what redirect do i use?

Question

I have a hosted rails application that gives every account a sub domain eg company.hosted_site.com

I have pointed our customers own domain to their subdomain via a A record and a cname so it looks like their own site.

But now i have 2 versions of the same site running so i need to now redirect the subdomain to the customers own domain.

My question is what redirect is best for this for SEO ?

thank you Rick

Answer 1

There are a couple of things you can use. First, assuming you have signed the domain up for Google Webmaster tools, you can select the prefered version of the URL. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

I would also add an HTACCESS rule to redirect visitors to the preferred URL.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} company.hosted_site.com [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hosted_site.com/$1 [L,R=301] 

Answer 2

as long as you get 301 site moved permanently, you'll be fine, doesn't matter which method you use to redirect, you just need to make sure to set the code properly.

Answer 3

If a file/domain has has moved for good you should use a "301 Moved Permanently"