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First off, I know next to nothing about SEO (I'm an application developer), but I have questions regarding the implications of having certain locations on a website directed to a different domain and server. Here's the breakdown of the setup:

The main website for the business is hosted on an Australian host, which hosts a WordPress site that was not built by nor will be maintained by me, hosted under a com.au domain

What I'm building is a software suite for both desktop and server that manages large amounts of data for this business. Since the software that I'm building has no effect on the main website (and vice-versa), and the fact that the Aussie server is managed (meaning I don't have root SSH access), I am deploying my software stack to a Google Cloud server (with a .net domain), also based in Australia. In isolation, this is irrelevant, however, there will also be a public web interface built on the Google server to handle some operations that the WordPress site cannot (one being a simple storefront to handle product purchases that require using the REST API on the Google server).

The main WP site will need to link to a page on the web interface using a different domain:

https://www.siteinquestion.com.au/ -> https://store.siteinquestion.net/

Basically, this is done so that the posted form data won't have to be proxied via curl to the Google server (and so changes can be made without affecting the WP site).

My client's concern is that this will negatively affect SEO on the WP site vis à vis bounce rates.

So my question is, how to set this up that will result in no negative impact on the WP site's SEO? My thoughts (again without knowing SEO at all) are:

1) Would there be a way to "tell" Google (and other search engines) that siteinquestion.net and by extention store.siteinquestion.net are related to siteinquestion.com.au so bounce rates do not apply?

2) I'd prefer not to, but what about using the siteinquestion.com.au domain on the Google server as well using store.siteinquestion.com.au? Are there negative implications having a subdomains for the same domain split across different servers? Would this not slow things down, having multiple name servers for the same domain point to two different places?

3) Or is this all needless worry, and just build it as is?

Thanks for any help you gurus can provide.

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First of all. I would disagree on using store.siteinquestion.net. Instead you should use store.siteinquestion.com.au. This has to do on keeping a consistent identity across both website and store front.

To accomplish that you need to point the A record on your domain registrar to the IP of the Google Server.

Regarding the use of subdomain/domains. What you should understand is that a sub-domain is totally different entity than its domain. Therefore you must market these entities in different way. If you do this I don't see why you will increase the bounce rates on the main domain.

Now on your specific questions.

  1. No there's no way to tell Google about the different domains you are mentioning.
  2. No negative implications on using a sub domain if you carefully market your store front and main domain as different entities.
  3. My first paragraph suggests to use a sub-domain deriving from the main domain.
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  • Thanks. Problem tho - the registrar for the domain in question does not allow A records to be added for third-party hosting, only nameservers.
    – mwieczorek
    Dec 4, 2019 at 9:29

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