Strange problem - Whitehat SEO Help required

perfect10

perfect10

Regular Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
323
Reaction score
163
Hi,
Currently I am doing SEO of a company which has good name in its services, I am facing a strange problem.
We have 3 .com domains

1st is for company name (eg.: CompanyName.com) and initially I am optimizing it for same keyword.

2nd is like CompanyNameXXX.com (XXX represents one more word and not adult)

3rd domain is totally different from company name(based on one of the company's product.

All domains have PR3 and the CompanyName.com is more than 5 years old.

What happend earlier, the domain CompanyName.com was not with us so the company bought other 2 domains and those domains have good number of backlinks from some of the authority sites.
After some time the company was able to obtain CompanyName.com and now they want me to optimize it.

The Problem: All three domains have same site running, means same html files are uploaded to all three domains, so if i search Google for my company name other two domains are ranking but not the one I wam working on.

What i think is we are running same sites on all 3 domains so probably big G sees it as duplicate content and it is not ranking my desired domain.
I don't want to loose the benifit of backlinks to other domains, should i just redirect them to the first domain or

I read some where that there is some error 300 file or something like that (Just rough memory) [like error 404] which can inherit all the properties of a domain to new domain including backlink power.

What should I do, any inputs welcome. Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
Advertise on BHW
Yes, use a 301 redirect to redirect the two sites to the one you want to rank. A 301 should pass all the benefits to the main site.
 
sidnettwo said:
Yes, use a 301 redirect to redirect the two sites to the one you want to rank. A 301 should pass all the benefits to the main site.
Click to expand...

Thanks for a prompt reply.. atleast now I am sure about 301 redirect.

Any idea after how long it should start showing its effect.
 
Never put up the same exact content on multiple sites. Your main site might be deindexed from google.

Go to google and type "companyname.com" (whatever it is)

If it's not in Google, then you are deindexed, unless your website is like 2 weeks old and hasn't been indexed to begin with.
 
perfect10 said:
Any idea after how long it should start showing its effect.
Click to expand...

As you know, any traffic effect will be immediate. As to other benefits being transferred, normally that should happen sooner rather than later, but as I understand it at the moment Goog is having some trouble with 301's, so I couldn't really say with any accuracy.

It's still a good idea to focus everything on just one domain though.
 
It will also make it easier for maintaining the website. Once you do the 301 redirects you won't need to keep the duplicate pages anymore. Just put everything on the single domain, use the .htaccess file to do a 301 redirect, and then delete all the html files from the other domains.

Also, for the most part you should do all your future backlink building for the new domain name only. Pretty much the other domain names will only be used to collect the benefit from all your previous seo campaigns. Plan to keep the old domain names indefinatly, as long as there's still bookmarks and backlinks out there (which for some of them is pretty much forever) you'll want to keep the redirection in place.

edit - when you do the redirection be consistent from both sites regarding the use of www. Also on the main site include a redirect to whichever you decided on www or no-www. By doing that it will make the prefered url come up no matter what the user typed in or what backlink they clicked on. Doing this will help a little for branding the company name. Also be sure to include a favicon on the main domain, this will also make companyname seem just that much more branded. Just google for favicon to find some good premade ones or editor to make your own and instructions for including it. Same thing for redirect, just google for it and you'll find the exact code you need to include for each site's htaccess file.
 
Last edited:
bobbylove321 said:
Never put up the same exact content on multiple sites. Your main site might be deindexed from google.

Go to google and type "companyname.com" (whatever it is)

If it's not in Google, then you are deindexed, unless your website is like 2 weeks old and hasn't been indexed to begin with.
Click to expand...


All 3 sites are indexed, but ranking is suffering. All domains have PR3
 
GreyWolf said:
It will also make it easier for maintaining the website. Once you do the 301 redirects you won't need to keep the duplicate pages anymore. Just put everything on the single domain, use the .htaccess file to do a 301 redirect, and then delete all the html files from the other domains.

Also, for the most part you should do all your future backlink building for the new domain name only. Pretty much the other domain names will only be used to collect the benefit from all your previous seo campaigns. Plan to keep the old domain names indefinatly, as long as there's still bookmarks and backlinks out there (which for some of them is pretty much forever) you'll want to keep the redirection in place.

edit - when you do the redirection be consistent from both sites regarding the use of www. Also on the main site include a redirect to whichever you decided on www or no-www. By doing that it will make the prefered url come up no matter what the user typed in or what backlink they clicked on. Doing this will help a little for branding the company name. Also be sure to include a favicon on the main domain, this will also make companyname seem just that much more branded. Just google for favicon to find some good premade ones or editor to make your own and instructions for including it. Same thing for redirect, just google for it and you'll find the exact code you need to include for each site's htaccess file.
Click to expand...


Wow.. Many thanks for all those ideas.. I picked some nuggets from your post.

OK yesterday I placed 301 redirect on both the domain names, now they are redirecting to my main site. That's fine but only the domain is redirecting to the new site and inner pages are just showing Page Not Found that means I will be loosing a lot of traffic which is coming to inner pages. I am in a Fix. most of the organic traffic and referral traffic will be lost! :confused: is there any thing that can be done. I searched G but could not find any solution for this. Do I need a redirect on each page?
 
Use canonical tags... they fix this problem without redirects. Always use canonical tags on every page of every site not matter what... Even if you only have 1 site use them! All sites have dupes. Its the nature of HTTP. You want to poison a competitor in the SERPs. If they don't use canonical tags submit their site using https: then submit their site without the www. then submit their site adding ?youveBeen=owned then submit using #dupesdupes then submit with the index.html then with :80 after the domain ...


In short always use canonical on every page of every site no matter what.
 
ipopbb said:
Use canonical tags... they fix this problem without redirects. Always use canonical tags on every page of every site not matter what... Even if you only have 1 site use them! All sites have dupes. Its the nature of HTTP. You want to poison a competitor in the SERPs. If they don't use canonical tags submit their site using https: then submit their site without the www. then submit their site adding ?youveBeen=owned then submit using #dupesdupes then submit with the index.html then with :80 after the domain ...


In short always use canonical on every page of every site no matter what.
Click to expand...


an you explain how can I use canonical tags on every page of every site?
 
ipopbb said:
Use canonical tags... they fix this problem without redirects. Always use canonical tags on every page of every site not matter what... Even if you only have 1 site use them! All sites have dupes. Its the nature of HTTP. You want to poison a competitor in the SERPs. If they don't use canonical tags submit their site using https: then submit their site without the www. then submit their site adding ?youveBeen=owned then submit using #dupesdupes then submit with the index.html then with :80 after the domain ...


In short always use canonical on every page of every site no matter what.
Click to expand...

the blog post said to use the tag on duplicate pages, you say to use it on each page. So, using it on each page, i'd simply

<link rel="canonical" href="same exact url we're on" /> ?

...and what do you mean, "submit their site"? submit it to where?
 
Yeah canonical are important to keep google from tripping over itself on your site and giving you a dup content penalty (a real one) all because your CMS generated one to many URLs for the same page. I think people been slow to adopt it mostly because they don't know its even out there.

While this isn't a whitehat solution to your 3 site dillema. Might I suggest, cloaking. Take the others that are not primaries and simply cloak the content so you can capture those additional placements, and have all traffic just 301 to the primary company site.

If you are using wordpress, I would recommend WPCloaker as a solution for this.
 
chockomonkey said:
the blog post said to use the tag on duplicate pages, you say to use it on each page . So, using it on each page, i'd simply

<link rel="canonical" href="same exact url we're on" /> ?

. . . and what do you mean, "submit their site"? submit it to where?
Click to expand...

yup . but to clarify "most appropriate version of URL we're on" instead of "same exact url we're on"

Example: all of these are the same page and can be replicated with any page . . . which is most appropriate . . . work it out for every page . . . always

http: // www . domain . com
https: // www . domain . com
http: // domain . com
https: // domain . com
http: // www . domain . com :80
https: // www . domain . com :80
http: // www . domain . com / index . html
https: // www . domain . com / index . html
http: // www . domain . com :80 / index . html
https: // www . domain . com :80 / index . html
http: // www . domain . com #
https: // www . domain . com #
http: // domain . com #
https: // domain . com #
http: // www . domain . com :80#
https: // www . domain . com :80#
http: // www . domain . com / index . html#
https: // www . domain . com / index . html#
http: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html#
https: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html#
http: // www . domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com:80 ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com:80 ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
 
Last edited:
Make sure you do 301s for all of the internal pages too so they point to their equivalent on the main page. Don't just do a general one for the main URL.
 
perfect10 said:
Wow.. Many thanks for all those ideas.. I picked some nuggets from your post.

OK yesterday I placed 301 redirect on both the domain names, now they are redirecting to my main site. That's fine but only the domain is redirecting to the new site and inner pages are just showing Page Not Found that means I will be loosing a lot of traffic which is coming to inner pages. I am in a Fix. most of the organic traffic and referral traffic will be lost! :confused: is there any thing that can be done. I searched G but could not find any solution for this. Do I need a redirect on each page?
Click to expand...
If your sites are set up with the exact same file names then you shouldn't be getting the 404 errors. Can you post exactly what you put in the htaccess files?

(just replace your actual domain name with a generic name for posting on here.)
 
sidnettwo said:
Yes, use a 301 redirect to redirect the two sites to the one you want to rank. A 301 should pass all the benefits to the main site.
Click to expand...

You have to be careful though using error redirects, as they are infact ' error ' calls and what people don't realize is that google and the other search engines don't tell you but, it will work for a limited time. However, whatelse they don't tell you from jumpstreet, which happens to screw up and kill a lot of sites falls to two common factors:

1. Perfect 10 is already experiencing in action with the domains not following through on the redirect because it is redirecting only the domain and not the actual site pages. Sorry bud, that's human error. Will give you a suggestion in just a moment, so read on.

2. They don't tell you that if your site is crawled by enough spiders that read that error, with the site having this issue in perfect10's case more specifically, then those bots will list your domain ' error pages ' and not your proper internal pages, which will make your site devalue in authority and position REALLY quickly and you may not even know why because everything looks fine on the surface of your searches.

Be sure and search your domains in google for ' domainname.whatever + 301 error ' and see how many links you have running through their engine.

The same thing happened with gurus were promoting targeting pages on their 404 error pages, which I still make use of those pages in my sites, however, do NOT index them into the search engines as actual pages, which if you promote them as pages to land on in natural search, select bots look for nothing but error page effects and list them without the ability to see anything else.

Don't fall victim to this common and someone self-destructive practice.

The alternative: a simple php redirect. It will redirect a domain to any given domain you want it to pass to.

Be sure that this is the ONLY code you put in the page, as your redirect page, otherwise, you will have a header error.

Simply name it whatever.php and post it into your site wherever you want.

PHP: 
<?php

header('Location: http://www.example.com/');

?>


Bottom line here: Stop using error pages, they do more harm than good to your sites.
 
ipopbb said:
yup . but to clarify "most appropriate version of URL we're on" instead of "same exact url we're on"

Example: all of these are the same page and can be replicated with any page . . . which is most appropriate . . . work it out for every page . . . always

http: // www . domain . com
https: // www . domain . com
http: // domain . com
https: // domain . com
http: // www . domain . com :80
https: // www . domain . com :80
http: // www . domain . com / index . html
https: // www . domain . com / index . html
http: // www . domain . com :80 / index . html
https: // www . domain . com :80 / index . html
http: // www . domain . com #
https: // www . domain . com #
http: // domain . com #
https: // domain . com #
http: // www . domain . com :80#
https: // www . domain . com :80#
http: // www . domain . com / index . html#
https: // www . domain . com / index . html#
http: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html#
https: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html#
http: // www . domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // domain . com ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com:80 ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com:80 ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
http: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
https: // www . domain . com:80 / index . html ?owned=submittedByCompetitor
Click to expand...

Using port 80 open link feeds like this cause major hack potiential issues though. Just use a simple and secure php redirect and save yourself the time and trouble.
 
Actually, a 301 redirect isn't an error code.
I usually don't disagree with aftershock2020, and this is minor point. He has a lot more experience at this stuff than I do, especially if you want to run an online business he's someone you should listen to. There really are good reasons for using on-page redirects sometimes, so I'm not disagreeing with him about that, but here's the information I use regarding HTTP error codes.

Of all the http status codes, only the 400's and 500's are considered error codes.
HTTP status codes fall into the following categories.
1xx Informational
2xx Success
3xx Redirection
4xx Client Error
5xx Server Error
You can get the specific breakdown of each status code on Wikipedia page, List of HTTP status codes.

Google won't penalize a site for a 301 redirect, in fact they recommend its use. The only time it would be a problem is if you're somehow trying to trick google with it. The situation perfect10 is describing is one of the exact reasons the 301 was implemented, they're simply moving a website from an old domain to a new domain and want to have all their previous backlinks still carry over to the new domain.

The following is taken directly from Google Webmaster Tools Help.
301 redirects

If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:
  • You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
  • People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways - for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com - it's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. You can also use Webmaster Tools to set your preferred domain.
  • You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.
To implement a 301 redirect for websites that are hosted on servers running Apache, you'll need access to your server's .htaccess file. (If you're not sure about your access or your server software, check with your webhoster.) For more information, consult the Apache .htaccess Tutorial and the Apache URL Rewriting Guide. If your site is hosted on a server running other software, check with your hoster for more details.

updated 9/21/2009 ​
Click to expand...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LR8H8pn1M&feature=player_embedded
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top