Domain Redirect Question?
Posted by Thomas | Posted in questions | Posted on 30-09-2009
Tags: Domain, Question, Redirect
3
My website is http://www.familycoats.com, that points to http://www.cafepress.com/familycoats
The reason I got the domain is so that people could remember it easier because it is shorter.
I paid somebody for SEO advice, and they told me that this is a bad thing because search engines will consider it as multiple content.
Is this true? Is there anyway I can change this?
I want to keep the domain name, but I don’t want my rankings to suffer. As of now, my rankings are really bad.
Ok, your SEO expert is only partially right.
You have a 302 redirect from familycoats.com to the cafepress page. The issue here is that a 302 redirect is a temporary redirect and has been used in the past for deceptive search engine practices.
By now, the big 3 search engines are all aware of the 302 redirect and while you may not be penalized for having the 302, it’s most likely stifling your rankings. Change the 302 (temporary redirect) to a 301 (permanent) redirect.
The SEO person said that there was a duplication/ multiple content issue, and that’s not very likely. So, they were right in the fact that it’s hurting you, just not why it was hurting you.
As a side bit of advice, the left hand navigation looks repetitive and spammy. You dont need to repeat the same keywords over and over again. It’s the principle that if everything is bold, nothing stands out. The SE’s see each repetition of the exact same keyword as spammy. Keep it simple, design for the user.
Secondly, if you can shorten the content at the top of the page and add product specific descriptions, that would be a much more search engine friendly and user friendly way to get your product across. What you have now is “ok”… but to be honest, I wouldn’t read it, and the search engines are very good at mimicking user behavior. Use targeted descriptions and not a blanket description, and you should see some better results.
Now, I’m assuming you want to keep the Cafepress page and dont want to host your own unique site. If you DO want to host your own site and domain, the principles still apply, but they get much bigger.
You need to host your domain at webhosting provider say http://aplis.net/
Now in your webhosting provider file manager, you need to put a file named .htaccess which has a line like
redirect 301 cafepress.com/…
You may also contact a web designer in case you need any help , check websites like http://getafreelnacer.com/
The advice of DigitalDarth is right on.
Good luck!