So our current domain name is the brand name (these are made up):
www.speedster.co.nz
but we just purchased this additional domain because it contains the keywords that we’re targeting:
www.fastgocarts.co.nz
For SEO, what is the best way to point the new domain to the main domain? attached is a picture of the options my host control panel gives me… is cloacking or redirection best?
If I were doing my site I would redirect the url rather than cloak it. (Assuming I am working the white hat side of things) Your business is the speedster.co.nz and that is the site you want to be sticky for your customers. If you use the keyword url in things like adwords or links on social media sites ect. the cloaked url may/will (depending on who you talk to) be found out by the search engines and you will not enjoy the benefit of the incoming link to your main site and will be/maybe disallowed (or charged much more per click) by adwords. I may also set of phishing alerts on some computers.
Cloaking is advised only if you have a really solid reason to go that route. Reasons like masking an affiliate url, creating dynamic links in an e-book or downloadable pdf and even those can be done simply with re-directs.
Ok, thanks for the valuable feedback there.
Would it be a silly idea to duplicate just the homepage and put that on both domains. Then have all links from the secondary domain homepage point to the main site?
With our particular site, the homepage is very simple and not likely to be bookmarked, it’s more of an intro/gateway but it is where most of our keywords are, making it the main search engine entry point
Ideally your links from the search engine to your main site would enter on the page that is most relevant for the keyword that the link is talking about. So if your keyword is “sprint kart” that would link to a page about sprint kart racing.
I am working on a very limited amount of information here so bear with me.
If the secondary url is more keyword relevant to your industry or niche or perhaps better describes the mindset of your customers and prospects then you may consider making that the main site url and make your branded url more of a corporate site and customer service site for your products or redirect that url to the secondary url.
If you duplicate the site then you are splitting the traffic value to the site with respect to the search engines. Not to mention the loss of incoming link value that sending a link to a separate site would mean.
What would your perceived gain be by setting up the duplicate url as its own site vs a re-direct to your main site.
You’re creating more work than you need. I honestly think your strategy around this domain is slightly backwards. I would simply have it redirected to your main domain.
It’s not going to capture any traffic by itself unless it has its own content and its own back-links. Making it a duplicate of your main site dilutes the effectiveness of your main site and you end up competing against yourself in the search engines.
You could create a duplicate of the homepage and use the rel=canonical element, but then the new domain won’t even appear in the search results this way.
I’d simply have it redirected (for anti-competitive reasons), and target those terms on your main site.