Help, I may be on my way to getting banned!

[TaKoda]

I am not sure where to post this but it seems I may have a huge problem going on.

My site has been on the web for 7 years or so and for the last couple of years I have regretted my site name and address, it did not really describe what I was, so I had been considering a complete change over. I was fearful of this step because I had been ranking well enough with the top SEs to be receiving adequate customers to keep me content.

About a month ago, I had just finished creating and uploading a photography business site for a new customer. I set them up with the same FREE server I have used for years, (www.doteasy.com) Less than a week after I had finished, doteasy started a referral program (figures) in which the referrer and the referee would get an addition 100 MG storage space. Dang, I couldn’t pass that up but I did not have any new clients in the near future, and since I was already a doteasy customer I could not refer myself nor did I have any one else to refer to them.

As a result………I went back to the photography studio customer and had them to refer me as a new site with my new site name, one that describes me better. Great! Now I have two identical sites with two separate names, PLUS, my entire site is in frames, so I built a complete noframes site for both of my framed sites for noframe customers and search engine purposes. Still with me here?

Doteasy.com could care less, everything is wonderful there and I recommend them to anyone looking for a fantastic, free server. If you need php, sgi, pearl, etc you have to pay a very small fee.

My problem is I just read in the Search Engine forum that what I have done: duplicate sites on the same IP address will get me banned from search engines. From the time I built the duplicate and until just now, I did not realize I had done something wrong.

To solve this, I was thinking of a 301 redirect from my pages that are ranking in the SEs to my new site address without giving it away to my customers that they are being redirected but I do not know how to do this for sure. I will delete all of my old site content except for the redirect pages.

Sorry this was so long and I am praying for some feedback on this dilemma a.s.a.p. so I do not jeopardize my new site’s SE placements. It has only been 2 to 3 weeks since I have submitted the new site and I am hoping to fix this mess before I get spidered and possibly banned.

[netbaldwin]

I would strongly recommend doing a redirect from the old domain to the good domain. Some registrars will even set up meta tags based on the site it is forwarding to.

[clasione]

I would immediatly stop redirecting and add completely different content on both sites.... If you did get banned - only one should get banned, and it really shoud be the new one, being it should be picked up as a duplicate instead of the original... But I would immediatly seperate there content and make them unique....

That's what I would do anyway....

[TaKoda]

Thank you guys for the info, but I am very confused on the 301 direct. netbaldwin, you mentioned that some registrars will set up meta tags for me, is there a way for me to do this myself? My registrar is DotEasy, & they will not get back to me for another 24 hours.

In addition, as far as changing all my content clasione, that is impossible. LOL, I don’t have any more usable content!