Maybe I'm Just Thick !

[Canadave]

This may not be the right place to ask…. If so please excuse me.

I know the topic has been covered over and over but I find it confusing

I have a number of domains which I have had parked and pointed (forwarded and masked) to one main site. I understand the problem this has become. However several of the pointed sites have been indexed – I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I’m having trouble understanding how the 301 redirect is set up – where to find or create the .htaccess file – and where the code goes. Do I need to do anything at the registry and if so can changing the Name Servers at the registry accomplish the same goal?

I built my site a number of years ago and was never really concerned with PR – and have enjoyed good success by driving clients to the site and then harvesting them. However I don’t want to be completely excluded from the search engines either – you never know what might happen tomorrow.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This is my first post .... not sure how to sign off

Dave ....

[cyanide]

You appear to be on a Windows server, so htaccess among other things will not work.

If your domains are just forwarded to your website via the registrar, then they're not really indexed, because there's no pages. In this situation a 301 isn't really necessary and you wouldn't have access to the server to put one anyway.

I built my site a number of years ago and was never really concerned with PR

You still shouldn't really, in my opinion.
pr is just a number to reflect the popularity of web pages. It will not directly influence search engine positioning

[Canadave]

Thanks for the reply, it sheds some light – maybe I’m getting some mixed advice. I think my first problem is vocabulary, some words seem to have different meanings in different converstions. So as clearly as I can……

I have a number of Domain Names, purchased through GoDaddy. Using the Forward / Mask function they offer I have sent them to specific pages I have created on my main site. There they open what appears to be a 3 or 4 page site unique to that domain name.

Each “site” offers a similar service but in a different geographic area and the domain names reflect that. My goal was to market these domains independent of each other, building a network of local businesses. Is there something fundamentally wrong with this ?

Several of these domains will be returned in a google search for their communities, I would not like to do anything that will negatively impact their ability to rank or at least be listed - in the future. (understanding that improved ranking is another conversation)

The sites will max out at 4 pages and I really can’t justify or afford to pay to host each individually.

[cspelts]

I'm curious about this too - and maybe someone can give a more definitive answer - but I would think that if you have a site at FirstDomain.com, and you create a little four-page site at FirstDomain.com/SecondSite, and point SecondDomain.com to that URL, you'll be fine as long as you ALWAYS use SecondDomain.com in all your links to that site. IF you also link to FirstDomain.com/SecondSite, you'll probably be dinged for duplicate content.

Is anyone doing this? I'm really curious...

[cspelts]

Okay, I think I have an answer - at least as far as Google goes, and I doubt MSN and Yahoo are much different.

From http://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html

6. Googlebot is downloading information from our "secret" web server.

It is almost impossible to keep a web server secret by not publishing any links to it. As soon as someone follows a link from your "secret" server to another web server, it is likely that your "secret" URL is in the referer tag, and it can be stored and possibly published by the other web server in its referer log. So, if there is a link to your "secret" web server or page on the web anywhere, it is likely that Googlebot and other "web crawlers" will find it.

So even if you NEVER linked to www.FirstDomain.com/SecondSite, it's likely Google would find it anyway and count it as duplicate content. So it appears you really do need to host microsites individually. Oh well.

[Canadave]

Cspelts - Thanks for taking the time to research and post.

I’m still scratching at this…. I do need a practicle solution and I’m stepping into unfamiliar territory so please bear with me.


If it is necessary to host micro sites individually

My local ISP wants $ 35.00 per month per name to host – I can’t justify that.

Can this be accomplished on a “Dedicated or Virtual Server”. As offered in a number of places on the web?

As An Example One Offers:

2,000 MB Disk Space
20,000 MB Bandwidth
Unlimited Domain Control; etc. etc.

I have no idea what all that means, in terms of volume but it must be more than I have with a simple “household” account.

If this will solve the redirect problem from the search engines view by making each Domain unique it could be affordable.

Any input or opinions would be most welcome.

Cheers ..... Dave