May 10, 2005 -- If you are carrying out search engine optimisation your site for high positioning in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN you need to make sure you don't
get banned by accident
In the spirit of fair play and providing depth in its results, Google frowns on duplicate content. Some web site owners purchase multiple domains and copy their content for both domains.
They mistakenly think that having another domain with the same content is just going to replicate their success, but unfortunately it isn't that easy!
Another more common mistake is to have multiple domains pointing at the same site - this can be as simple and unintentional as having www.refreshedmedia.co.uk point to www.refreshedmedia.com. Unfortunately the outcome is to end up with 2 copies of your
site in the search engines and they don't like it.
What's the solution In most cases, a 301 redirect is your best bet. It's a server-side redirect most administrators can handle in a few minutes. In effect, it's a proper way of telling
search engines to ignore the content from the redirected website, and just take it from the original.
You may have many good reasons for owning multiple domains, including brand protection. For example, we own refreshedmedia.com AND refreshedmedia.co.uk for the simple reason that we don't
want someone else feeding off our success and diverting our customers away, simply by purchasing 1 domain for a few .
So how do you keep Google and friends happy
If you secure more than one domain, redirect the other sites to your main website using a 301 redirect, or use the extra domains for unique content (perhaps showcasing other products or
services).
For more information please contact our sales department or call 01202 242200.