We have two domains with links pointing into both. Right now one 301 redirects to the other. What should I do for SEO?

Question

We have a web site example.com and domain example.org which is 301 redirecting to example.com.

Both of these domain names are promoted in web.

Because redirection is badly affecting SEO, instead of redirection, we can point example.org to the same content which is shown when visiting example.com.

Right now:

example.org/about-us redirects you to example.com/about-us

We would like to change it so:

example.org/about-us shows the same file that is shown when visiting example.com/about-us

The question is how this will affect to the ranking of the web site? We don`t care much if people will find us by example.com or example.org.

EDIT: Why we have two domains - don`t have any idea. The biggest problem here is that our backlinks are also divided by ...com and ....org. Previously we did a lot of campaigns and advertisement and sometimes org were used sometimes com.

Even in social media you can find one domain in facebook and the other one in Instagram.

So, I am trying to find the cheapest way to fix this in the scope of SEO.

Answer 1

What kind of negative effects are you seeing in the SERPs for example.org? When you first implement a 301 redirect you will often see a drop in rankings but typically that rebounds over time (assuming the content of the page redirected to deserves the same rankings).

If you were to place the same content on .org and .com, you would run into duplicate content issues. That would mean you'd have two sites competing against each other for the exact same rankings since those sites contain the exact same content.

Almost always, duplicate content on different domains will create a much bigger issue than redirecting one domain to another. So, you'd likely be better off leaving the redirect in place.

The better solution would be to pick the primary domain you do want to promote. That might be example.com instead of example.org. Make all of your work about promoting example.com, make sure all internal links use example.com, and make sure all external links reference example.com. That way you really help example.com rank higher and example.org doesn't have any presence in the SERPs.