How can I have a duplicate of my website without hurting the SEO of the original website?

I need some tips on how to hide my website from search engines. I want it to be only accessible by typing the URL directly. I know that using "User-agent: * Disallow: /" in the robots.txt file won't do the trick all the time and that some search engines just ignore it.

Do you have any suggestions on how I can make it work?

By the way, the reason behind this is that I want to create a duplicate of my website on another domain without messing up its SEO. I can't protect the duplicate with a password because I still want people to be able to access it through the URL.

Thanks for your help!

upload/restore the website to another webhost but don't re-point the A records for the domain for the website to the new address. Also don't assign a temporary or spare domain for the dev site.

instead on your PC/Mac add a host file entry to resolve domain.com and www.domain.com to the IP address of the DEV web host.

this way, only the device with the host file will be able to access the website and see any changes.

also just as an extra measure, block search engine spiders in the robots.txt.

Block Google Bots?
using the following meta tag: <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow">.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/block-indexing

myk33 said:

upload/restore the website to another webhost but don't re-point the A records for the domain for the website to the new address. Also don't assign a temporary or spare domain for the dev site.

instead on your PC/Mac add a host file entry to resolve domain.com and www.domain.com to the IP address of the DEV web host.

this way, only the device with the host file will be able to access the website and see any changes.

also just as an extra measure, block search engine spiders in the robots.txt.

Click to expand...

I want the duplicate website to be accessible by anyone who will have the link, how can I do that? I think it will be even easier to achieve than what you thought I was looking for (having the duplicate accessible only by me – which is no what I'm looking for). Also, will the line that I mentioned in my question be enough to block search engine spiders?

xReminisce said:

Block Google Bots?
using the following meta tag: <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow">.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/block-indexing

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Is that enough to completely avoid the duplicate site messing with my SEO?

Prodmoistwood said:

Is that enough to completely avoid the duplicate site messing with my SEO?

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Nothing will be full proof, even if you ask for it to be completely de-indexed.
Google does whatever it wants.
What you COULD potentially do ontop is to set each and every URL to have your main URL as Canonical URLs. Which will further strongly discourage it to be indexed.
But once again, you can only do so much, google will still do whatever google wants.

xReminisce said:

Nothing will be full proof, even if you ask for it to be completely de-indexed.
Google does whatever it wants.
What you COULD potentially do ontop is to set each and every URL to have your main URL as Canonical URLs. Which will further strongly discourage it to be indexed.
But once again, you can only do so much, google will still do whatever google wants.

Click to expand...

Got you, so I guess I won't take that risk.

Let me explain why I'm looking for this setup. My previous profile on Facebook Business Manager went down, and unfortunately, it had my website linked to it. Now, I have a new profile and BM, and I still need to direct people to my company's website because it's a crucial part of my sales funnel. So, my plan is to create a duplicate website on a new domain exclusively for Facebook, but I don't think that I want to take the foolish risk of messing up my SEO. Do you have any suggestions?

Prodmoistwood said:

Got you, so I guess I won't take that risk.

Let me explain why I'm looking for this setup. My previous profile on Facebook Business Manager went down, and unfortunately, it had my website linked to it. Now, I have a new profile and BM, and I still need to direct people to my company's website because it's a crucial part of my sales funnel. So, my plan is to create a duplicate website on a new domain exclusively for Facebook, but I don't think that I want to take the foolish risk of messing up my SEO. Do you have any suggestions?

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Cloaking would probably be an option

xReminisce said:

Cloaking would probably be an option

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Won't that put my new Facebook setup at risk?

Prodmoistwood said:

Won't that put my new Facebook setup at risk?

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Yes, it would.
But, depends on what you mean "went down".

Prodmoistwood said:

My previous profile on Facebook Business Manager went down,

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For example, if it got banned/blacklisted etc.
The entire operation you are running is probably at risk as it is, no matter what you do.

xReminisce said:

Yes, it would.
But, depends on what you mean "went down".

For example, if it got banned/blacklisted etc.
The entire operation you are running is probably at risk as it is, no matter what you do.

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Yeah you're right.
My personal account got restricted because it was new and I went too fast with creating all the assets.
I deleted that account and opened a new one (with new IP and fingerprint).
Before deleting the restricted personal account, Facebook didn't allow me to delete the BM, so I deleted the domain from the BM, and changed the email to gmail instead of my busines email, but I forgot to verify the email change, so the email tied to that BM is a business email...

Do you think I can use my domain with the BM or is there a chance it will restrict it? I know that facebook still somehow remembers that domain because when I went to create a new BM and used a business email with the same domain ([email protected]), I got a prompt saying something like "Are you sure? there's a business manager for that business".

I didn't really do anything wrong by I'm kinda stuck with that domain situation.

Prodmoistwood said:

Yeah you're right.
My personal account got restricted because it was new and I went too fast with creating all the assets.
I deleted that account and opened a new one (with new IP and fingerprint).
Before deleting the restricted personal account, Facebook didn't allow me to delete the BM, so I deleted the domain from the BM, and changed the email to gmail instead of my busines email, but I forgot to verify the email change, so the email tied to that BM is a business email...

Do you think I can use my domain with the BM or is there a chance it will restrict it? I know that facebook still somehow remembers that domain because when I went to create a new BM and used a business email with the same domain ([email protected]), I got a prompt saying something like "Are you sure? there's a business manager for that business".

I didn't really do anything wrong by I'm kinda stuck with that domain situation.

Click to expand...

with that domain, its been fingerprinted (recently too) that there was an attempt to use it.
FB is pretty anal about it all.
Not totally a Facebook Expert but if you head over to the Facebook section and post your question, surely there is someone who is knowledgeable in the said subject.
Maybe there is something better to do aswell.

xReminisce said:

with that domain, its been fingerprinted (recently too) that there was an attempt to use it.
FB is pretty anal about it all.
Not totally a Facebook Expert but if you head over to the Facebook section and post your question, surely there is someone who is knowledgeable in the said subject.
Maybe there is something better to do aswell.

Click to expand...

Alright, thank you for your help and time.