Two domains pointing to same site. Which domain should I redirect?

[Pullo]

Hi,

My client has two domain names:

name-place.de
business_type-name-place.de

e.g.
smith-berlin.de
hairdresser-smith-berlin.de

Both domains point to exactly the same site.
To avoid the "duplicate content" problem (i.e. two copies of the same site under different urls), I want to permanently redirect one domain to the other.

Problem is, which one?
Should I redirect "smith-berlin.de" to "hairdresser-smith-berlin.de" or the other way round?
Which SEO implications does this decision have?

My current idea is to use "hairdresser-smith-berlin.de" as the main domain, as this would catch more generic traffic, i.e. if someone searches for "hairdesser berlin" (although after reading this thread, I'm not so sure).

Would be grateful for any advice.

[Stevie D]

Hi,

My client has two domain names:

name-place.de
business_type-name-place.de

e.g.
smith-berlin.de
hairdresser-smith-berlin.de

Both domains point to exactly the same site.
To avoid the "duplicate content" problem (i.e. two copies of the same site under different urls), I want to permanently redirect one domain to the other.

Problem is, which one?
Should I redirect "smith-berlin.de" to "hairdresser-smith-berlin.de" or the other way round?
Which SEO implications does this decision have?

My current idea is to use "hairdresser-smith-berlin.de" as the main domain, as this would catch more generic traffic, i.e. if someone searches for "hairdesser berlin" (although after reading this thread, I'm not so sure).

The first thing I would say is that it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. Yes, there may be a small benefit to having an exact-match domain name containing keywords, but it isn't a big deal and Google has clamped down on spammers and scammers that were abusing this free lunch before. There are so many other signals that if you're doing other things well, you can get a top ranking with a domain name that is completely meaningless.

As to which of the domains to choose as your primary one, I would suggest looking at the logs and search results, and see which one is more popular and performing better now, and keep that as the primary domain.

[Pullo]

Hi Stevie,

I ended up redirecting the shorter domain to the longer one.
Even if it only makes a small difference in the generic search ranking, that's still a bonus.
I couldn't look at the logs, as I'm just making the site and it's not yet online.

Anyway, thanks for your advice, I appreciate it.
It's good to know I'm not overlooking something obvious.