Help Please. Duplicate Content Problem due to Parked Domain?

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

We launched the site under the domain www.free-tarot-reading.net in 2002 and later changed the name of the site to Lotus Tarot, then registering www.lotustarot.com and simply parking the one domain on top of the other (site hosted on dedicated server).

We enjoyed top 3 positions across google, yahoo etc for the majority tarot related key words until about 8 months ago. Now we are struggling to get top 20 for most of them even though 'lotus tarot' is in the top 20 for tarot key word searches.

Our PR 5 pages dropped to PR 4 and 3 also.

I wondered if the parked domain problem had caused this, as google began recognising the 2 urls as the same domain (back links etc) whereas before they were seen as seperate.

We have countless backlinks out there to both domains, and probably thousands of bookmarks of both domains, so it's not such a siimple thing to alter.

Site is currently getting 20k visits per day, and Alexa about 35k. We peaked at Alexa 10k and 30k visits.

Any input on how to get our rankings back would be great.

I'm thinking of developing a new linking campaign using full page article links for our link partners, as I'm losing faith in links page value.

Also one other question, anyone know if the google backward links are listed in order of importance - that would give me a good idea of how to create a good value link exchange program.

Sorry, many questions here. Would appreciate beginning a dialogue with some of the experienced wm's.

Best
David

[wige]

As far as it not being easy to fix, since you have a dedicated server, you should be able to set up a 301 redirect for one of the domains which will redirect all incoming links, bookmarks from one to the other. This will put all users on the same URL, while consolidating (at least partially) the benefits from your inbound links, and eliminating any duplicate content issues.

The next step I would suggest would be to slowly try to get as many inbound links redirected from the old domain name to the new one. If this is done in a slow, natural way Google should catch on to the shift and transfer the benefits of the moved links to the new domain.

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

Thanks, that's the sort of advice I need.

I was a total newbie when I started the site, and learned a great deal during development, most of which I've forgotten again!

So I correctly understand, if we have, for arguments sake, 20 urls out there linking into one domain (ie. lotustarot.com/a/1.php lotustarot.com/b/2.htm) then we can direct them to their relative pages on the other domain, or do they get redirected to only one specific page.

To rephrase, is it possible to set up a redirect that simply strips the actual domain and replaces it with the other, maintaining the folder and file extensions.

Sorry if the terminology is a bit jumbled, that's kinda how the site is too. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

e.g. www.lotustarot.com/articles/thefool.php may be out there as an ibl. If we unpark lotustarot.com from f-t-r.net how do we maintain the integrity of the link to make sure it goes to www.free-tarot-reading.net/articles/thefool.php? (we have well over 5000 indexed pages, most of them f-t-r.net, but users tend to go with the lt.com domain as it's more memorable, and we have been using it in email links for 3 years as the domain is shorter!)

depending on your answer, I'll ask related q's or give related info.

thanks
D

[wige]

If you have two domains, you can set it up (under five lines of code in Apache) so that whatever URL is entered for the old domain is 301 redirected to the new domain name. This would change olddomain.com/folder/page.php to www.newdomain.com/folder/page.php. Even if you have 15 domains on the server, this would remap them all to the new domain. The code you would use is:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.newdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

That sounds perfect. So then I would first need to unpark the second domain and set it up on the server with its own ip.
Does that remove the parked domain/duplicate content problem with google and other SE's?

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

The next step I would suggest would be to slowly try to get as many inbound links redirected from the old domain name to the new one. If this is done in a slow, natural way Google should catch on to the shift and transfer the benefits of the moved links to the new domain.

By this do you mean searching the net for links to the previously parked domain (lt.com) and writing to the wm's to edit the links?

Doesn't google et al follow the redirects and index the link as if it is coming straight to the redirected page?

[wige]

With 301 redirects, some or all of the weight of inbound links goes to the destination page. How much is a matter of conjecture, which is why you want to start getting as many of your inbound links moved to the new domain. The problem is that if you move too many at once Google may become suspicious. A change like this typically takes a while.

You don't need seperate IPs, you would just point both domain names at the same server, and the rewrite rule will redirect all the traffic not pointed to the one specific domain.

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

With 301 redirects, some or all of the weight of inbound links goes to the destination page. How much is a matter of conjecture, which is why you want to start getting as many of your inbound links moved to the new domain. The problem is that if you move too many at once Google may become suspicious. A change like this typically takes a while.

You don't need seperate IPs, you would just point both domain names at the same server, and the rewrite rule will redirect all the traffic not pointed to the one specific domain.

Ok thanks again. I think it is pretty standard that if I create a seperate domain on the server, it automatically gets its own ip. It's only a buck a month anyway, so no problem with that

Just a thought before I go ahead. Given that Google seems to recognise the two domains as being one and the same site (same page rank, same back links etc), do you think it's still necessary to make the changes?

[wige]

Yes, because the links are going to be divided. Plus your existing users will almost seamlessly be diverted to the new site.

Even if everything is the same right now between the two domains, by using 301s to merge the two you will end up with a stronger site than if you let the sites remain seperate, dividing your content and your inbound links.

[LotusTarotWebmaster]

thanks, I actually completed the process with 4 other domains we were using (only the lt domain intensively).

I set up 4 subfolders on the root and put an htaccess file in each of the folders as follows:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.free-tarot-reading.net/$1 [R=301,L]

I then pointed the previously parked domains at the respective folders.

I let all the domains share the main ip address, there was no need to use independent ip's as you rightly said.

It works like a dream and is seamless as you say, thanks so much for your help.

now to start contacting all those links out there and asking them to convert ....

best
David