Wrong way to alias domain names

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matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Wrong way to alias domain names

Post by matthijs »

So I have this website existing for 5 years, say thelongdomainname.com. Now the client wanted an easier shorter name so he registered domain.com. The webhost made the shorter version an alias for the longer version.

Since it's bad SEO to have multiple domains point to the same content, I wanted to do a 301 redirect in htaccess, from the new, shorter name to the existing longer name. Since the longer name has all the right keywords in it and has good ranking, I did it like that instead of redirecting the old long name to the new short one.

I tried:

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?domain\.nl$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.thelongdomainname.com/$1 [R=301,L]
However, not working. Wondering why I discovered this: the webhost put this in place of the new domain:

Code: Select all

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>comain.com</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET ROWS="*,0">
<FRAME SRC="http://www.thelongdomainname.com/" NORESIZE>
<NOFRAMES>
Your browser does not support frames.
</NOFRAMES>
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>
This seems like a very weird and wrong way to do this. What do you think? Why would they do it like this instead of using a normal alias or redirect?


(p.s. I placed this question here in general discussion because it's a bit of SEO, server stuff and webhost stuff.)
josh
DevNet Master
Posts: 4872
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:23 pm
Location: Palm beach, Florida

Re: Wrong way to alias domain names

Post by josh »

You could start by enabling the rewrite log and posting the relevant log entries.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Wrong way to alias domain names

Post by matthijs »

I don't think I can enable those. And my main question was about the use of frames. Why a host would do that. It's just as much work as putting up an alias or redirect. And SEO wise it's very bad to do it like this. Also for users it's very bad. I have done all the effort to create user-friendly URLs. Now with the frame, if the user visits the site they can't copy, print or see any url.
josh
DevNet Master
Posts: 4872
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:23 pm
Location: Palm beach, Florida

Re: Wrong way to alias domain names

Post by josh »

Because you could buy a domain for content for which you do not control the name server with that technique. Good for newbs. Usually the user is presented with several options when buying the domain and your client chose to pick the warm & fuzzy option. Fun for you.

There should be an option for a real redirect. Tell him [client] to redirect not alias.
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