Many Domain names pointing to one website

[BaltimoreAgent]

Hello everyone!

Stupid questions coming up...

I've read that it is not a good idea to have many domain names pointing to 1 website because the site will get penalized. When they say pointing to the same website, does that mean pointing to main page of the website? What if another domain name pointed to a different page of the website?

For example, I have my main general page. Then I create a new page just for seller information, and then another just for buyer information. Can I point my seller domain name to the seller page, the buyer domain name to the buyer page, and my regular domain name to my front page? Or is that considered pointing all those domain names to the same site?

Reason I ask is because I would like to create individual pages for my seller's listings and have a domain of their address pointing to that page. So if I had 10 listings with 10 of their own pages (all under my website) and each one had a personal domain name - is that all considered pointing to the same website?

I'm sure the answer is probably simple but I just can't figure it out. I must be overthinking things too much here ... or am I?? Help!

[avonreal]

you don't get penalised for having too many links, you might get penalized if you have too many links in a short space of time.

[BaltimoreAgent]

Thank you for your response!

So just to confirm... it is OK for me to have different domain names for different pages of my website so long as I don't create the links all at the same time.

So, for example, I can have my "thebaltimoreagent" for my main (index) site and then a domain (mybaltimorebuyers) pointing to a page I created for my buyers, and then a domain (mybaltimoresellers) pointing to another page which I created for my sellers, and another domain (mybaltimorefsbo) pointing to my fsbos, and another domain (mybaltimorehomestagingtips) pointing to a tips page that I created. NOTE: these aren't actual domains - just using them as an example.

Anyway, it's is ok for me to do the above and not be thought of by google to have too many domains/links going to 1 website - just so long as I don't put all those domain links all at one time. Correct?

[Dan Connolly]

You don't want to have two different domains pointing to the same page. So if you have a domain pointing to your FSBO page and also have a link on the Home Page pointing to the same FSBO page using a different URL (the page name) then you will have the potential of penalties for duplicate content. You need to use a 301 redirect to forward the second, third and fourth domain names. Not a 302, just a 301.

[RonnieG]

There is no penalty for dup content if all of the domain name redirects are 301 (moved permanently) redirects, even if you have 20 domains pointed to the same page, your home page for example.

[BaltimoreAgent]

Oooh Boy! I think I may be way out of my league here. I read up on 301 redirects (since I had no clue as to what that was) and even after that, I don't know how to do the 301 redirect since I don't even know what type of server I have. My website is a site provided for us by my company (Keller Williams). I bought my domain name from yahoo and just have it forwarded to my KW website. I don't know about ASCII or Perl servers (if I'm even saying it right).

Oh well. Thanks for everyone's help! I guess I won't be getting any extra domain names that point to my other pages. I see now that I'll just have to get a webmaster but I've got to wait on that until I can afford it.

Thanks again. :-(

[RonnieG]

In the case of domains, 301 redirects are generally done by the domain name registrar. If your domain registrar has a simple domain management utility, like GoDaddy does, setting up the 301 redirect should not require any technical knowledge or expertise. You just need to know where the redirect function is in the domain management utility. It also does not require any technical support at the target domain. You just need to know the url of the target page.

[DonnaYVH]

In the case of domains, 301 redirects are generally done by the domain name registrar. If your domain registrar has a simple domain management utility, like GoDaddy does, setting up the 301 redirect should not require any technical knowledge or expertise. You just need to know where the redirect function is in the domain management utility. It also does not require any technical support at the target domain. You just need to know the url of the target page.

HI Ron, So is it safe to assume that it could be beneficial to have other domain names point to your main domain name?

Example: Main domain name: KathySells
301 re-direct domain names: OakParkRealEstate
OakParkHomes

[RonnieG]

How beneficial may be debatable. Only the primary (target) domain has a real presence in the search engine indexes. Secondary domains pointing to the same website home page become "vanity" domain names, perhaps useful for some marketing purposes, but no benefit as far as search engines go. This goes back to Google and other SE's use of only the canonical urls (the final target and unique url that any redirected url may refer to) for their indexing, primarily to eliminate duplicate content, which is too much of a technical discussion for this thread. For example, I have a couple of domain names pointed to a community specific home valuation pages on my website that I sometimes do postcard mailings for. The community specific domain name goes on the postcard, and the consumer lands on a home valuation request form built specifically for that community when they enter that domain name. I used to use redirected domains as my landing page urls for AdWords, taking advantage of a loophole in their TOS that has since been closed, but since that no longer works, I have been letting those domain names expire as they come up for renewal.

[ericbramlett]

you don't get penalised for having too many links, you might get penalized if you have too many links in a short space of time.

Has anyone ever shown any proof of this? There are so many natural ways that you can garner thousands of links in a very short period of time...namely, going popular on digg. This is a claim that seems to be generally accepted by a lot of people, and I just don't buy it.

If that were really the case, then all the SPAM (sites performing above mine) in the index would be in trouble.