Redirect for new domain with worse keywords

Marketing
1

Reading about having multiple domains here it is clear that having only one preferred domain and doing 301 redirects to that one from any others seems the best way.

However, what I have now is the following:

  • An existing 5 yr old site with good ranking and good keywords in the url
    (say bipolardisorderscentre dot com)
    The domain is good with the keywords and ranks well. But it’s a difficult and long name so for a user a bit difficult to remember and type
  • The client bought a new domain, a very short, easy to remember and type url (say bipol dot com)

What should I do? Redirect 301 the long old domain to the new one? Or redirect the new one to the long existing one? I admit the shorter is easier to type in and remember. But the long version does contain exactly the keywords for which the site should (and does) rank well.

2

@stevie: thanks. There is no server on bipol.com however. There’s only one server, bipoldisorders.com.

Are you saying that if I have


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\.bipolardisordercenter\\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.bipolardisordercenter.com/$1 [L,R=301]

on the server bipolardisordercenter.com that that would not work?

3

If you want action to be taken when users go to a bipol.com URL, you need to put the code in the .htaccess file on bipol.com, not bipolardisordercenter.com!

4

An update: I’m trying to do a redirect with htaccess. But it’s not working.

So bipol.com is an alias of bipolardisordercenter.com (the webhost set that up). the actual site is hosted on bipolardisordercenter.com

I put these lines in my htaccess file in the root of bipolardisordercenter.com


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bipol\\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.bipolardisordercenter.com/$1 [L,R=301]

But when visiting bipol.com I’m not redirected. Is it not possible to do it like this?

I also tried:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\.bipolardisordercenter\\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.bipolardisordercenter.com/$1 [L,R=301]

not working either

5

Yes, a 301 redirect. The easiest way to do this, unless it’s a small site, would be using mod_rewrite to remap the complete URL, eg bipolar.com/folder/page.htm redirecting to bipolardisorderscentre.com/folder/page.htm.

6

I agree with stevie that keeping up two sites instead of one just for search engines does not make sense. In this specific case even updating one with a bit of fresh content now and then is difficult.

But back to the main question: Rob suggests keeping the short name as the main one. But wouldn’t it be better if the main site (to which you get redirected from an alias) is the one with the nice keywords in the domain name?

And Stevie: I asked about the redirect from the alias: you meant with a 301?

7

Why would you go into competition with yourself?

For a start, it’s confusing to customers if there are two different sites that basically do the same thing but with different words, and are run by the same organisation.

Second, it’s likely to hurt your search rankings, because you’re not concentrating all your efforts into one site but spreading them across two, so each site will appear lower down the rankings than your single site did previously.

Third, it’s a load of unnecessary work to design a second site and then keep it up to date. You’re in serious danger of the two sites getting out of sync and one of them having out of date information. Every update you make, you have to do twice.

Fourth, it starts to look dodgy to search engines if you have two sites that are too similar. At the very least it looks like one is a copycat site, at worst it looks like scamming or “black hat”.

Don’t do it. Concentrate on making your one site as good as it can possibly be - for visitors and for search engines.

8

Why not just make another site with the new domain - different template, keywords, etc? Then you will have 2 websites with varying SEO. Perhaps one of the sites will appeal more to a different search engine. I see this as a positive!

9

[QUOTE=matthijsA;4635887]@stevie: thanks for the reply: so you mean a 301 redirect from the new (short) domain to the (longer) existing one?

/QUOTE]
I think you need to decide which one would you like to use. In any case you will not lose anything. I assume better have short domain name as main domain name.

10

@stevie: thanks for the reply: so you mean a 301 redirect from the new (short) domain to the (longer) existing one?

The webhost currently has made the new one an alias for the old one. So if you type the new url you get to see the same site as the existing url. Even with and without the www you get to see the same site, instead of redirects.

11

I would keep the existing domain name and set up the “alias” to redirect to the existing name/URL. While using 301s should maintain your ranking in Google, you can experience a temporary dip - and visitors can be confused by long-established URLs changing.