org markup, (using JSON-LD), in each Product's Offer, I could either have a single Offer with a price range, (minPricd: $5, maxPrice $6), or I could add a separate Offer for each variation, each with its own, correct, price set. Is one of these better than the other? Why? I've been looking at the WooCommerce code and they seem to do the single offer with a price range, but that could be because it's more flexible for a system that's used by millions of people.
Technical SEO | | 4RS_John1 -
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0