Pointing new domains to existing domain

[rjjj111]

i have a website i have had for several years now. a couple of months ago i bought a couple of older domain names. i want to point them to my main domain but am concerned about Google thinking they are duplicate content of something.

any problems in doing this?

[stymiee]

You'll need to do a 301 redirect or else you'll go into duplicate content hell. Fortunately this is not difficult to do. You'll need to add the following lines of code to a file called .htaccess and place it in the root directory of the website:

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

[Maloney]

301 is the best way to go (as noted above), but you don't need to host it or fool around with htaccess if you don't want to. Many domain registrars have the domain forwarding tool right in your account. If you deal with godaddy (for example), look for domain forwarding and then go from there.

It's free and hassle-free .

[stymiee]

And it will also cause duplicate content in Google which may result in your site being ranked poorly or not at all. Always use a 301 redirect when pointing multiple domains to one website.